CARRY ON

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads-d'Verse Poets Pub

There are places
in my mind
I just won't go to
as having been there once
is enough for a lifetime

I've no need to relive
every misdeed
or stupid mistake

I'll wait to have all that
read back to me
at the gates
of either heaven
or hell

EULOGY

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

There's a mall just down the road
that's dying 
it's a slow demise
as one by one the shops
are closing up shop
(so where ya gonna shop?)
and a walk down those corridors now
encounters just a few curious soles
making contact with the tiles
and yours truly of course
(cuz I feel so at home in lonely places)

You can say what you want about the malls
but for a long time they served as our surrogate
downtown in the days of urban decay when
nobody wanted the real experience 
too scary
and so we strolled along in air-conditioned
comfort and poked our heads into the shops
and always seemed to run into someone 
we knew (whether we wanted to or not)
and the seniors in their Nikes and jogging outfits
puffing along twice as fast as anyone else
and the smells...oh the smells...
of sinful chocolate delights and sticky buns
and the way they went all out with the
decorations at Christmas time and the 
jolly fat man holding court 
(where the hell you gonna find Santa now?)

It's a lot we're losing and we don't even care

So I just think a eulogy is in order
for the death of brick and mortar
as we gaze glassy-eyed into that screen 
and click add to cart 
and wait for the guy in the brown truck 
to ring the bell
or more likely than not
just dump your package by the gate
cuz he's got lots of rounds to make
and you don't need to greet him
anyways 
cuz after all
it's not like 
he's anybody
you'd be happy
to run into 
at the mall 

HERE COMES THE LUNCH

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Lengthy verse (more than 100 lines or so)
bores me to tears. Just make your
point suckah, and admit that you are
a novelist at heart. And haiku, 
while so tasty and perfect for our
ADD world, is the Chinese 
food of poetry. You're ravenous again 
shortly afterward. So I'm going to 
feed you a light lunch to tide you over. 
Let's see...it's about me (isn't it always?)

I'm wasting away in the bar of a 
hotel (you could call it seedy)
when a woman slides 
onto the stool next to me.
Maybe she's a hooker.
Maybe she isn't. But we end up 
getting a room and afterwards 
as we light the proverbial fags 
(I don't smoke but it's necessary 
to the atmosphere of the story)
we begin sharing details of our 
personal lives and lo and behold 
it turns out that she's my long 
lost sister! I look her square 
in the eye and say that I don't
regret a thing. She says well
she does regret one thing 
and I say what's that and 
she says it's that now you're
prolly not going to pay me!

ONE SILLY QUESTION

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads--dVerse Poetry Pub

Did U ever think about why
Officer Smith gets a lavish
send off--a showy parade provided
for by your tax dollars
when he falls in the line of duty?
I do, and I'm not saying he doesn't
deserve the proper respect,
such a risky job...
but then we have Tyrone Smith
over here (no relation)
who was charged with an
equally harrowing task--
that of driving himself to the
store and back without getting
pulled over for not employing his
turn signal, and if he made 
one wrong move 
that could have easily been
curtains for him too--
and ya see Tyrone was just
laid to rest in a pauper's
grave with no fanfare,
no crowds lining the streets
as the cavalcade of motorcycles
files by, and it makes you think--
well maybe not you--
but it makes me wonder about
why that is, and there's no other
reason of course than
authority must have its due...
authority must always have its due.