Living room clocks are good drummers
They keep good beats for us guitar strummers
They never complain and they're always on time
Always creative , compliant and song wise
Zen musicians that keep their mouth shut
Approachable and quite cheerful when the band
is in a rut* ...

I witnessed a carousel of twinkling lights
Songs of nature filled the clear August night
Wet grass cooled each step
Two stars fell from the midnight Heaven , I made two wishes for Mary Ellen* .....

Western breezes tell tall tales within sparkling canopies as hardwood and loblolly vie for the afternoon sky ..
The Lamp of Creation highlights a sylvan masterpiece -
with amber , gold and wild rye ....
Rambling yet pertinent ..
Blessed growth cloaked in antiquity ...

Waiting for an audience , practicing every move , critique every nuance , critical eye contact with animal counterparts . Your display of affection is most disheartening , the only reason for you presence ? So politically correct friends can feast their eyes upon a " shelter dog " . A rite of passage like your tie dyed t-shirt , sandals and voter registration ! Claim to be  a PETA activist but your only a charade , a most dangerous psychopath walking from cage to cage ! Who stands before me ? You appear delusional as well ! In two days I'll be sentenced to the backyard , shackled to a tree ! Living off of rainwater and sporadic feedings ! Crying for release , tortured with fleas .. I have found the one ! Any guess on how I can tell ? You've the unmistakable look of loneliness coupled with the scent of depression .. An aroma within your gradient most vivid and easily detected ! The same odor within my cage , surrounding this wounded animal ! You and I will remain side by side , play off each others affections , render great joy to one another and form a bond that will last forever !

Across the superiority of natures wardens where watchful eyes
lay claim to natural , devoted miracles ... Where the gracious minions of the animal kingdom practice love for the land and upmost respect for the living waters that flow above and beneath her .. Plants of myriad shape and size in relentless travel skyward , in journey toward life giving rays of Sun at the crack of Dawn ..
A feast on the remnants of the brilliant canopy , surrendering leaves that free themselves of physical struggle to return to the soil below , to mingle once again amongst relative and benefactor , born anew ...
The episodic , audible travails of Winter zephyr , struggling through deep southern pine thicket in brazen attempt to cull brown straw cover , forever lost in briar bramble and Water Oak , Sycamore and Dogwood ..

Big smiling sun on the corner of the page , blue and red people with flowers in their hands , tall green grass against a white background , a monkey wrapped his tail around the flagpole . Silver comets and green rain drops , man on the moon winks high above , black seagulls and bright red hearts , green dog scratching fleas in the back of a pickup truck . Red riverbanks , brilliant blue stars , yellow school bus on a marigold  highway ! Purple turtles play in a charcoal creek , brown smiling horses in a pink sunset ! Daddy colored orange with a navy mustache , lavender Mother with a periwinkle apron !

You are the murmuring birds that grace my line of sight
Brown eyes that ease the night
The Spring lambs that warm my heart
Auburn silk tresses , blue forget- me -nots
You are the very instant the sun breaks the morning brume
The stained glass sky in my Autumn afternoon
My question , my seduction , my reason
My trail , my expression , my Summer season* ...

There's a saga in every direction
Stories to be told , a lesson languishing -
o'er tilled countryside and dirt road
Smokehouses , immaculate small towns
Sorghum presses , Pecan groves , Loblolly Crowns
May Robin carols , topwater Bream slice the surface of
brook fed glass ponds  , Whippoorwill's , Pileated Knights worshipping the given Dawn

The Wurlins sweeten muscadines on the vine , gather morning dew
in Petunia buckets , hollow out acorns to carry their Clover honey lunches
They ride June bugs by the light of the Moon
Entice Tree frogs to strike up a tune
Make Huckleberry wine and Sassafras brandy
Pecan coffee and Honeysuckle candy*....

