Our thoughts of time travel
burnt-up when Junior
sang The Blues.

Foreign creature.
***** voodoo muppet.

His spaniel’s moan,
a call to mud,
digging deep like
“woo-woo-woo”

Smacking the past in the chin,
he dipped a laden lead melon
in a barrel of black molasses.
A slow lowering,
tender sinew slackened.
Unclawed-
the orb traversed his finger tips
nicking his nails on the way earthward.
The black drink parts then
floods back where it once was,
coating the cold round load
as it sank down below
the Mason-Dixon line.

Junior gurgled in slow-mo
dipped his Gibson
and stirred the stew,
made the black brew dribble over
the barrel’s shoulders
and puddle in the thick sticky
corners and cracks of
the Juke’s oak planks.

He fished it out then
-bladaplowplow-
-WHAP!!-
split that melon in half,
no knife, they used the trap,
then Junior took his break
to take a nap
in Baton Rouge.

I want love-
Not the little love
That makes the
heart skip, and
The face blush.
I want to indulge in the Love
That ignites the Spirit

The love that fills all voids,
Heals all grievances,
And
has no boundaries,
No limits,
And
no preconceived notions.

I want the love
That is contagious by presence.
The love that
eradicates insecurities
And replaces them with ecstasy,
I want the kind of love
That sets people free.

I don't want the love
That beats around the bush.
I want the love that
bangs
down my door,
Sets my heart
a blaze,
And keeps
fueling
the fire.

Fireworks thunder like
Stars long gone,
And I’d remembered
Something Grandpa once said –

“The world’s a wonder,
But home will always be
Home.”

And the fireworks still thunder,
But I’m the star long gone,
As I’d remembered
Something my son once said –

Innocent and earlier mirror’d,
His eyes were all that’d speak,
“Please.”

So now, I knock, atop the “thunder”
Calloused oak ‘fore, “father,”
As I discover, come echo’d only answer –

Whispers brought the cold, and the scent
Orchids wrought, “tell him to hurry;”
Once and an only gasp I’d hear too late.