Neither of us can recall
What made us drift apart
But time and distance didn’t take
Michael from my heart.
I still remember flashing eyes
And highlights in his hair,
And how he told his stories
Of what he saw out there
Among the passing people
Who if they only knew
Were missing all your glory
All the joy that was you.

You were younger, so sublime
In eagerness to learn.
And I was understanding
Of the candles one must burn
On the way to manhood
Seeing how the world is run.
Watching you discovering
Was a blissful kind of fun.
And laughing when you saw
That people can be dense.
Living lives of self denial
Just did not make much sense.

So we laughed and cuddled
Both exploring white hot ***.
We carried on like wantons
Bewitched by a pleasant hex.
We wandered too, in happiness
Like all the world was all brand new.
And now that I look back on it
I think it was for you.
Even then, I felt the weight,
The honor of it all,
To be the one to be there
When your heart felt the call.

Now the years are gone away
And now we meet again.
Now neither of us is a youth;
We are middle-aged men
But both of us remember it
A time of joy and love
At a time we both agree
Was like a gift to us from above.
And we both treasure the moment
A kind of dream came true.
A carousel we made ourselves
Just big enough for two.

I got up late and left the house at eight.
To some that might be early but it’s not.
The cloudless day surely would be great
I wanted to see a friend who I found hot.
Right before the bus stop I heard someone
Calling out my name, a voice I knew.
Asking if I wanted to have some great fun;
He could be counted on to follow through.

We went around the corner to a buddy
One I was sure I had never met before.
His front yard was wet and very muddy
With marijuana plants there by the score.
We went inside and after a few doobies
I asked him if the cops left him alone;
After all those plants are not jujubies.
He didn’t answer me, but dialed the phone.

A little while later I heard someone knocking
Our host went over, let the new guest in.
I guess my face betrayed something shocking,
Because I heard the laughter of my friends.
Standing in the door was a policeman
Full regalia, face as stern as a warrior.
I got up, almost straight enough to stand
When our host said don’t call your lawyer.

Relax, he said, the cop is my kid brother
And he does not believe in this law;
He thinks the rules against *** and hemp
Are dumber than a script from Hee Haw.
We sat there with him and passed the joint.
He told us not to worry about his sergeant.
He smokes too, so that’s a good point.
*** heads with a policeman friend is pleasant.

I never made it over to my friend’s place,
The one I started out today to see.
He didn’t expect me, so it is no disgrace.
How the day turned out was okay with me.
One of the nice things about cannabis use
Is the happy acceptance of one’s fate.
Not caring where you’re going is a good excuse
To stay longer and not care if you are late.

CONGRESSIONAL EDICT

Go home soldier;
No whining allowed.
Shut up soldier;
It’s enough to be proud.
Be proud you fought
To defend our systems.
Just stop *******
About things wrong with them.

Go away, soldier;
So what if you lost a leg?
Man up, soldier;
It is not polite to beg.
You did your bit fine
It serves no purpose to lag.
Shut up now, for good;
Your words seem to be a brag.

Bug off, soldier;
Yours is an old sad song.
Who cares soldier?
We’re important, so go along.
We have work to do now
And laws to undo and make.
We have no time for cripples,
How much whining can we take?

Buck up, soldier;
The churches will feed you.
Not us, soldier;
We no longer need you.
You fought for your country
In the wars of yesterday.
That is an old, sad story.
So, just go away.

They tried so hard to banish me
To eternal non-entity;
They resented my voice
They denied me a choice;
I had to be the type of soul
Adhering to their own goals.
The don’t care what we suffer
They speechify and don’t stutter.

They haven’t been secretive
About the way they’d have me live.
They bellow and bawl their mind
And little of it is anything kind.
They have no obvious compunction
Behind their every injunction.
They point and label me something odd,
Invoke a two thousand year-old god.

They drape themselves in our flag
And shout names like queer and ***
And tell us we are abominations
Not fit to live in Christian nations
But they forget that we all free
To choose what our religion will be.
In truth, they do not seem to care
About anyone’s opinion but theirs.

The hardest thing of all to bear
Is for all the venom they share
Is that this country has rules
That they ignore by being fools.
They want the right to tell us all
Who we can bring with us to the ball
And who we can love or marry.
What a heinous load for us to carry.

There may be nothing quite as egregious
As a congressman all sanctimonious
Who tells us we must not disparage
The sanctity of heterosexual marriage
Whether is his bride number three or four
That’s exactly what the Christianity is for
Because didn’t Jesus himself say
He didn’t want no homos today?

Conservative these days now means
The richest are the few who glean
The wealth that exists in our land.
The rest of it is sleight of hand.
After decades of this foolishness
We have grown weary of your mess.
We don’t think we can ever win
This country back to from you again.

You seem to hate those who are non-rich
And include them in every austerity pitch.
You refuse to help them feed their brood
Then pay the farmers not to grow food.
You cover yourself with glowing self-praise;
People starve, you grant yourself a raise.
You stand before the rich and genuflect
And subject your constituents to neglect.

