Winter Pome

 In winter my wedding ring loosens,

Slides free and skitters beneath a café table,
Disappears under the car in a grocery lot.
I hook my finger when I reach into the dryer,
Or raise a key to the front door.

Across the valley, night lights flare
Through the sunroom glass.
I run my thumb along the Celtic knot,
Asking again what the ring still holds—
Time’s circle on a thinning finger.

We are no longer what we were.
No one is.
And winter presses our dark forward,
Down into the valley of another quick year.

Night Pome

 Oh Heavy Night

 

Kerplop,

Black walnut releases

The gold nugget of moon.

 

Somewhere

The glorious horror

Of childhood.

 

Somewhere

An ambulance siren

Summons the coyotes.

 

Somewhere

A homeless vet finds memories

He cannot carry.

 

Somewhere

An old man drunk in the waltz of time

Stumbles past the burn barrel.

 

Somewhere

Under the cemetery pines,

Gravity gives way to sleep.

Henry River, NC

 

Motel Daze Poem

 Motel Daze 101

 

When I was a motel clerk,

I was always something else

When a guest would ask me,

You must be in school,

And I would tell them

I was working on a novel

Or I was a free-lance writer

Or I was waiting

For a fabric salesman job

Because you couldn’t be

Just a motel desk clerk

Running cards and counting

Back change, shuffling keys

And booking reservations.

I’m going to be an actor.

I’m writing a dissertation.

I’m waiting for a Trust.

I’ll tell your story if you

Stand here long enough.

Saturday Pome

 When I Believed in the Traditional God

I believed in vampires, too.
Black ice felt like a case full of bad bets,
left out there, waiting on collection.
Nothing could survive
in the dark I carried.

I asked my father—my minister—
what makes holy water holy.
God, he said. Prayer.

I watched him pour warm tap water
into a pint jar,
seal it tight with fitted tin foil.

After the baptism that morning,
while he was upstairs changing,
I lifted the wooden lid of the font,
dipped out what remained
into a Styrofoam cup,
carried it home,
set it beside my bed.

All that was left
was to find the stake.

Jackson Training School, Concord, NC

 

 

86

Scrapdog loathed welfare rats,
“feminazis,” Obama—
spent his old age muttering
that a country the size of Afghanistan
should’ve folded in a week.
He’d learned his wars young,
eight years old at a mill-house table,
leaning over creased maps with his father,
tracking Europe’s flames,
the Pacific’s meat-grinder crawl.

Now he limped across the tennis court
like a busted relic,
a loaded pistol buried in his gear bag,
a knife ground to a razor
riding in his pocket.
At home every room was armed,
rifle across his lap
as he sat on the deck
listening to the Braves,
eyes sweeping the yard
for whatever threat
he needed to believe in.

The world, he said,
was crawling with enemies.
And he meant it.

K Pome

 I wish I could write like Jack Kerouac,

Like the stringy cheese on the manicotti

At Gepettos, the dining room half empty,

Sponge Bob on one flat screen,

Tattooed NBA giants on the other.

I wish I could wrap all my words

Around a stained steel fork,

Morgan Wallen explaining about

Flyover Americans on the tinny radio.

I wish I could say that Jack

Would hate that crackhead shit,

But who am I in 2025

Wearing old man Wranglers

From the Amazon rack—

Just a son of a preacher.

Just a pasta eater. 

Little Joe Poem

 Little Joe Cartwright 

Sure could whip 

Some big guys’ asses. 

He had a smile 

That was half God 

And half curly hair. 

And when he walked 

He never boot stepped 

On the cracks. 

One of my favorites

https://allpoetry.com/Dream-Song-35:-MLA