Esteemed personages and jurists
let the oral arguments begin.
Sir, the legality of your position on this
most serious of matters
limps like a drunken duck.
Madam your logic has diminished,
it trips over its own dung,
it bleats like a flea bitten nanny-goat.
Sire, your robes make you look fat.
Madam, your mother resembles
a demented Pitbull.
Sir, your ass requires two chairs.
This case is flawed.
This flaw is the case!
The floor is wet madam, are you incontinent?
Your flapping mouth is toothless Sir.
Gum me !
Go dry your nuts in a microwave donkey breath.
“My respected colleagues,
decorum please,”
pleads another pillar of the law.
Together – ‘Shut-up fish face!'
Long thoughtful pause,
while giant legal minds deliberate.
A deep disembodied voice intones::
"The Supremes have adjourned for lunch."
We'll all be old dogs someday
if we last so long.
We'll remember when we were young
and active and greatly loved.
But then one day someone
dumped us off at the side of the road
because adult diapers were getting
expensive and conversations
took us forever searching for our words.
So there we are
on the side of the road, afraid,
slow from age just kind of waiting
for someone to remember
to come back and get us,
while we become increasingly
rattyass and flea-bitten
with muddy poo under our tails.
Will there be
one final round of happiness
for any of us?
The puppy in him ventured forth
eager to live life to the hilt
A flea-bitten hound crept back home
Who'd taken the meat from his bone
Fruitful faeries flying freshly frightenly faraway
Flashing flea-bitten furry fireflies fantasy fey,
Faux flash-dancing flowery figs flowing flippantly free,
Ferocious fierce foursome fruit-flies flying fantasy’s flea.
Fast-fingered flicker formidably frugally fit flexible.
Frosting frilly flounder’s fluorescent fetish fully fixable.
Fanciful freckled fathomably frosted filly fibs flitting,
Fashionable forcefully fanatical farmhand fuzzily fretting.
Fun-loving, flippant foolhardy fivefold finger’s foghorn.
Fooled fellow’s fervent fleecy foppish fire fuzzily forlorn.
Fantastical fanged frolicking fishy fuzzy fickle frills.
Fixes froggy’s fanciful fanned fox figs from freezing Frankfort.
At your very birth,
before your fanciful embellishments,
they not only gazed, but breathed into you
and meant and did you no harm.
You were so pure and they were so true.
Guarding you, guiding you, teaching you,
knowing quite well what you were,
but perhaps not what you would be;
they wished you and were what you wished,
and you could go, do, be as you pleased,
take all and only what was good and enough,
you needed no more than to reach
and they would reach for you
and back to you
and meet you, grasping, halfway.
But you hurled them to the ground.
And horse-drawn chariots and carriages
conveying warmongers and kings and queens,
and decrepit carts stuttering wearily
behind wearily stuttering flea-bitten mules,
trampled and rolled over them roughshod.
You stood among them, broken, shattered,
scattered about your feet.
Those broken pieces wept.
26th March 2005
I will be a memory tomorrow
To one more lover than I am today.
She will be gone and I'll face my sorrow -
Another country song for Hank to play.
But there'll be others to lighten my load,
An' a little Jack Daniels on the side.
It ain't my first time down this lonesome road -
She won't be the last in my double wide.
So tomorrow I'll grieve an' shed my tears,
Think of the good times we shared together.
I'll remember what we built through the years -
Try not to think of the stormy weather.
Then next week when the rodeo's in town
I'll be buckin' on some flea bitten flank.
And there'll be a smile replacin' this frown -
I'll grab life an' give 'er another yank.
8/28/2017
Here comes Buck Toothed Chuck
from Hickville Street,
sorriest feller you
ever did meet.
Walkin' his flea bitten dog
down the street, scratchin’ his head
and flip flopping his feet.
If he asks for money
best say, "No way"!
'cuz it'll slip through his fingers
in less than a day.
He'll be spittin' tobackee
the whole day through,
'cuz he ain't got nothin'
better to do.
There goes Buck Toothed Chuck
from Hickville Street,
hasn’t had a bath in
over a week,
Best steer clear cuz' the
smell ain't sweet,
sorriest feller you
ever did meet.
This is a rat infested; flea bitten, trash seeking, concrete hardened,
Winter frozen, nose closing stench I call life.
Poverty my wife:
Ash my nourishment; paper my blanket; disorder my order;
Sewage my water; concrete my mattress; streets my room
No-one is who I am
Living to see another day my plan
Been all over the place but still the same street
Cracked the hardest sole by the greater feet,
Which though winter or summer bring the strongest cold?
BUT YET SO BOLD
To crack a smile of serenity, freeing me, peacefully
Un-comprehended but well complemented
But can’t dare to share it
With my enemies: the rich; the government; the wealthy
I salute you poverty, there were not supposed to be
Don’t they know the richer they are the poorer I become
I know that I’m black but poverty is where I’m from
They may get richer in rand but I’ve got more in cent
Common and the ones jingling in my pants
That’s why I say:
“This is a rat infested; flea bitten, trash seeking, concrete hardened,
Winter frozen, nose closing stench I call LIFE.”
