Midnight Crossing

Her white, aged, sun spotted hands were shaking
His black, young, ring laden fingers were baking
She had stopped to get gas and the clock had struck midnight
He had stopped to get gas and was headed to “set things right”
She tried not to make eye contact as he walked by holding up his pants
He smiled and thought about the 38 he’d use to “bring some music to the dance”
She did her best to ignore the thunderous beat, the vile lyrics emanating from his car
He didn’t know, as he walked on by her, that they both shared horrendous scars
Her father had been an alcoholic, a sadistic bastard who beat her and her mother
His Mother had been a junkie whore whose boyfriends stubbed cigarettes on him and his brother
She shot that Bastard long, long ago, yet she still remembered well
He decided not so long ago just how he’d deal with his past hell
One, knowing nothing of the other, under moonless midnight, rushed to take flight
Two, separated by time and circumstance, embraced a bullet to cure a barbarous plight
She only put in half a tank, jumped in her car and caught her breath
He only put in half a tank, then checked his gun before his rendezvous with death
Her hands had stopped shaking in the fifteen minutes that it took to reach her drive
His fingers had stopped baking in the fifteen minutes for the simple reason he was no longer alive
Her white, aged, sun spotted hands were slightly shaking with the morning paper read
His black, young, ring laden fingers were no longer baking as he lay on a slab, eight hours dead
In a world inhabited by over six billion souls, their paths had crossed on a single night
She’d lived, though old, to see the sunrise…He’d died, though young, just after midnight

Keyed-Up

He was a two-bit piano player
Who called himself Rock Moninoff
He ate granola bars, was a novice sooth-sayer
And drank enormous amounts of Smirnoff
They found him one day at the bench
Where he often sat in semi-stuporous pride
Dead as a doornail with a suicide note
Lying on the stool by his side
It read; I never was a religious man
So God I won’t belittle
But why do the big keys have to be White
and the Black ones always little?

Hope Eclipsed

Central California…foul bowl
Stagnant…fevered…deadly
I burn my soles
On ice cold souls
Mockingbirds moan
Wing tips singed
A spider clasps eight hands
Sirens pass over a graveyard
I hear a train’s midnight sonorous blast
Heading somewhere…anywhere
And I look up…terrified…relieved
As the sun burns a hole
Through the moon

Betcha Can't Eat Just One

At the end…the very end
Humanity, on raw knees,
Layers of corpulent
Skin dragging in the desecrated dust
Discovered… at long last
the answer. The antediluvian
Question concerning the
Innate desire…To embrace vice.
It was… so simple
The cookie jar
Someone, long, long ago
Forgot to put the lid
Back… on the Cookie Jar

Hosfatality

In a coma, at a secret lab, since ‘47
But now he was sitting and wide awake
And for the first time in over sixty years
He was shaking the cobwebs and taking a break
Bid some tearful goodbyes and a final farewell
Then packed up his satchel and trekked off to Arizona
It didn’t take him long to discover after he left Roswell
To figure out he’d pulled a monumental boner
Folks pointed fingers, he had anti-grav boots on
They said he surely was a sight to be seen
And on the day when he up and landed in Tucson
They couldn’t help noticin’ the little feller was green
An illegal alien that’s what they said
And his big saucer eyes got moistened with fear
“Either send him back breathing or send him back dead
It’s the white folks that’s indigenous to these parts around here”
Why would they do this, what had he done?
Besides make the folks back in Roswell a pot full of loot
Now he’d been cast out from the land of the sun
Exploited for decades and now given the boot
His former friends back at Roswell had once named him Comet
On account of his skin the likes they never had seen
But he was so scared now that he thought he might vomit
And when a Martian does that it ain’t colored green!
So they put him on an old bus with some folks shaded brown
Then warned him to never come back to this land
But he escaped in the hot desert one hundred miles from a town
And then waited till midnight and held up his hand
His fingertips glowed and so did his eyes
When there came from the sky a deafening crack
And as he disappeared into that blackened split sky
He whispered, “ To the people of the earth, with my friends
I’ll be back”

Prop 8 Date

Love just won a battle
But there’s many more to come
Hate is re-mobilizing its forces
With vows it won’t be overcome
Love has always had a brother
A sadistic evil twin
Hate has always had a brother
Who he hated to see win
Love is a cool cup of water
To a parched and lonely soul
Hate is sharpened box of thumbtacks
Embedded in the sole
Love has always been the stronger
It’s a basic human need
Hate has a chip on his shoulder
He likes to see things bleed
If Love is to win the final battle
Then Hate will rue the day
A judge who lived in California
Sent a rose to those who are gay

Tug-of-War

Optimism…Pessimism
They sleep in the same bed
One greets the new day smiling
The other just nods a head
The Optimist he sees the
Brighter side of life
The Pessimist she warns
Of suffering and strife
I wake up in the morning
Optimism’s in the lead
I go to bed in mourning
Pessimism’s an addictive creed
The world has many roses
Yet roses do have thorns
Humanity consists of sheep
And legion have sharp horns
Optimism…Pessimism
Conflicting and what’s more
Doesn’t it seem quite fitting?
To call it Tug-of-…War