It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT

on nights i cannot sleep
i blame it all on you
i let myself think back
to the very first day we met
and starting there, i fold
each day like the layers of an
accordian until i convince myself
that every note of yours
has affected every one of
mine,
and though yours will always be sweet
mine are now and forever off-key.

There is this constant suppression
of all my aggression
and my actions
that never make it out my mouth.
Ever since fifth grade
I have been trying so hard
not to say the things
that would boost me out.
So I became this actor
like the ones in my own scene
who glimpse at the camera
beady eyes with no soul.
I could be staring at a mirror and I-
I would never really know.

meaning of wishtastes
desires drive delusion
devils delve deepening
seeds to root loathsome leaves
smelt cinders graying goals
craving strangled contentment
under backalley blackness
beats heart sneeze two
cavalcade blue
cacophony in fast dreams

reseized by letting go of circus surlplus
reassurance of real love is real gone
gone is the relooped sad troupe armies of needinesses
truth proofed ****! the magician disappeared
withdrew tears,fears, smears, and leers
now amongst new artful peers
The lions tail was a cobra coming with teeth under the door
awoke then broke my dreams end and don't hafta go back again
ego sinning by ego being a sin says ego
leggo my ego waffle a proper prophet
the jewels three sweet gleams eaten
gifts even the ego cant teacher the reached rifts
sewn up all dischordian accordian polka poked out eyes
belief swam away to the island of surprises
can I ? I can will it . Will then be faithful to real action.
kung fooled schools chop trees sticks
paper stones throw away
I can walk 6 feet on airs invisilbe stairs
ears heard alistening stream just the branch that froots
Shotgun riding to the holy holy holy
Dee vine

ant infested arm chairs
folding accordian hardwoods
seas of soiled laundry littered about

tomorrow i'll hand off my birthday
in a bag to the neighbors, someone
may as well make a cent or two
off my quarter of a century on this earth

the whole block talks **** about us in spanish,
quiero decirles que entiendo,
but instead, i smoke bowls on the porch
and laugh at their corruption and convinction
over a couple of twenty somethings
who like to have a good time a little too much

i imagine them lining the streets with
pitch forks and torches, yelling to us,
escuche perras, su tiempo ha venido,
instead the neighborhood committee
knocks on the door at four pm interrupting
my six hours of vommiting, i stumble
down the stairway bra-less, brazen, and
baited, waiting for the moment to say,
we'll be gone july first

funny how families are cool with drug
front pyramid marts, but birthday parties
seem to have no place here

The Little Skiff Slips through the water, following Swamp Trails.
Soft Light of a Bayou Moon in the Mist, on right the splash of Gator Tail
As it hunts in the Moonlight,  Twinkle of Neon Blares through the reeds,
From a Swamp bar Southeast of Lake Charles, Fiddle and Wash board,
Scrap , over Sweet Chords of Accordian Tunes drifting in the mist, As a
Patron of the Bar stirs coals on the bonfire, Drunken Guests Cut a Rug
On rolled out linoleum, Et Toi a Night of Bon temp Roulle on the Bayou
Inside the door, for some Cat fish and Red Beans & Rice with a cold brew
The Old Juke Box Plays Aaron Nevilles "If Tear Drops were Diamonds"
As the Band takes a Break, fiddle laying at Bars end Winks in Orange
To the flash of the Beer Sign, Uncle Solacess Raises his glass to the Moon
A high toast to La lune ete Amour de Coure, A Drunken Fight breaks out
Old Family issues, the contenders hugging and laughing over fresh Beers
As I Stumble out the door, just as the Zydeco strikes up I crank up the skiff
As I float into the fog, Bon Temp Roulle under Bayou Pale Moonlight
C'est bien de te voir, A bientot Au Revoir Bonne Nuit et Beau Reves....
.......................................................­..........JMF 10/114

A 70th Birthday Poem

My mother had a series of rules
     by which we lived
And by which I think I still do

For instance,
     to keep my brothers and I from fighting
         fighting to cause star-shaped pain,
two-dimensional and primary colored, like on Batman
         fighting to cause welts from
rising like tectonic plates heralding the end of Pangaea
         fighting to bring forth blood
     red blood
      red blood
       burgundy and green and iridescent blood
she said,
         “As long as you’re laughing when you hit them,
it doesn’t count,”
     and it became true
     as the forced, adrenaline-driven guffaws
           tumbled up and over one another
            like rocks shattering one another
              into pebbles exfoliating one another
                into sand
     white and soft and meandering
seaside to tomorrow and forever.
         Know what I mean?

