IN MEMORIAM

Poetry Picnic

d'Verse Poets Pub

Everything starts here

in my composition book

just like the ones I never used

for school work

too busy scribbling my subversive poetry

in study hall

a nasty little parody of Beowulf

or The Night Before Christmas

a drunken Santa staggering around

busting up the furniture

always thought drunks were funny

still do

art imitating life

I guess

I was past the days when dad

barely able to stand

took the car out one New Years Eve

and wrecked it

injuring some innocent family members

in the other vehicle

then

somehow getting a ride back home

and taking our other car out

and wrecking it on the same night

the guy was a gas

one day I said this is such B.S.

this idea of school as a full time job

and I vowed to stop taking homework

completely

and made good on it

my last two years of high school

nobody cared

the funniest thing was

they let me graduate

dear old mom and her Second Big Mistake

would be at the beer joints all night

I'd stay up alone on Saturdays

in that isolated farmhouse

watching Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi on late night TV

I wanted to walk like an Egyptian

I could always count on them

to come home fighting

ripping the phone out of the wall

and busting up some furniture

so comical

I'd pass my nasty rhymes around in class

Teach would be up there with his blah blah

my poem circulating up and down

each row of desks

even the girls snickering

and passing it on

and Teach

protector of impressionable minds

intercepting the paper

beginning to read

beginning to laugh out loud

catching himself

face turning red

going on a diatribe about how such trash

was the product of a sick mind

but it was too late

I'd already caught him

in the act

and gool ol' Mom lying there

in a pile of chicken feathers

from a ripped up pillow

and ol' Doc from town would come out

and patch her up

discreetly

it was a small town

and Doc's young daughter

prettiest girl in my Junior High class

asked me out one time

to a roller skating party

it occurred to me much later

that he must have put the kabosh

on that from ever happening again

with the likes of me

and Santa cursed

and flipped them all the finger

as he rode out of sight

after busting up some furniture

of course

always thought drunks were funny

still do

but only funny

if they're funny

and not morose

more points if he's staggering around

with a lampshade on his head

every comic knows

that comedy comes from pain

so please don't stand there

with that look of disdain

and try to change me now

CHRISTOPHER STARDUST

Poetry Picnic

d'Verse Poets Pub

You gambled on a sure thing and your losses were incalculable. So you hit the road (after being tossed from a speeding pickup truck).

While hitch hiking, you meet up with an old southern gentleman who is offended by the stars in your eyes and the stripes along the highway. He says, "I SPIT on you, suh!"

"No ya don't," you cry, keeping on the move, bobbing and weaving, increasing the tempo until he runs out of saliva.

You shag a ride with a woman in a Jaguar convertible. She parks along a dirt road and her top comes down. You desperately want to get her home to play a game of Scruples, knowing that she has none.

You say you can never be bought, but she purchases you outright. And though there was a price on your head, she says it can be easily removed with a little soap and water.

Her career is in high gear, so she leaves you at home to play Mister Mom. She sends you a text that says: BANG THE DRUM. BURP THE BRAT. BE SURE THE DOGS ARE BATHED AND PROPERLY TUCKED INTO BED. (It is public knowledge that she has a rash in a private place, but since it's always dark when she gets home, you're the last one to know.)

You become a transvestite, fashioning your own dresses from the burlap bags you buy with your meager allowance. You wear glitter in your hair and call yourself Christopher Stardust.

The newspaper does a human interest story on you. You get your own cable TV show, doing psychic readings for house pets from the way they bark, mew, or snort into the telephone. You tell a cat that its last escape from death was just by a whisker.

You parley your knowledge of animals and your smooth bedside manner into a successful phone sex business for those who are into bestiality. (You imitate all those beastly noises yourself.)

You take all your profits and hit the casino again, intent upon making that one big score.

You put it all on black.

It comes up red.

You borrow money from a guy named Bruno. You don't lose your shirt...you lose your bra, your wig, and your garter belt. They take you back to the highway where they toss you from an even faster moving truck.

Ever the hardheaded one, you gather yourself up and stagger down the road. Glitter falls from your hair and gets stuck in your navel. You look up at the sky and see a shooting star burning itself out. Your woman drives by in her Ford Fiesta.

This time, she doesn't stop.

STARS ON WATER

Friday Poetry Fest

Poetry Picnic

d'Verse Poets Pub

We are lost in the darkness

the autumn constellations

like the sparkle of snow

Dreaming

drifting
as milk wagons from a bygone era

on nightbound roads

moving ceaselessly in search

of a vanished dawn

The sleeping forest

crisp and cold

a jewel in the moonlight

Night planes

spiraling stars

deer snorting in the underbrush

Atum spills his seed across the firmament

the great nebula of Andromeda

we need only believe in mysteries

Our campfire

like the summer

fades to glowing embers

Eternity so relentless
and yet so fleeting

springs and autumns flash by

slipping wordlessly away

And we

like stars on water

drifting seaward

In the awe-filled silence