The Devils popping the bubble wrap
Hail is bouncing off the front door steps
Blustery tree lines wrapped in sheets of lightning
blue , rivers forming at downspouts , thunder
growing louder
Cars come to a crawl
Peace and violence are poised to draw
Suddenly showers stall , a lull ensues
Quiet resumes , the night is rescued
The treefrogs strike a tune , the June bugs swoon
The timid moon looms , the insect musicians balloon
The oboes , the clarinets , the piccolos and the cellos
Sweet voices , the harps , the guitars and the pianos
A whippoorwill calls the orchestra to order ,
the thrushes , mockingbirds , the katydids , the cricket
chorus , the coyotes , the bobcats , the hoot owls and
the sprites
The jays , the cicadas  and the songsters of night
Goodbye Old Man Squall , may the creatures of the eve
now come to call , may the maidens of the forest render
ballads of rest , may the fledglings of the morrow lay
peacefully in their nest* ...

A storyteller wears a denim blue blouse with a caramel , marigold apron
Her children wonder aloud ,  seeking eye contact , relishing her approval
Exploring leaf strewn trails through forested countryside apartments
Bearing joy constrained with certain peace beside the wildflower,  carpeted alluvial shoreline* ...

The sound of utensils being stored
'just so'
A second cup of joe
A post card Dusk soon to follow
Red sky traveling West
Fir Trees begin to shadow our
little 'Brick Nest'
Hummers relish their final feast
The Harvest Moon takes over the painted East* ...

Each second a gift , every minute we lie in jeopardy , indebted to the physical forces which spawned our very existence ! In denial , through meditation and belief in greater entities we falsely claim the surety of life in perpetuity ! Whom begat the gods ? Thy sanity at risk of foreclosure , at deaths residence what lies behind her door ?

Loneliness , a humid inferno of a day -
without the promise of rain
The hunted hid within tall grass writhing -
in pain
A drop of water prematurely called to the sky
The stranger at the wood-line in the
tempest twilight
The safety of thick , homemade curtains with
the ringing of chimes
Tears 'neath the silken canopy of night
Queer recollections serviced with anxiety
The blanket persecution of unwanted notoriety

Detach the mournful profile from youthful embittered emotions ..
Sad , dark hours preceding death are merely curtain calls , rivers that peek inquiry from birth to ocean swept , delta epilogue ..
Reborn of Spring storms , the memoires of blackberry Winter ,
gray day maritime gales , thundershowers of September , yellow daffodils of March foretell the onset of today , gleam in the abiding sunlight of their anticipated hereafter ..
Behold the cliffs whom covet the turquoise exposure of the sea , imperiled flowers that belay their certain capitulation amongst the sharpened bottom .. Gulls shriek in suspend animation , black shorelines echo their resignation , carried across thick ocean breezes ...
Our physical days quite aware of the future at each subtle turn , the payment of debit with every expensive hour ...

Perilous voyages of small watercraft at sea , amphibious landings on well defended beachheads , Clipper ships whaling on distant oceans , military vessels in armed conflict , night of relentless cannon fire , explosive reflections across shark infested waters , treasure maps and chest laden with gold , rubies and pieces of eight , the cry of Viking warriors on the rugged coast of Newfoundland .. Pirates just off the shores of the Carolinas ..  Forts Pulaski , Sumter and Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas ..
Oil platforms racked by ferocious winds on the Gulf of Mexico ..
Union and Confederate battles on Mobile Bay , Riverboats traversing the Mississippi ..Tending barges along the Ohio ..On high alert through Georgia's intracoastal waterways ....

I worship the mattock that tends my Spring field ..
The Apple tree with it's Fall yield ...
The tractor that criss crosses the meadow ..
The firewood keeping me warm in the hard months of Winter ..
I pay homage to the Summer rain ..
Give thanks in May before our pollinators every day ...
Pay respect to my water well on parched evenings ...
Most grateful indeed for every change of Season ...

Our function is to question all
To challenge the bitter , the sweet , the very footprints we leave
We lay in Spring primrose valleys requesting the dirge of hard Winter with odd forethought
We pen the macabre , the obscene and the refusal , providing a chart for the self righteous imbecile , the lay and the lost , we are new today but very well called upon tomorrow* ...

