I don’t miss my misspent youth, not really. There were some good times though and occasionally it is worth it take a little look back. I might have saved these poems for the Poetry Month Celebration, but it seems silly to not do Friday Nite Poetry as well as that, especially when I have two related poems. Here’s to the past and all the fun people I spent it with.

Dream Escape

There was an alley
down off the street
we all used to mill about on
a crooked broken path
between buildings

I never saw
that alley
in the dark of night
it was always mid day
while shopping
with the high noon summer sun
reflecting from white plaster
blurring the landscape

It gave the whole scene
a otherworldly image
like some portal
to a magic world

Sometimes I would imagine
the back door to the headshop
was the entrance to a faerie court
knights tall and thin in long leather coats
and a faerie queen dark and beautiful

The blistering blinding daylight
would be banished by heavy doors
replaced with a soft glow
in blue and purple

I would be welcome there
finding my place among goth-punk courtesans
the belle of the ball
second only to the queen
ladies and lords alike
would seek my cunning cool favor

Then a loud horn
protesting dumb kids
crossing against the light
would snap me back to the bland

No court for me
no dancing
no laughing
no place

 

Devil’s What

Illegal campfires
in a you won’t get me to name it
state park
under a late summer sky
full of alien stars

We talk each other’s ears off
long into the night
some of us desperately wishing
our menial conversation
is actually an invocation
staving off the coming day

Protestations against the previous generation
are mixed with admiration
for the art they have wrought
the struggle against The Man
is a torch passed down
as men and women of a certain age
achieve apotheosis

So we solve the world’s problems
or mock the banality of a culture
we have barely sampled
though some of us are only half here

Some of us are waiting for that special moment
when the cheap beer
unlocks our inhibitions
and opens our mouth to the girl
or guy
seated next to us

Some others mock Bill Clinton
and inhale away
letting our thoughts float away on smoke
a psychedelic séance for the ghosts of the unimagined

Trying not to piss ourselves
as we go for a piss
in a dark woods never knowing
just what we are tripping on

We always make it back to the circle
where we belong
because the circle goes on forever
even as the sky in the east turns pink