He raised me the old-fashioned way
Never spared the rod
Worked daylight to dark
Except for Sundays
Never heard him say
His life was hard
Taught me to drive a stick
To hunt, to fish, to throw a lick
And how to take one

Good times fly by
Years fade away
Yesterday dies
Time cries

Daddy was a good ol' boy
I'm talkin' about them good ol' boys
They're the heart of the South
Them good ol' boys
Well they're about as good as it gets

He gave up all the boyhood dreams
And plans he'd laid  
So that I'd have some
Sometimes he'd speak and gaze
A glimpse of better days
Back on the farm
I can just see him now singin'
"Not Fade Away" and "True Love Ways"
There in the sun

Good times fly by
Years fade away
Yesterday dies
Time cries

Daddy was a good ol' boy
I'm talkin' about them good ol' boys
They're the heart of the South
Them good ol' boys
Well they're about as good as it gets

I carry his picture in my wallet
Together with his boyhood dreams
The picture is of him at 12 years old
My wallet's bustin' out at the seams

Time cries out for them good ol' boys
I'm talkin' about them good ol' boys
They're the heart of the South
Them good ol' boys
My Daddy was as good as it gets

Time cries out
For the heart of the South

Time cries out
For the heart of the South

Time cries out...
Time cries out...
Time cries out...

© Jason Cole

A touch of sadness
               ten years gone
Like a midnight's voice
            of a far away song

Caught me unaware
              when I thought
I no longer cared

A sudden spark
              that flew
                    into eternity

A dance done then
             now done
                    in effigy

A poetic terse
              taughtly strung
                    deligently

At first dawn
           fades away

I can't believe how idiotic I was.

Loving you was harder than David's stone, knocking me dead mentally, and I didn't realize it until blood dripped along my temple.

Two opposites I thought would go great together only rebelled  when close.

Let both stay far apart, for neither were meant to be close, rather "symbolically paired".

(j.a.r.)

In the darkness
Flashes of light above casting
Brief sunlight onto the ground below
And then the distant rumble
Like cannons in some old forgotten battle
And the pat-pat-pat of rain against the window.

A cricket makes his brief song. A frog croaks.

The sudden reminder coming of a brief life in the marsh.
A place now gone forever as it was, only to live on in memory
And half-forgotten dreams.

This seductive South wraps its warmth around me.
And I soon forget the politics, the semantics, the loneliness
And I fall into the dreamland
To sleep in its breast

You're sitting on your grandmother's porch
Eating watermelon
Spitting out seeds
While grandpa is reading the Sunday paper
You feel a stillness, a peacefulness
to the rolling earth around you
and you understand
You'll never be in that exact moment again
The South has a way of holding your heart in a way you wouldn't know
Always wanting to leave
But when you actually do,
You miss it more than you could even miss a person
It's the stigma of home

Fluff and puff,
water plugs,
power plants,
paper over eyesores,
paint it matte,
pink as salmon,
pack the homeless
into the Bird's Nest,
ghettoise Moses,
bleed the Amazon
down to size,
moor the battleships
to Yamuna Bank,
let white elephants
run riot on warm Black ice
over those who won't
play ball in our
electric garden
free your head
from the rails
for what?
roti kapda makaan
or BSP ki maya?
be buried or a sport
let laal battis through
ab bus, stop
blaming it on Rio
don't you know
how India shone
in October 2010,
or that Russians love
their children too?
So what if they don't
believe in modern love?
Potemkin villages are
built brick by brick
by BRICS,
Red, Yellow, Orange
kilned to Black.

The dawn dipped red the morning light,
Calling forth thundering spring just like
An ocean of storming clouds.

It cracked the sky's black heart.

The large eye socket of Thor
Stretched in gnarled greys,
Tailored in the howling winds,
Clawing the earth in Titan strength-
Drenched the ground in flooding tears.

Find constructed love
a piecemeal beauty
on those winding roads toward
Memphis
within rolling hills of
kudzu
the south, of red roads
black birds and white
in the swamp
a shock

cotton fields span
quiet, still the machines sleeping
the sun seeping
the car were in, **** covered
streaming

tall black and pastel along cars
friendly
I also saw a prison
carved in a hill side along a skinny
road, Mississippi
barb wire gem stone shine
white sign,
do not pick up hitch hikers

the humidity, heavy guilt
on dried clay
boiled peanuts
sightseeing in a
crime scene

Ms. Cho is so, so sorry
for the unintended worry
and the dreadful social uproar
she created
when she rated
her airline’s services as poor.

But any self-respecting South Korean
would understand the shame
when the macadamias came
not in a china dish
for this salty snack delish
was placed calmly on her tray
the cabin crew would say
resplendent in their jackets
“The nuts are served in packets
vacuum-sealed to keep them fresh.”

Hyun-ah proud and haughty
wagged her fingers, called them naughty
and summoned forth the Chief of all the crew
demanding that he tell her if he knew
if the in-flight rules were being followed
or was it in anarchy they wallowed.
He stumbled and he stuttered
swallowed, then muttered
he’d never thought this matter
was the least bit earth shattering.

“Nuts in a bag, are you insane?
You must be taken off this plane”
True to her word the flight turned round.
Until they landed not a sound
was heard within the cabin of that plane.
He was dropped back at JFK
and after some delay
they made their way again heading east.

But arriving eleven minutes late
Ms Cho had definitely sealed her fate
Notwithstanding Daddy’s power
as the airlines CEO
relations turned quite sour
his daughter forced to go
She lost each and every perk
that accompanied her work
her executive pay
all lost – such is the way.

So, finally in sum
Beware of a Cho tantrum
when you see that charming face
remember she’s a nut case
who in shrill and angry voice
made a devastating choice.

Never change an airline schedule
Never let your plane be late
Never waste expensive jet fuel
Or suffer Ms. Cho’s fate