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Autumn's hedges weep blood again, the eternal mystery of red leaves confounding reason, protecting and surrounding us either in gentle beauty or concealed sorrows we never knew.  Theories of our own existences are proved certainties only by the imprecision of tears as we've lived.  Rage the year. The dead season, still, nears; we too, should paint it anew in bold color and embrace it without fear.
Botany has yet to develop adequate scientific theory for the color red in the season's leaves, as it seems an otherwise pointless expense of energy for plants preparing for winter. As if everything should need that measure of reason - even this simple act of expression declares being.
Norman Stevens
Always gets evens:
Reads my stuff on his smart telly.
Go on Norman, give it some welly.

There you have it, a Clerihew,
Oh what an how to do,
Very silly, very true.
Why I love them, I haven’t a clue.
Time now for another brew.

As I’ve said before:
Write a Clerihew:
It’s easy to do.
Two rhyming couplets of any length:
Short and simple, that’s its strength.

Paul Butters
For my *****'s pub drinking-mate Norman.
How can I be the closest to your home, and still unknown,
How can I be the closest to the Sun, closest to the scorch,
and still have the most icy landlords in my poles,
and why can I and twilight be seen by you alone?

How come from my surface, light does not work--light does not hurt, I do not blink as I think, even as the sunset pours lava forth, and that sunset is that lie of time, as you disappear in darkness, I almost disappear in light, then the stars scream across the sky, in a geminid shower rewind, in my unblinking muse, in the solar hues, the great inferno retreats, and the slower speed of Earth I view, And I see the astrologer, with his useless scope, trying to track my path, futile as the priests trying to invent gold.
They cannot understand my core, with machines that are perfect because I am perfectly mercurial on the surface,
with the intense cold of my poles, and the intense burning solar gold of my repose,  I view blinding light, then infinite starry night, and cold dark logic they are encased in--my deep dark basins--and the rolling triumph of my surface's relief is from breathless sandy ovation beneath.


        But now is my silver region where I compose, between extremes, no ovation no gold, only metallic mercury upon the barren from faint starlight strobes.  Here is where my dark volumes are known, but  like shifting shadows--from light are closed.  Then a clock strikes the hour, when my surface is reinvested with power,  the oncoming of a sunset getting louder and louder,  and in my face a cold severe place, and on my stare intense solar glare.

   My theater is caused by applause, my temple is lit with pale light of long dead stars, and I crash and die young forever like my short lived geminid sparks,  In your twilight is my house, and with my intense and icy blood, I protect the memory and mystery of love.
Shall we through this tall grass run, children
heed the urgency of crickets this early morning,
outrun meandering trodden trails we'd make?

or await to pack our baskets
with late summer peaches picked
after sun shakes dew from waning leaves of her laden tree

life is measured in those quick steps
the insects said,
scattering ashes of the dead never teaches them to fly

much as we might try, but we might yet
they know winter's shadow always too soon arrives,
an uninvited guest in this meadow
Sadly, Kiddo, that's what's called life.
There really aren't fresh starts for day-to-day strife
just different street names to remember
(or not, as as the old ones, I find, are usually much better)

Bills, work or chores are always the same
Laundry, dishes, mopping the floors,
the phone, electric or price for gas -
don't care where you live
or that you're dragging your ***

The rent or a mortgage, unpaid, are no different;
tires, brand new or
used from the dump "down'a way,"
all intend to go flat in a week, regardless
(it's in the fine print if you read it ... I did once)

groceries cost more than you'd planned at the start,
but kids will eat food and have those "growth spurts,"
too soon outgrowing
new shoes that you'd bought them
  
When you boil it all down, we must do what is needed -
mostly for them, the brats we are raising;
it's the love of a parent: unbidden, unasked
  
I just close my two eyes before coffee on waking
(or sometimes just the one that sees that I'm walking)
and hope I'll make it to work in the morning

expect to come home in time to cook dinner,
collapse on the couch for a much-needed breather
remembering my bed is a-waayy up the stairs
where, sometimes, I make it before
the snores take me

Repeat.
just a little bit o' asbestos
unwrapped from 'round the pipes,
yellow-green arsenic soap
in the bucket to make me clean
to eat... sump'n to munch on
like crunchy lead paint chips
and oh, how i love the smell o'
greasy diesel dip -
it reminds me of my last birthday
when we ate my smoggy cake
the kerosene ran dry that day
and smoked us to the street
our tummy aches that time forsake
'cause doctors cost real money.
but, hey, no choice in winter
- Obamacare or heat -
couldn't type his site with frostbit nubs,
no matter what the hype.
life ain't free,
so as fer me, i doctor fer myself
hell, in 50 years i've seen nothin' yet
some bourbon wouldn't fix.
but never in this tidy place we come to call our poverty
has ever lived the lovely stench
of crisp, green, perfect money.
I read that money pollutes societal interactions...
I let ivy try the trunk, green all winter
yet buds haven't come with warm weather
it'll rot and drop this summer
or next, if it's too dry

I'll pretend surprise
as I oil the saw again, strike teeth with a file
left on the old tool bench downstairs...
one last time, I think, as we're all showing our wear

it's still tall, met the sky once
when it left - I heard the sigh
but turned and went back to sleep
imagining nothing but cutting until morning
Did the Pax Americana
come and go?
Is her statue, made of ice and snow,
Do I see her in the fire and now I don't,
Pax Americana, I hear her, as I go deaf,
I feel you
As red decorates slowly through my vest.

I am with you, in a tiny-- but vast land--
yet still on my back,
Watching sweat pick up crystal sand,
Your dune has no debris that I see
mid this blackened road--shining so beautifully,

My Lady of Pax, my lady of last laughs
that came from the briefing,
My lady of things one would want to last
Yet you stay now that I am bleeding.

Lady Peace,  just like a goodnight kiss--
in respite, you exist,
This war all I've seen is their pretty olive eyes
and you are their lips,
You are here now as eternal momentary bliss.
because

on some dateless dawn
away from the mown swath at the edge of the road,
grass tall in the meadow, gold already and leaning, each piece seeming
to whisper some secret one might hear if close enough
as blades nodded in unison towards scrambled trees at the edge of the clearing

i  was a deer there, hiding, feral, eating secrets
for a moment then, free
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