Act one, scene one;
A date with drama
Has just begun.
Two youngsters
Hale of body
Ready to run.

Act two, scene one;
Excitement does not
Necessarily mean fun.
Too many secrets
Not enough revealed
By either one.

Act three scene one;
Good news can be
Bad news for some.
A lucky break
A chance to take
One could not shun.

Then comes intermission
Perhaps time for confession.
Sometimes no, sometimes yes
But maybe too much to confess.
Perhaps that’s how it goes
Maybe romance owes
Its success to mystery.
One chooses one’s own misery.

Act four scene four;
Being very careful
What you wish for
Seems obvious
When one looks back.
So very patrician.

Act five, scene one;
The denouement begun.
The finale can be dramatic
All cacophonic static
Or the lovers can walk off
Hand in hand in the sun.

Rap is crap
Can be written while napping
By simply slapping words like zapping
Up alongside trapping and wrapping
And suddenly you’re a rap star
Driving an expensive car
And before your coffee is cold
You are draped with gold
Maximum bling
But it doesn’t mean a thing
Other than money because honey
If your ‘song’ lyrics are still known.
When ten years are blown by
And you are no longer a famous guy
Whose words are forgotten
It is because they are misbegotten
And liked by the current batch of airheads
Who think this is music when instead
It’s a beat they can feel in their feet
And if they don’t read the words
Printed in the album, what is heard
Is a lot of screaming and percussion
Not worth discussion in Billboard.

Someone could cut the microphone cord
And all anyone could hear would be drums
And the audience spilling their beer,
And nothing worth humming;
Lyrics for the dumbing down of the race,
A major entertainment disgrace
That destroys the ears and means nothing
That will ever be revered like Sinatra
Elvis or The Beatles have done.
It may be number one today
But when time passes away
It will be nothing but the shouts
Of a bunch of untalented louts
To an audience one has to fear
Was born with a tin ear.

Brent Kincaid
6/1/2015

Wedding bells
The heart swells
A couple of people teary
Nobody here is leery
When it is two guys
Marrying after so many years.
Not an occasion for tears
They walk hand in hand
Toward a more grand
Joining together
Wedding each other
Now that some in society
See it is propriety;
Now that love is love
And over half the people
Know that couples
Are those who marry
And cease to carry
Their old angry baggage
Like stinking luggage
Into a loving occasion.

There is no reason.
Everyone here knows
That is how love goes.
It is between two hearts
No cart before the horse.
It’s a matter of course.
And, of course, family and friends
Not just kith, but kin
Are happy and celebrating
For the long awaited mating
Of two that fought the tides
And made it here where abides
That rosy day of knowing each other
Part of a couple officially;
Equally exciting and peacefully
Into a new morning of a new day.
What better way is there to say
I love you, a phrase not new
But this time said for two?
And certifiably, legally too.

I closed the box and hid it
So many years ago now
That I forgot all about it
But, I am not sure how.
It meant so much to me
Back when memory hurt.
I told myself I was a victim
And love had done me dirt.

It was only a short affair
Love lasting longer than the act.
I labeled it to myself and others
As the best as a matter of fact.
Prince Charming and all that;
The love of my life back then.
The most I had ever ventured;
The fullest my heart had been.

I only had to see my love
For all of my plans to change
To fall so fast and so hard
Never for a moment felt strange.
It felt so completely natural
To dedicate all of my dreams
And all of my hope for life.
Now, how crazy that seems.

But who can tell young love
How to behave and how to act.
It sometimes seems madness
As if I and the devil made a pact.
But it was more that someone
Looked and found love in my eyes.
When that is the feeling happening
Who stops to think of goodbyes?

I still have the love I felt then
And cradle it deep inside
And the box holds mementos
I carefully collected to hide.
Each item as I touch them
Takes me back to that day
And gives me back the love
I never want to feel go away.

MAMA DON’T ALLOW

Mama don’t allow no carpetbaggers ‘round here
Mama don’t allow no carpetbaggers ‘round here
We care a lot what Mama will allow
Carpetbaggers ain’t no good no how.
Mama don’t allow no carpetbaggers ‘round here.

Mama don’t allow no gerrymandering here
Mama don’t allow no gerrymandering here
We give a hoot what Mama will allow
Leave districts right where they are right now.
Mama don’t allow no gerrymandering here.

Mama don’t allow no poll taxing ‘round here.
Mama don’t allow no poll taxing ‘round here.
We don’t need Jim Crow no more
We know just what that is for
Mama don’t allow no poll taxing ‘round here.

Mama don’t allow no warmongering here
Mama don’t allow no warmongering here
We care a lot what Mama will allow
We’ve had too much war, don’t start no row.
Mama don’t allow no warmongering here.

Mama don’t allow no segregating ‘round here.
Mama don’t allow no segregating ‘round here.
Mama says we all take a breath
We all got born and all face death
Mama don’t allow no segregating ‘round here.

Brent Kincaid
5/15/2015

See the Republican,
Hop, hop, hop.
Hack up the welfare laws
Chop, chop, chop.
See him getting wealthy,
Shop, shop, shop.
Watch all our forests go
Drop, drop, drop.

Teflon coated Republican,
Crook, crook, crook.
Put him in a prison cell,
Book, book, book.
Fine him for every dime he
Took, took, took.
Check out his finances,
Look, look, look.

