Solace [Lyric Poem]

My war days are long past.
I'm not quick to beat drums.
I've neither king nor caste.
I've seen the winter come.

Fearful norms have no hold.
The law has lost its sway.
I've broken from the mold,
and turned a roving stray.

Crazy sages / role models:
those freed from conventions,
who can't stand for twaddle,
and shun all pretensions.

Vienna Limerick

There was a famed therapist from Vienna
who knew the source of all angst and each dilemma.
"Sexy thoughts of your mom
made you fear the A-bomb!"
"Uh, it started last week when I fell from an antenna."

Chicago Limerick

A window washer from Chicago
would work in the snow and that fog - Oh!
But he was chagrined
when there were crosswinds,
"A guy could splat like a soft avocado!"

Morlock Memories [Free Verse]

I woke up rife 
with Morlock memories.

What a damnable time it was!

The days when I 
was not a boy,
and not a man --
nothing for which anyone
had a good word.

Maybe I was a shadow:
two-dimensional 
&
wonky in shape.

I was that which 
lived below:
below ground,
below the radar,
below comprehension.

Last Blossom [Blank Verse]

The final flower falls to the sidewalk.
It's damp and deformed, -n- sugared with sand.
It's gritty and pretty at the same time.

The ants are crawling around and across.
A faintly putrid scent must call to them.
They crave that little bit of death in food.

And tomorrow it'll be gone -- somehow -- gone.
Who knows where: swept up, carried, or wind-blown.
It will be gone, and branches will be bare. 

Nashville Limerick

There was a great guitarist from Nashville
who couldn't remember to pay his tax bill.
They seized his Les Paul
and even his stress ball.
He became that stressed-out uke player of Asheville.

Cambridge U. Limerick

When Lord Byron lived at Cambridge University,
he greatly increased campus diversity.
He lived with a bear.
They were quite the pair.
For the poet, the dog ban was a perversity.

Yellow Camphor [Haiku]

camphor flowers,
in a disheveled bouquet, 
stretch warmly

The Melt [Common Meter]

Our lives are blobs that melt away.
You may not sense the drips.
It happens slowly; you may never
hear burbled blips. 

You may not feel that it's lighter,
or that it's lost some girth.
Because you've shed it gently each
and every day since birth.

And when you feel the withering,
will you take it as loss?
A good loss like becoming lean --
a skimming of the dross?

Or like a vicious theft of the
best parts of one's being: 
like time has grabbed the valuables
and taken to fleeing?

The melt will continue onward
until there is no more.
So, think yourself experience rich
though you are time poor.