We trespass insanity with great stealth  
at the close of day , jot bits of our self -
described tangled webbing to disclose later in prose ,
commit our imaginations to tap on the door
of the 'magnum unknown'
A goblet of red , a whiff of Borkum Riff , a
Moonlit tint producing a curious script
We're improvisational thespians surrounded by
our peers , Fire Ants on a forgotten marshmallow ,
a can of beer left in a hot trunk in Florida ready to
explode , a wind rattled Hound Dog trying to get home

Forever paint the same old dog red and call it a brand new monkey ..

If this simple write should prove to be my swan song , let it be duly noted that I left headstrong ! As the Drill Sergeant , leading green soldiers , the fearless non-commissioned officer , carrying the colors ! The Calvary , under direct fire , dressing the ranks , preparing the charge , advancing forward , committing what cries to be heard unto paper for all the world to address , exposing the draconian tyrants of prose , poetic blasphemers and the vile fabricators of plagiarism !

Maybe I've been insane since day one and my family
can't find the way to break the news to me ...
I think every night to anyone that would hear me , not to
let me be melted and poured into the 'American Male' mold with
it's false bravado and savage , morale culpability ..
Writing poems for the mind ., clarity and acceptance in a blackened
field of possibilities ..Poetry feeds the pigeons at the park , pets the
lambs at the game ranch , tucks you in with a kiss after dark ...
Prose is simple mathematics , throwing the book aside because you've read the ending , painting with water colors in the rain to incite bleeding , writing help on a wall that no one cares to heed ..Poetry can be lightning screaming into a 440 transformer , heat changing sand to crystal , nitro fueled rocket engines drowning out a locomotive screaming into your field of vision , one five five howitzers pumping rounds into a nuclear reactor . Poetry is Delta Force coming in hard at tree top level , Daisy Cutters dropped over a bivouac in the desert , surrounded on four sides at midnight with zealots committed to killing you ..

My sunbeam in the morning -the field of energy that circumnavigates the past . The tenon securing thoughts -preventing miscommunication , reticent , careful what to share ...To remain steadfast in private battles devoid of fear , the molecule in the scent plume that wolves can lock in on with uncanny precision inside the odor gradient ! Look malevolence in the eye and not blink .. To be cognizant and intensely focused as opposed to haphazard , omnipresent ...Receive indicators and triggers , process them in their totality , exercising their potential benefits with caution at whirlwind speed ...

What amount of sugar will render '*****'
palatable

At last the June bugs are on their way ,
playing summer songs at the close of day
A cherry blunt , a flatpicking tune , a Seagull-
guitar beneath a yellow moon ..

Midnight British tea with clover honey
Thoughts of you as the rain is pouring
Lightning over some distant sleepy town
Memories of fireworks , porch conversations
and birthday silver dollars
Wishing you were still around* .....

Watercolor grass , growing dark
Roof of the earth , growing dark , growing dark
Rain wrapped in perfume whisper
Quiet room , ambient shadows , growing dark
Ever darker* ....

Each ripple at her shore perfect , every panfish feeding just below the surface held with upmost respect ..
A repository of turbulent waters awarded peace , a placid impoundment delivering solace to all it's fortunate recipients ..
Canadian Geese are quite familiar with her charms , bullfrogs and killdeer speak of her beauty with Summer songs ..
The calls of numerous songbirds fill the Springtime air , Largemouth Bass crash at the top of the water , breaking the afternoon silence ..
Georgia Pines shade her Northern front , blackberry thickets just beyond the Western shore , Blue Herons quietly forage in the shallow waters , she is the emboldened mother of countless natural wonders* ...

My God drew glittering
diamonds across the turquoise
plane , amber sunlit shallows
beside lapping banks ,
leaves of every color sailed her
silver waves , windswept memories to cherish
the remainder of my days* ...

