Eyes set for journey,
Downy flight, round hills, meadows,
  .  .  .  Us naked in bed.

Eyes set for journey,
Downy flight, round hills, meadows,
  .  .  .  Us naked in bed.

Mr Green:

Mr Green, or whatever it may have been
Was last seen, across from mine (allegedly)
Pleading with some suits in a Greek parody
of his own life’s tragedy
begging for a Parlay of more time

I know not what, nor if your smart, and your no part
it’s none of your business anyway,
not that you don’t care for the man over there
He was just the spectacle for the day
or at least, originally it seemed that way.

Shouting always carries on the wind, especially if it’s angry,
More than laughter or nice surprises, I’m afraid to say
Roaming hounds were all some place else or had the night off
No engines revving juvenile celebration of joyriding
Another car chase at the end of another day

Mr Green, or whatever it may have been
Next morning was found
Face down to the ground
Crumpled, bloodied and broken.
Lips open
As if still holding onto those last words
In a motionless magical speech bubble which cannot be undone
Leaves him left unspoken
Leaves a Mother to bury her son

Eyes set for journey,
Downy flight, round hills, meadows,
  .  .  .  Us naked in bed.

This is long, but go through it.  It’s worth it.      it was originally called "Words That Changed Our Lives", being inspired by the  connection between pandemonium and pandemic.  

           Pandemonium

Words that show lives but a tribe:
There to scribe, describe our lives.
Words that come from health or sickness: mind and body:
Prowess, fearless, speechless, endless;
Dangerousness, selfishness, childishness - nothing escapes;
Sowing seeds of mental shapes
That come from mind-to-mouth.

Now’s come the time to learn some new:
Epidemic and Pandemic,
Plus another word to view: Endemic.
Just a few, but whew!
Hoping that it’s not titanic - the Titanic!
Let me help you.

First came epidemics:
Measles, smallpox, influenzas…
How to conquer, name and aim,
How could and could we control the sum?  
Sometimes.  Some.
Coming back to hit us all the same,
But vanquished?  Germs and viruses not dumb -
Survive  anti-biotically (the foe of symbiotically).

Year twenty-twenty,
Epidemic now pandemic,
Plentiful and more than plenty;
Too, too many - far too many.

Struck by the invisible;
Questionable, susceptible,
Humans daring not to touch,
Wondering, asking when will it become too much?
And thus we come to the last word:
Endemic: background sound
Though underground many a year
Alive and well and waiting for…
Pandemonium 5. 14. 2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

pandemonium | ˌpandɪˈməʊnɪəm |
wild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar: there was complete pandemonium—everyone just panicked.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: modern Latin (denoting the place of all demons, in Milton's Paradise Lost), from pan- ‘all’ + Greek daimōn ‘demon’.
pandemic
(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.
an outbreak of a pandemic disease: the results may have been skewed by an influenza pandemic.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Greek pandēmos (from pan ‘all’ + dēmos ‘people’) + -ic
endemic
1 (of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area: complacency is endemic in industry today.
[attributive] (of an area) in which a particular disease is regularly found: the persistence of infection on pastures in endemic areas.
epidemic
1 an epidemic of typhoid: outbreak, plague, scourge, infestation; widespread illness/disease; Medicine pandemic, epizootic; formal recrudescence, boutade.
2 he's a victim of the county's joyriding epidemic: spate, rash, wave, explosion, eruption, outbreak, outburst, flare-up, craze; flood, torrent, burst, blaze, flurry; upsurge, upswing, upturn, increase, growth, rise, mushrooming; rare ebullition, boutade.
adjective
a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time: a flu epidemic.
• a sudden, widespread occurrence of an undesirable phenomenon: an epidemic of violent crime.

Fire should frost
But the smoke dissolves your lungs
The alarm works well, even in the sticky heat
Professionals visit the keyless lock
Liquid extinguishes the flame
Strength is key
Heat drives you
Cars swivel
Too late

The tricks we try to use against parents most never work.
They been there and done that just like us.
Trying to change clothes to fit in at school.

Trying to sneak around with that love interest.
Eventually get caught by one or both parents.

Trying to sneak out to only realize they caught onto it and locked you out.

Yes, they been there and done that.

Joyriding around without approval.
Until the police pull up on you.

Trying to skip school until you notice by others you not there.
They been there and done that.

Well, maybe not all of us.
But a few of us.
Which makes some of us greater parents.

You said you wanted flowers,
Thrown at you from the highest towers,
You wanted this, you wanted that,
You wanted a rabbit pulled out of a hat,
Of the sun the moon & the stars,
You wanted it all while joyriding in cars,
You hoped for everything,
Yet you never asked for anything,
All I heard was the wet of your tears,
As they drizzled down through the years,
Because you were never happy,
Never satisfied, always ******,
Had I failed so miserably,
At giving you my all? Very probably,
For you love was not enough,
Because of this you made the going tough,
My affections could not quench;
Your wanton desires powerful stench,
So I've left you to your own devices;
Having enough of my sacrifices,
There is no cure for your want of material things,
I waited long enough, now the fat lady sings...
© okpoet

I was fifteen,
Jersey boy, displaced
from green suburbia
to a sagebrush sea.

I tried to drop my accent,
got a job at a horse ranch
shoveling ****,
wore cowboy boots.

Finally made a friend
in that dirt road valley,
taught me to sideways slide
and countersteer,
joyriding his mother's car
down rough roads
we shouldn’t be on,
sparks flying,
rocks bouncing
off the undercarriage.

And he had guns too,
pistols and rifles.
We hiked up into the hills,
shot at rusty
abandoned cars,
empty beer cans
or anything
that crawled
slithered or hopped.

Killing that jackrabbit
was a lucky shot.
I got him right through the eye
with a 22, on the fly,
just for fun.

We laughed
and high fived
as that black crater
in his head
did not stare at us
from the dusty ground.

I was in.

An Autumn like day (August 28th, 2021)
found me and the missus venturing
along unfamiliar roads.

Said spouse manned wheel of automobile
courting entering land of the lost,
nevertheless experiencing zest
she drove as I determined,
whether we went north, south, east or west

her purposefulness deliberately linkedin
delving off course to test
comfort level, interestingly enough
not experiencing feeling over stressed
possibly because place names
(an abridged version follows)
Green Lane, Perkiomenville,
Sumneytown, Upper Salford,
and Zieglerville somewhat familiar,
thus any uneasiness
(straying off the beaten path)

got put to rest
regarding moseying along
our spontaneous quest,
cuz I trend toward anxiety
(and most likely
would suddenly turn gray)
at prospect of trekking into
hinterlands not many miles
away from the place
the two of us call home.

Joyriding not something we
(meaning said married couple in question)
indulge since cost of fuel thee
cannot deny nearly cost an arm and leg
as one who drives regularly can see
the folly spewing gasoline exhaust
tooling around within 2009 Hyundai Sonata
for no rhyme nor reason unnecessarily re:
leasing gasoline exhaust pollutants

into the atmosphere whereby eco police
unlikely accept me to cop a plea
one garden variety ******
a bloke who strives to exalt glee
crafting poems, and reading as well
ranking his significance no higher than flea
common name for the order Siphonaptera,
dear unknown aforementioned comparison
ye might not agree.