THE OLD MAN
Drab
Dingy
Tobacco juice dripping on the floor.
Bread-crust
Bleeding rust
Creaking door.
The old man is silent
No less
No more.
MODERN POETRY
Incoherent
Convoluted
No sense of motion.
Regurgitate
Masturbate
No deep ocean.
Poetry guru
Get off your high horse
A line with no rhyme
Is bad prose or worse.
OLD POETRY
For some, Greek metaphor spews from the pen
Oedipus, smedipus
To hell with them.
Give me a reference to modern day
Longfellow, Emerson
Maybe Emily.
Perhaps a Python quote
Or a Bill Murray retort
I like a philosophy with a good chuckle, a snort.
EMPTY SPACES
A sunset’s fading glow, a celestial black hole
Or that distance between you and I.
That long awkward silent pause between two lovers at odds
Can not fill a chasm separating two mountains
A rubber hose, a flaring nose, or the nubbies between my toes
Measures small to the inner lining of grandma’s mothballed clothes.
A desert terrain, a winter’s silent rain,
A yearning unfulfilled.
A crowded hall with no one at all
Sits a lone martini not shaken, not stirred.
A vacuum tube, a vacant room
Or the futility of whose right and whose wrong.
A parking lot, a hangman’s knot
That which separates the shoe from the ground.
A lover’s embrace, a rose to my face,
These fill the voids I have found.
COVID CAPER
Lacy-dressed We Cares and We Know What’s Best
Disguise authorities’ draconian decrees put to the test
To create a dystopian world not for tomorrow but today
With totalitarian rulers who won’t let us play
Nor live, nor breathe, in any normal way
A pandemic without the sick
Is a pretty devious trick
To use to imprison the world
Arbitrary numbers concocted by doctors
Collude with political slime
To convince the people a hug and a handshake is a heinous, horrible crime
The ubiquitous terrorist becomes the ubiquitous germ
In this latest global scheme
As jobs are lost, small businesses crumble
And Bezos’ riches continue to double
A con like no other emboldens those
Who would rat out their own mother
A snitch every time will turn in nine
Be they Jew, a Commie or an anti-masker
Yet always obedient to their power-trippin’ tasker
Opportunists abound during our forced lockdown
Wall Street wealthy miraculously win again
Then parlay this disaster with a stimulus for masters
And a paltry paycheck for their dutiful peasants and kin
A swab up the nose, a shot in the arm
Will do you no harm they say
Until you’re cheated of your medical, cheated of your health
And Big Brother tracks your travel every step of the way
And Bezos gets richer, and Bezos gets richer, and Bezos gets richer…