POVERTY MY WIFE
In the Australian vernacular
he was a ‘flea-bitten’ grey.
Not dappled like a dream horse
but speckled like a rock and not a
fine large horse like Tom Cable’s
roman-nosed, Major.
Dad had traded for him- with Tom -
two rolls of barbed wire and a fence strainer.
He came with a used saddle and bridle and
the high spirits of the seldom ridden.
Dad knew, that before he would let me mount him,
he had to take the 'curry' out of him -
rode him hard through a ploughed paddock.
Rode him until he stood in a foaming sweat
ears sideways, subdued.
I can’t forget being led, those first few rides
“Don’t let go of his head, Dad” I’m not ready yet,” Dad
and I knew the horse sensed the trembling in my being,
until one day, his bone- jarring trot, became a solved puzzle.
I felt a gathering- a sense of balance
between the pony’s mouth, the stirrups and the reins
and suddenly from a secret fulcrum
I was posting, “Let him go now, Dad,” I shouted,
A sweet transition to some rhythmic, magic floating
Around the homestead once and back I was cantering.
I pulled the reins, “Whoa boy!”
That first halt obeyed filled my head for days and days.
No matter how deep you think you dug
The earth on top still lies fresh
In a heartbeat
In a teardrop
In the flutter of a Raven’s wings
Mere seconds it takes
For those memories
Those feeling that ache
To be dug up and placed at your feet
Soiled from the time wasted
Bitter from the Chance lost
You feel sickened
Like you are nothing better than a flea bitten mutt
You see your failures
All you have done
The chances that you have lost
In the barrel of a gun
Where am I now?
Staring six feet down
At all I could have had
All I threw away
What am I?
Kicked on the ground by my own heal
Bleeding slowly by my own hand
Heart faltering by my own actions
At the edge of darkness I stand
Wondering what could have been
I should have corrected my sin
I should have buried myself with it all
For I am nothing without them
A man I should have cherished more
A friend I should have been there for
A stranger that I could not spare a kindness
I will dig a grave for myself
Close my eyes and dream
Imagine a life where I did not fail
And slowly forget to breathe.
Crystal, my flea bitten nuisance of a kitten, brought me a little token of affection tonight.
I deplore mice.
Even dead ones.
Filthy buggers.
But, there sat Crystal. Mouse at her feet, mewing at me. As if to say
"See, I love you, even if you are a blood lusting monster of the dark."
I admit, she only mewed once. But I am certain, that is what she meant.
So as not to hurt her feelings, I donned on of my least favorite pairs of gloves and
picked the rancid vermin up.
But I drew the line of pretending to eat it!
I must remember to burn those gloves.
Odd. The candle on my desk sputters. There is a breeze. Although the door to my lair
was tightly shut.
There is only on other way in or out. That would be the small tunnel I dug for Crystal.
So that she may come and go as she pleases.
Ah. But here rests my cantankerous little fiend upon my lap.
The breeze brings with it a scent. One I know all to well.
Blood.
My lair has been breeched.
Time to hunt.
~Lord Kellington
I don't believe it!
I, the blood thirsty monster
of every nightmare!
Who fills the night time streets with
a true evil unrivaled!
What am I to do
with a tiny white kitten?
It followed me home...truly.
A pathetic little thing.
Probably full of fleas.
I have to buy milk!
I have to buy stinky fish!
What else will it need?
It does have cute ears
and the tiniest pink nose.
IT JUST WENT UP MY NEW VELVET DRAPERIES!
It will not come down!
fine. It can stay there and starve.
See if I care.
Now I have to go see if I even own a ladder.
My dinner is getting impatient.
He thinks that he is here for a job interview.
As if I have the needs of a butler.
Hmmm. Maybe I will let him get
that flea bitten thing down
before I partake.
~Lord Kellington
The castle perched high above the busy city
ringed by a deep moat.
Fisher birds posed atop nesting sheds,
bobbing for koi,
preening their flea bitten feathers;
dreaming of past majesty.
Across the bridge through the massive gates
humanity, lumbered
passing layered levels of water gardens,
overlapping like the squares in a Mondrian painting,
forming asymmetrical rectangular patterns.
The basins of rimed granite block
edged in white limestone gravel hedged in an
early Fall display of chrysanthemums.
Buddy my friend
you came to my house
unwanted by me. Loved
by our Man, and Dragged in
by the little girl that our man
just Couldn't tell NO! So many
times I have returned home
UN-afraid because I knew you
took good care of your duties
as guard to your "people".
So many times I
have carried you with me
to keep me safe as I went
about doing my jobs as Mom
even when those jobs came
after dark. I was never afraid
when you and your growl
rode shotgun. I have watched
you run for a ball even when
they hid it and just made you
run for the fun of it. I have seen
you turn cartwheels for the same
ball bounced just out of your reach.
No wonder you made them fight you
for the ball every time you did bring it
close enough for them to get a grip on it.
I would have done the same. So many dogs
have come and gone since you came here as
Just a flea bitten bundle of skinny bones.
Some say that animals don't have a heaven
But I think if they do, You are surely there!
I will miss you Buddy!