Who proctored the marriage
of water and shore , filled
the morn with songbirds of
every color , placed top water dancers , filled the murky depths with
magic and romance , aligned the trees
along her shining banks just so ,
adjusted her loving tributaries , calculated
their timely flow , created crawfish , shell ******* ,
rock bass and channel cat ,
pink and blue flowers , otter and muskrat
Who drew men into blue eyes , focused their
gaze into March sky , placed their naked feet
in her cool dominion , created a love never ending* ...

Rancorous Ole Bullfrog , snoring on a paddy , clear your pipes and carry that voice across the quiet marshland , low country valley .. Start the dandy evening opus with low bass tones , croak a silly song with that golden throat trombone , find a whippoorwill and lay down a duet you 'Old Hambone'*!

This heartland knows who I am
All the manly bravado washes away
when I'm in her presence
The quest to become a champion
dies
The rapid streams ahead subside
I stand before calm , reflective waters
in the company of true leviathans* ..

For every creek stone that contains the rushing waters , every unique tree dotting the forest , a drop of morning dew reflecting the morning Sun , the changing colors of the canopy high above ..
The glow in ones heart as the soul is touched , a familiar hand on the shoulder can mean so much ..
Gardenias that captivate the senses in the Summer breeze , the morning fog that obscures mountain scenery , the call of nestlings in a Cottonwood Tree , the endless foraging of a Carpenter Bee ..
A mind secured in the glow of meditation , a place in your heart for all mankind , the blessings of divination for all creatures , the heartfelt song of liberty performed for every nation ..

A cool cloudburst from up high will cleanse this *****
metropolis ..Overfilling the gutters and storm sewers , the viaducts
and retaining ponds , filthy black tar streets , sidewalks crying for
upkeep ..
Rid this unkempt town of dreaded pollen and factory dust ,
stagnant pools of non-potable creek water , scrub the tarmac
at the city airport ..
Wash the 'Big rigs' , the trailers , the railheads , buses and the commuter locations . Shine her tall skyscrapers , her radio towers and her subway stations ..
Polish the walkways , the store fronts and the precious , park greenery ..
Refill the birdbaths , the fishing ponds and the vibrant lakeland scenery ..

I see music and determination , age in collusion with wisdom
The struggle forward and the modus operandi , the songs of
my undiscovered band shall forever come to mind
I see the eyes of a teenager
Wrinkles associated with pain
Today I see not the rock but every grain of sand it contains
I've the ability to remove fools in my way
Conscious of every note I play
Writing lyrics in free form style
Erasing all other would be musicians in denial* ...

What folly , this masterful deception of a life we lead
Bound to government , religion and money
Following trails built by those before us , tethered
by the chains of 'leaders' , our true potential
regulated by the state ,  a lubricated part of the killing machine ,
a three headed serpent coiling within deception and greed* ..

Industrious , Americanized honeybees
Working the Dogwood trees
Stopping at every colorful flower -
along the way
Making the most of the God given day* ...

Children are most precious seedlings that will flourish by addressing their most basic , primary nourishing needs ...
Copious amounts of red and black dirt , no part left untouched , a daub of soil from head to toe ...
Summertime showers to feed and cleanse their young minds and bodies ,
to run and play in wet fields of hay , to gallop in the rain after hot and dry days ...
Brilliant waves of sunshine to help them grow , the light of creation pulling them to the blue sky above !!

Traipsing corridors of stone  
A smidgen of the real me waiting
to be discovered
Rustic region thimbles of fortuity ,
peaceful harbor answering riddles ,
solving mysteries ..

Staying at ground level reduces the length of the fall* ...

In the traffic of God's ocean
Commanded by the undertow
Enveloped in colors previously unknown
Working the bottom as if tethered to land ,
awaiting redemptions sure hand* .....