My mother had a series of rules
     by which we lived
And by which I think I still do

For instance,
     to keep from clashing
in a fashionable/unfashionable dissonance,
it’s important to remember:
     “Just because two things are red,
doesn’t mean they’re the same,”
or blue or white or black
     that when held together like paint swatches
each holds a different value,
         and the painter tries to make the best choice
because a purple shirt can be pretty,
     but . . .
“Nobody wants to live in a purple house.”  
         Right?

My mother had a series of rules
     by which we lived
And by which I think I still do

For instance,
     housecleaning should be done to a polka,
or not at all
         joyfully or begrudgingly
as best suits the cleaner
         and the polka,
     because . . .
“Doesn’t a little accordian make everything better?”
         Well, doesn’t it?

My mother had a series of rules
     by which we lived
And by which I think I still do

For instance,
     today is the 31st anniversary
         of her 39th birthday
     just as it will soon be
            the 15th anniversary
         of my 29th birthday

Of *course, it is.

Mud bug Stew, Black beans and rice
Collard greens and fat back boiled up Nice
Nothing like a Bowl of Fila Gumbo
Boozoo Chavez play the Crawfish mombo
Blind drunk Betting, and Letting Dollars go
And he blew it all on horses and **'s
Boozoo got a taste of Cold Cash And Cadillacs
Clifton Chenier in Lake Charles too
Snook right past ole drunk Boozoo
His accordian tunes Ripped right By
Boozoo Chavez who did not Know
How Clifton Chenier became
The KING of ZYDECO

FROM THE FLAGSTONES 
 
This concrete town with no guts,
no grit where we can only smirk
as galoshered feet slip ‘n’
slide in and out our café where
exhalations of icy conversations
mix with the fog and cigarette smoke.
 
It’s a damp riverbank town
border with riptides
sneak currents
no watchtowers no walls
an escape for the committed
or reckless – the next country
a lucky swim away.
 
You draw down
panelaks, teetering like headstones
(that lost their plots
a regime ago)
pen in flagstones and millstones
flower tubs filled
with butts and dead dogs
tarted up with cans and stencils
subjects of your studies in pencil.
 
Nature’s only concession
(so far as I can see)
is this wedge like a warm slice of pizza -
four fall trees jutting out of the bar
where dogs curl up in corners
and mist pushes in fishermen
selling trout -
 the toxic confetti
swirling around the passing
procession of Saturday weddings
dragging monochrome trains
drawn into this twilight
fugue whisked by an accordian player,
guests laughing back at us
while you’re smirking back at them
cocooned in wine and tuica
almost  lost in your sketch
smudging *** ash for sky
dreamy with relaxed fatigue
of travel and infatuation.
 
Your pad’s our field dressing
that could work for a while
before the gangrene sets back in
so I’d like to amputate this souvenir wedge
for my scraps book.
 
I watch you listening out for the shanty
from the flagstones – about weeds
delicate, green, undamaged,
muscling through the cracks
in the concrete
drawn up to the cut where
we also look effortless and a little green.
 
Tomorrow we head for the border
and only one of us can swim.

"I Yyi Yyi fake move tubular my housebound,
to halve and to scold from dismay forward;
for butter, for wurst, for pitchers from pourers,
insecureness and unwealth,
to loaf, sherry, and obit, till breath us do smart,
accordian two cod's holy slaw."

a flock of buntings
with
their
majestic feathers glowing
red blue green and yellow
swarming through
the
joyful atmosphere
swirling back and forth
direction
like an accordian motion
rendition of Gabriel's Oboe
thus
we give God
all the praises
lord
i extract
all my faith
from thee
for
thy will be done