Hear the Republican,
Lie, lie, lie.
Selling out constituents,
Sigh, sigh, sigh.
Writing up new voting laws,
Cry, cry, cry.
Cutting breaks for all the rich,
Why, why, why?

Smell the Republican,
Stink, stink, stink.
Defender and a patriot,
Wink, wink, wink.
Master of the magic trick,
Blink, blink, blink.
Hater of the common man,
Fink, fink, fink.

Hey ** and there you go
And when you get there
Well, there you are.
Now, ain’t that something;
Better than nothing?
Two guys walk into a bar.

The barkeep asks them
What will you guys have?
The both gave him a look.
I would like to be rich
Both guys said, but that
Is neither aa creek or a brook

Two little old ladies
Were rocking on a porch
Throwing fruit at passersby.
Their husbands hid out
Finding it were best
In case someone asked why.

All this and all that was
Somewhere not quite all
The way to awesome.
There were a few pretty boys
And then some women that
Were known as handsome.

Eenie meenie miney moe
Olly olly oxen fee.
Whattya know about that?
Higgeldy piggledee
Hotsy and totsy, has
Your tongue got your cat?

Thingamjigs, doolollies
Gadgets, whirlygigs
Don’t amount to nothing.
Whatsername and Miss Thing
That ought to do it right now
To keep your beer frothing.

I was the frightened little kid
Who got pushed against the wall.
I wasn’t terribly masculine
Had acne and was not very tall.
Or maybe it was my intelligence
Or artistic talent that drew the ire.
It was an ever-changing list
That drew my fellow student’s fire.

Maybe it was that my game
Was never quite there for sports.
Or maybe when I did not join
On jokes about **** and other sorts
Of woman demeaning quips
They had to have learned at home.
Parental misguidance one oh one
Not learned at school on the roam.

Whatever it was, I got beaten
And locked inside my own locker.
And I got called ***** and ***.
Now isn’t that a big fat shocker?
I got shoved around in hallways
And knocked out cold by a creep.
I didn’t even know the ****
But he decided to put me to sleep.

And when the faculty was called
I was suspended along with the guy.
The school’s policy it seemed
Was to punish both kids. Ask why.
I asked and I was told sternly
That the school really did not care
The attacker and the attacked
Had the same punishment to share.

Now, in this case, the attacker was
Known to be a ruffian and a miscreant.
And I was known to be a wimp.
So why give me unusual punishment
When I was already being punished
For not being some kind of snorting ****?
This was like the school system
Giving my jaw an extra and official sock!

It would be nice to say about this
That it was a totally isolated incident,
And that principals seldom pass out
This officially thoughtless kind of punishment.
But I heard that line so many times
I could have lip-synched right along with him
As the principal mouthed a policy line
From a time grown distant and dangerously dim.

School gym coaches called us girls
If we didn’t keep up with hand-picked brutes
Who enjoyed inherited musculature
And bigot approved physical attributes.
So those of us who were who we were
And could not manage mow down the men
At the line of scrimmages
Were called ‘lils’ and fairies once again.

It is like some steampunk nightmare
Where working overtime is a racket
When what was time and a half pay
On the day I get my check, I make less;
Some kind of tax bracket scam thing
Where working extra hours put me
Into another category and increased
The tax they use to grease the wheels
Of a bloated government that hates me.
Maybe that dates me and it isn’t true;
That things have changed and it is
No longer arranged that way. And maybe
The way things became done was that
I got it all back as a refund. But isn’t that
Redundant, that I had to pay it to them
To use it like per diem for their games?

The shame is that I chafed and did nothing
Besides ******* and frothing at the mouth.
It’s not like I could go south to Ensenada,
Buy a piñata that looked like Mickey Mouse,
It was just that the house always wins.
But I have to pay for my tiny, mundane sins.
Why don’t they? Why does it go on and on
And then the money’s gone and I pay more
The next time some fat ***** of a politician
Begins a petition to increase their slice
And nicely reduce ours to a pittance
So low there is no admittance to a show
Or enough to replace a car that is a wreck?

The albatross around my neck gets larger
As it I move farther from the day it died
Even though I have tried standing up straighter.
It’s The Grand Guignol Theatre that life is
And the strife is to not let it get me down;
To be the happy clown and not the sad one
In a game that was begun to make me lose.
I am not confused. I see it, but it seems
Even in dreams I get no kind of relief
From a governmental thief with immunity;
The pillages with impunity and teases
That he does what he pleases. Neener, neener
What in hell could possibly be meaner?

I used to live in a country
That was based on liberty
And where just anybody
Could achieve prosperity
That with assured equality
And working diligently
One could expect definitely
To succeed economically
If you saved all the money
Left over from your salary
To save to bring your family
A step closer to solvency.

Not an impossible proposition,
It was based on the condition
Of a grand national institution
Which promised that stabilization
By taxing us and corporations
With an equitable correlation
Between folks of humble station
And the larger organizations
Working in happy syncopation.
A welcome feeling of elation
Would descend upon our nation
And keep us from stagnation
Or going into nationwide deflation,
Or just as scary, a huge inflation.

Now I look upon our history
And see decades of misery
Laid upon us by calumny
By those meant to fortify
And build up our security.
The constant forces of calamity
If we accept less than probity
From those who have no honesty
Choosing leaders based on beauty
A national cult of personality
Then permit political chicanery
By people with no dignity
Only a greedy criminality
That pretends to propriety
And a devout base of spirituality
When what we have is actually
A kangaroo court of dishonesty
Without a care for the citizenry.