When I try to watch the news my sadness sets in ..When I look across
the yard sometimes in the evening the same thing happens .. I've cried myself to sleep several times over the last two weeks .. When I put a plate of food in front of me I start thinking about dead animals ..
I'm still getting the sensation of falling or being electrocuted .. I'm beginning to see objects at the window once again .. When I listen to music sometimes the sadness is unbearable .. Music is all I have so this is quite painful .. I've 'caught myself ' staring into nothing in whatever room I'm in ... Mary Ellen and I have gone out to eat several times over the last few weeks .. She's caught me ' zoned out' ..
She stared into my eyes an brought me back into the moment ..
I'm beginning to feel like no medicine in the world is going to help me ... I had some pain meds from my gall bladder surgery four weeks ago .. I contemplated taking all of them at once just to see if I could stop the 'machine' ..

1 cup - Animosity
2 cups - Anxiety ( grated )
1/2 cup- Indifference
6-Oligarchs ( peeled )
10 -World Leaders (softened)
1 - Body politic ( crumbled )

Boil Animosity for 6 years .. Sprinkle Anxiety-
while stirring ...Add Indifference -stirring vigorously
Pour mixture over Oligarchs then add World Leaders ..
Heat mixture for 1 year --Remove from constant heat then
sprinkle Body politic over the top .. Chill till needed ..

The wind is offering riddles this warm October morning ,  are we not like plants , distant cousins nourished from sun above , soil below , rays of light , tied down to a minuscule piece of ground , awaiting our ultimate fate , transpiration . Returned to the clouds ? Renewed . Establishing roots in the place we call home , bathed in sunlight and hopeful for tomorrow ..

Have you heard a bobwhite calling-
bob-bob -white in the morning
Perched on a cedar stump crying bobwhite-
with all his bob-bob -white might & glory ..
Stair-stepping from fieldstone to bob-white-
broomsage , gliding neath the bob-bob-white-
pines for fun , a dusty bath in the noonday sun ..
A bobwhite in the felled corn
A bob-bobwhite in the rabbit tobacco
Bobwhite-bobwhite on top of the cow lick -
Bob -bob -white from the 'maters
Bobwhite from some-bob- bob place along the bob-bob 'crick' ...

I lean on hot British tea in the early to mid morning
My staple drink of the quiet afternoon
Anytime during the day when things aren't quite right
Always sipping a cup or two late at night* ...

Kinetic waves of sweet water blessings , steaming blacktop
thoroughfares , trickling from gutter caps , rushing from downspouts , tapping my bedroom window like a childhood friend calling me to venture out
Petrichor melodies , Sun glistening Red Tip hedges
Wetted , diamond zoysia gardens
Culling roadside berries with cool naked
feet , with operatic fantasia rumbles the ubiquitous ' Thunder Roll ' , Blackbird gaggles resume their familiar treetop chorus in the ebony sky retreat of the afternoon Chattahoochee Summer heat* .......

A gloveless welder will one day suffer a burn
A carpenter in the rain awaits his turn for a blackened nail
The careless goat herder will soon receive the wrath of the buck
The citizen too busy to vote garners the scorn of an elected schmuck* ...

Counting boxcars as they hurdle down the tracks , one for every memory I can summon , one for every penny I've placed at this crossing for good luck ..
A copper token to insure good fortune , the wheels of a child's imagination set into motion ..
Walking the railway , dreaming of life as a " Hobo " , with my cane over my shoulder and a bag of apples tied to one end ...
Racing home at Dusk with the last glimmer of daylight at my feet , the five thirty special thunders through this small town again ..
Bound for points South , Montgomery or Mobile , breaking the quiet of night marching through corn , soybean and cotton field ...
The deafening sound of order and morning routine in sleepy Southern villages , a wake -up call for little boys with skinned up knees , ball caps and ***** britches ...

Rain was made for me
A shower from every shaken tree
Bird bath's filled to the brim
Fledglings taking turns on a bare -
oak limb..

Rain was made for the depressed
To wash away thoughts of loneliness
Lovers neath umbrellas with a million dreams
Thoughts of dry home with
simple , romantic schemes*..