You want every child to be born
Then vote to have their allotment shorn.
You seem to want them not to thrive;
You only protect them until they are alive.
You send the soldiers to march and die
And deny them benefits. Tell us why.
Is it because you have your wealth
And no longer care about their health?

The most hateful game you always play
Is making the voters look another way.
While you make laws that take their rights
You engage them in unimportant fights
About who is sleeping with whom today
And who is straight and who else is gay.
Or you worry the people about war
While you funnel subsidies by the score.

You pay your friends and give them jobs
Then call your opponents egregious slobs.
You engage in double-talk about the facts
And claim calumnies are helpful acts.
You accept your fortunes from commerce
And agree to treat the populace worse.
No matter how often you rearrange things
You edits end up being very strange things.

We need to hear our own clarion call
And push this kind of politics to the wall.
We must do more than hope for liberty
And once again fight for the land of the free.
We can’t just sit around at home and mope.
As it is, today, we can only sadly hope
That some liberty you will choose to take
Will cause the regular people to awake.

The two hundred pound waitress
Was smoking and patting
At her nearly two-foot-high hair.
The cook was scrubbing
The scunge off the griddle
Old Zeke was drunk in a chair.
A lonely song was playing
For the twenty third time.
The jukebox was just that old.
Young Biff was mopping
In the light of a weak bulb
He knew the water had gone cold.
Still he scrubbed at the colorless
Old linoleum floor, sulking
One more job to get through.
When the door to the café
Quite suddenly opened
And paper and napkins flew.

It was Biff's friend from school,
Most folk thought him a fool,
Jokey Jerry, his Dad and a girl.
His whole mind was taken
By the sight of the vision.
The most beautiful girl in the world.
When they sat at the counter,
Biff washed his hands
And hurried the waitress away.
He put a menu between them,
Between Jerry and the girl,
Asked what she would have today.

She laughed into her hand
And fluttered her lashes.
They were just for a moment alone.
Then his friend asked Biff
"Gimme change all in quarters
And where is the john and the phone?"
So, now with the mood broken
All too abruptly
He took all their orders and blushed.
He offered her some pie
That was made by his mother
Told her she must taste the crust.
The cook began to fry
The food they had ordered
As Biff gazed into her brown eyes.
His friend, the girl's brother
Sneaking behind them
Set fire to Biff's apron ties.
When the smoke rose enough
That somebody noticed
The girl let out a small sound.
Biff began to flail
At his smoldering backside
And wailed as he ran all around.

Quickly circling the room,
He stepped into his bucket,
Which went along with him as he ran.
Then bounced off the leg of
A customer's chair and they fell,
Hamburger, the chair and the man.
The patty flew out
And landed on the waitress
Who screamed and jumped to her feet.
And elbowed the cook
Who was cleaning her glasses
Which then fell into the hot grease.
She shrieked as she reached
For the tongs to retrieve them
And woke up the drunk by the door.
Zeke began to sing,
"Alouette", out of tune.
And "Hallelujah, praise the Lord!"

Oh his journey around the café
Raising all kinds of havoc
Biff found himself by the windows.
Somehow set fire to Hazel's
New book-ordered curtains.
Jerry's Dad yelled, "Thar she blows!"
Thinking rather quickly
Since he was nearest the danger,
Dad threw his iced-tea at the flames.
And most of the canary yellow
Took-two-weeks-to-get-them
Café curtains with the drawbacks were saved.

Biff was still standing,
The bucket on his foot,
So he bent to pull it away.
Around the corner came Lem,
A very large fellow
Who didn't see Biff in his way.
He sent Biff careening
Through the checkered-cloth tables
To end in the corner, in the dirt.
The shreds of his dignity
Were scattered around him
As tattered as his ruined pants and shirt.
But the beautiful ladylike,
Lovely sister of Jerry
Dared anyone else to make fun.
She took Biff's hand
And smiling, she told him.
"Darlin', this is how legends are begun."

Some people see personality
I just see criminality
What some call statesmanship
To me is not so hip.
There must be a different definition
In your version of the Constitution
But mine says we all are free
And not just those D.C.
And not just those Caucasians
Should be entitled to rations
Of respect and equality.
But we’re victims of duality
Without causality
Because our voice is nixed
Nothing gets fixed.
Nobody cares about the crooks
Until something of theirs gets took
Then they want to throw the book
Without a second look
At who it hits. It’s totally tragic
That so many believe in magic
Like somebody waves a wand
And all the thugs will be gone
From our leadership.
It’s a ****** trip
And a total rip
That they think someone cares.
But, nothing makes rich people scared
Unless someone else takes
One third of everything they make
Then they scream like banshees.
Meanwhile, down on our knees
We cry right across the board
But we are the blighted horde;
We never really scored.
We were just here to buy junk
And not listen to the bunk
The one-percent hurls our faces;
We live with the disgraces
And wish we could do something.
Wish we could do anything
To break this eternal ring
Of money meaning purity.
Yes, it is a homily
But it is practically
All there is.
Talk to the Wiz.
He’ll tell you it is crap.
It’s just a trap.