On the evening of President Obama’s second term in office, regardless of anyone’s political proclivities, I pause to reflect on the one great fact that subsumes all others: Christ our Lord it is who ultimately leads us and strengthens our arms to love and serve.

The ink is dry, the eyes are wet,

the table’s turned, the cast is set.

One plan dies, another one lives,

not without pain but it, wisdom, gives.

We aim’d to lead and change the world,

through every challenge fear we hurled.

Every obstacle, dark and drear

must meet with faith, not wanton fear.

The coldest wage still paid in time

are those whose hatred’s willful crime

purports to guide but kills instead

the heart of our compassion, dead.

But though with every fiber’d will

we put to rest our need to kill,

there yet remains love’s dividend

of Christ, the Lord, our journey’s end.

Let’s have some Greek escargot, garnished well with lobster tips.

we ordered kosher pizza though it’s never touched my lips.

Let’s have a garden party once I text the dog a bone,

then all of us retire to the balcony, alone.

The stereo is oozing out some sad John Mayer tunes,

a few Adele, Dave Matthews and Death Cab for Cutie, too.

We’re swingin’ in Hilfiger, Abercrombie, Fitch and Gap,

the men drink single malt and chase it down with room temp Schnapps.

The gals pretend to talk about the things that matter most,

but mostly compare boobs, and think they’re better than the host.

We spent the afternoon at Starbucks just so we’d be seen,

my forty something ass looks tight in these designer jeans.

The holiday in Aspen skiing down those magic hills,

we stayed in Porsche’s timeshare and took weight reduction pills.

My faith has wavered some in my investments this past year,

for all those lazy bastards without jobs I’ll shed no tears.

And now one last Shiraz will go down sweetly on my lips,

those seven Dos Equis have left me sorely needing sips.

When next you ask about me I will need to ask of you,

to use the servant’s entrance and to please take off your shoes.

Teased by leaves of impossible hue,

November coaxes her song, late in coming

but pure in its lyric of white death.

She sings, crouched in waiting on hollow, haunted haunches

squeezing out what remains of flourishing days.

Confidently, she trades them for the unknown future

where day and night swap places.

Grey becomes the new day,

greyer still the night that swallows up

scented Summer’s boasting, silken Fall’s lust for Spring.

Stop, she says.

Stop to hear this song about nothing,

these words that have sewn up sown seeds,

entombing with wordless serenade the last vestiges of living

and, instead, insistently hums her song,

her late and last and lingering notes;

notes only overshadowed by the noisy whines

of Spring’s new calling.

Photo thanks: writingasjoes.blogspot.com 

His was to be a road of warn and worn,

saddled in piecemeal fragility, poised upon the brink of his otherworldly heart.

No rings of Saturn to juxtapose here with there, horizon with fingertips.

No multiple moons taking turns rising and falling in the sight-line of his dreams.

No dusty, chemical-winds racing to pour themselves in heaps of derivative normalcy.

Beyond the vale of his thoughts, in pools of reflective light, came time

time…

time…its slow ache, d  r  a  w  n out, s  t  r  e  t  c  h  i  n  g then from now from when.

Along the borderlands of his discontent there lived others,

other souls of perishable flesh, volatile spirits, meandering hearts

who linger around burning garbage cans hoping to catch but a glimpse,

a passing glance of someone whose hands are still warm

whose life still contains the fragrance of love,

whose passions remain undulled by restraint and the ticking clock of desperation.

Then, as night falls from day falls from night,

a single drop of blood trickles down his shredded cheek.

His was a life renewed, born again in the tattered oneness of a cracked, brittle rosebush.

He had found a place of belonging among them in thorn-ed bliss.

Her many colored head, bedecked in Autumn’s finery

reclines against soft, brown-hill’d breasts.

Hunching shoulders of sleeping valley walls

protect the lingering leaves, giving them pause

to remain a little longer,

a little longer,

a little longer still for she knows of Winter’s intent.

Her rugged secrets remain, untainted,

even though she hungrily gave herself, surrendering

her supple haunches as Summer’s later lover.

But soon, her long, white atonement,

blankets her with redemption’s cooling hands.

The touch of icy claws rakes her back,

caressing her with sweet death.

She is purified in her dark sleep.

Then, as though in a dream, an untouched virgin

rises again in the womb of Spring.

Half a day and half again

since Donegal’s had seen the man

who truddled round the farberquim

the porter claimed he’d not seen him.

And grumpy Grifflabasherim

insisted he’d seen nowt of him.

Then near to half past quarter ten,

aspied he was near Quibulen,

with characters of shifty sort

and women, or so they report.

His coat in tatts, his trousers torn

his nose a’blooded, face forlorn.

with scuffed up shoes and smudged up knees,

for Shloope was shloshed at Schniffery’s.

Still, so still in your prison bed, saddled with weighted, watered coat.

Your shoulders, no longer subtle and seductive,

but rounded now, head prayerfully bowed.

Your once spiny shanks give way to your insanely colored demeanor

shared only here and now in these brief moments.

No one visits anymore to poke and probe and penetrate,

their sweeter fare to mix and merge for tea and sated palettes.

Patiently you abide the loneliness, forfeiting fellowship of other petaled sojourners-

now ghosts. Their spirits haunt Spring memories and taunt of Winter’s coming.

Your will wanes with the daylight hours;

your breaths are shorter, arms colder, with the grey horizon closing in.

Yet, alone you may be, but lonely you are not

for peeking out from rumpled soil where things long dead, or sleeping,

are others’ voices who pine for you to rise again, resplendent in former glory.

This you promise, but for now you shiver, brinking on edge of night

when sleep, finally, is yours and

you are reborn

once

more.

If two is three but less of one

and one means two where one meets one,

then all is none where few are gone

but few are gone where gone are none.

Still once is twice that becomes thrice

and quattro means once more than thrice

then quarter main is main times four

if less than main then less than four.

So now I end my ‘rithmetic

my brains all beat up with a stick.

If ever numbers you would know

look elsewhere please, I’m far too slow.

Slip shod past the wimplebee

goes Woodriff Shloope, at half past three.

This Shlizzmagora found his way

to Littleman’s wharf, or so they say.

Then Woodriff’s portulimpical arc

sat still while still he could be park’d

at Donegal’s the story goes

to drink eleventy more of those.

Now, the dishlee, Grifflabasherim

found Woodriff Schloop and asked of him

to kindly wait till half past three,

to slip shod past the wimplebee.