Beelzebub’s Brûlée

A pot of chocolate custard…
For this, I am keen as mustard.

Once it’s chilled & ready to go…
Crackable caramel chapeau.

Its crust beset with diamond ice.
Sea salt crystals, the humblest spice.

Then chilled & served with dainty spoon.
We crack & whack…scoop, taste & swoon.

Good not to know when next it’s served.
Foreknown, would have us all unnerved.

For H

Bespoke Broke

We are the bootstraps of the rich.
The very thing they preach & pitch.

We take the bait & waste a life.
Often spent as our betters’ knife.

When times get tough they yank the poor.
They shake us down so they’ll endure.

When lowest cast no longer fruits;
They’ll come for the middle man’s suits.

In truth, wealth’s never leaked from crown.
Yet, hollowed houses will fall down.

Carny Fall

I am the crying clown.
I’m up when I am down.
My rusted bells & other tells…
Like my cardboard crown.

Whatever my employ…
I’d dreamed of bringing joy.
I broke away & made my play…
As a living toy.

My big shoes are muddy.
Grateful they aren’t bloody.
Both blood & gore’s on killing floors…
Neither one’s funny.

My costume’s soaking wet.
My greasepaint’s smeared with sweat.
With peanut pay & beds of hay…
Fortune does forget.

My smile’s aged to a frown.
Life spread from town to town.
I started out no skill; just doubt…
Now, a crying clown.

Wit Schtick

I think Laughter an indelible ink.
It’s the chain of our recall’s strongest link.

For, we are quick to forget our worst pain.
Yet, hearts & bellies remember when slain.

Even the gallows change humor’s settings.
Shoulders shake at funerals & weddings.

A shush in a pew guarantees guffaws.
Don’t forget jokes about bears with long paws.

The happy good times flood back at a wink.
I think Laughter an indelible ink.

Salvage

It’s hard for me to meet my like…so many of us didn’t make it.
Life takes all it can too soon…an end’s the only thing to shake it.

I’ve seen us fall away from life…drowning in its deepest of pools.
The water of living soaks us thru…we’re experience’s fools.

None of us knew how to dress the part…couldn’t check the weather first.
The rain that we found ourselves dancing in, neither nurtured nor nursed.

It wailed against the levees & slicked its sunside with rainbow’s oils.
I started flailing towards a light…surface engulfed in flaming roils.

Punched thru the slick, gasped & burned alive; but was nowhere near burnt dead.
I grabbed ahold of trusted, floating hope & straight for life’s shore fled.

Pro Bono

Words are never small…even when they are short.
What we choose to say, has weight from hearth to port.

Lies are rarely harmless…they’ll hurt now, or later.
What we choose to hide, grows fat as a freighter.

Fights are not the way…to solve your wordless plight.
What, & who, we choose to hurt’s never our right.

Hate is seldom real; the scary mask of hurt.
Truths chose in mirrors; to see or blindly skirt.

These are not all finite, if it please the court.
Words are never small…even when they are short.

Sprout

I was born in the break but I’ll die in the whole.
I have burnt down the tree & I’ve abjured my role.

I grew in the dark & the dank of stagnation.
I was too bright a bloom for lowly creation.

My roots tapped deeper; while my bud craned for its sun.
A peek past the gloom told me I was not just one.

Every cool shadow in sight was adorned by me.
We’d beat fallow beginnings to sway finally free.

When fall comes for us, we’ll seed & hope for the best…
That our issues fall further & won’t have to crest.

Drift

There was a freedom rider two millennia ago.
His fame & legacy: division; battles to & fro.

For every good there is an evil; create & destruct.
A tome that tows dividing lines insures that they are plucked.

When the strings of DMZs are strummed by those in power…
Their idly pulled peaceful chords cause populi to cower.

Do not buy the bully pulpits touting pacifism.
Whenever there’s push, or shove; they drum the beat of schism.

If all we do is sit on our hands…fearful of big shoes;
We’ll never see that we outnumber foes by ones & twos.

Blue Dress

More, bigger, faster, longer; Earth’s great abscess of man.
Breaking, burning, owning, raping everything they can.

Monetizing H2O & serializing seeds.
Colonizing Nature & ignorant of her needs.

Ever hacking, ever groping, ever do they want.
Never sanguine, never sated…never not avaunt.

Mean caffeine & nicotine; For…Men won’t take a nap!
They spin crimes as exploration; blind: without a map.

The feminine’s like water…ever on the level.
Save for when men loot too far; then she’s Kali Devil.