LatinosUSA

Ghosting

You are the cat nap
I wish I could take
you are the sweet
pie I don’t know
how to bake
you are the aftershock
that makes my body quake
and despite all this
you just had to
go and flake
on our plans
to see where
this thing
might go
maybe I should
just take this
whole thing slow
but in the winter
I always seem to
melt like snow
because I am
too hot to trot
I thought you
loved me
but you don’t
even text
an emoji
so I guess
you love me not

~~

What’s Done is Done

Allow me to drift
with no said path
is what I am saying
after you ask my plans
or attempt to read
my hands
and forecast my future
with your psychic
ability to predict
what happens to bums
or those that ho hum
to the beating drum
of AM and PM
and I am referring
to my chained reaction
to relentless time
which rips holes
in my jeans
and in space
while smacking
that smile
right off my face…
look I’m trying
to play nice
but the clock
just cheated me
out of another
twenty years
of my life

~~

Profound Thought

Come on
you know me
we go back
no matter how
fast we go forward
that’s why we look
over our shoulders
to check out
everyone else’s
mojo as we yo-yo
between accepting
and not being able
to deal with
the stone cold truth
of what became
of Aunt Ruth
and that fact that
Uncle Ted is dead
yet our bond
remains like
catchup stains
after eating fries
in a burger joint…
everything lives
everything dies
yet isn’t it delicious
I guess that’s
my point

~~

Scruffy Kid

I am unteachable
as well as unreachable
I am in the halls
not in the classroom
I am exploring
the school
a delinquent fool
and I have my daydreams
and my nightmares
on this Coca Cola high
that is so sweet
I no longer want to try
to pass the test
or fit in with the rest
I am the first, last
and only dropout
cop-out who knows
I won’t be young
much longer
and will never
feel or be stronger
or laugh any louder
and I don’t respond
to reason or discipline
and I don’t care if
society locks me out
because I don’t
want to be let in
since when is
being a flunky
junk food junky
adolescent a sin
I am a dunce cap-
wearing, class clown
with unclean jeans
high on raging hormones
and no textbook
or disapproving look
will get me to
get my homework done
unless it has to do
with having
a whole hell of a lot
of childhood fun

~~

Mustache Memories

A tall, dark, and handsome
Burt Reynolds lookalike
cartoon caricature of a man
stole his way into the hearts
of my family
in the Hanna-Barbera
Super 8 seventies
when he swept away
my older sister, and carried her
up dozens of steps
to his little house on the hill
where he threw
shrimp gumbo shindigs
and jitterbugged
swing danced
and improvised
sheer joyful nonsense
with my zany Zen
uncle and me
a boy fascinated
by a time that
won’t ever come back
when we were all charmed
and disarmed by
this one-man band
named Jack
who sang about
one day having
a sports car funeral
in the hootenanny
era of our lives
when even granny was alive
and then California joy
faded into East Coast snow
yet our family never could
let him go
until now
after we learned
that the ringleader
of our greatest show
has been returned to the soil…
yet he lives on in his paintings
created in brushstrokes of oil
all spiral, indigo and vertigo
so there goes the most
animated guy we ever knew
our own personal Mr Magoo