Butterfly Fables (Part II - Revised)

It comes of its own, in its own time,
.....promising some luck in swirls of fate,
fluttering a course in crooked lines
.....(even love, at times, will make you wait),
..........then coming close, and lighting on your palm
..........stirring both a joyfulness, and calm.

But it is a skip and skittish thing,
.....as light as the breath of a first kiss,
and the momentary peacefullness it brings
.....(even love, at times, can be like this)
..........will tumble on bright wings into your past
..........where you're reminded, beauty never lasts.

Disco Code

In the tranquil death camps
of take-a-number rest homes, we've
always had a code of conduct and
a waiting list that goes on
and on.

We took in your hippies
with their sandal sores,
and drum circle hips,

(the peace-pipe love
had mostly worn away
leaving rough coughs
and wrinkled hands.)

We called it communes -
and had them string
bright beads and fashion
far-out paper flowers.
At night we'd come
bearing bong water drips
and following the code
they went with peace (,man)
limping barefoot into the
paisley purple haze.

But these disco kings and divas
are coming with their own code
of tight pants and short dresses,
with there hang'n, and groov'n,
and sparkling disco balls.

How many backatcha fakeouts
and foxy, funk bunny tales
of cocaine threesomes (can we dig it),
before some cool
cat wheezer is stuffing
the new girls undies in
his oxygen mask, and breathing
like he means it.

We'll come at night
with our tray of chill-pills
and tubular salves
promising to ease the edge,
only to find the swish of skirts
and stiletto heel's slick
clacking down the hall
moving to the living beat and
keeping us up late with their
staying alive,
staying alive.

Burned

Had I only been aware,
I would not have burned my youth so low,
would not have ground its ash into my hair
til timeworn spent and leaning,
I shut the curtain, snuff out the day's last butt,
and fade into the suffocating evening.

And if I listen now
across the stillness of the waning room
I hear the echo of a shallow wheezing
(the air's been growing thinner with my hair)
and death slinks in prepared to reap his seizing,
till the morning cough reveals he's just been teasing.

And this, I think, is hard to understand,
that I would trade it all - the memories, the loves,
the marks that show I once scorched through this land,
if I could burn a little once again,
if I could sear away this muzzy mist
to see a girl whose eyes asked for a kiss.

Is it enough to say
that when she sits across the aisle,
the air around her scented like a rose,
that I begin to breath again,
and worry that I'll somehow be exposed
for taking her this way, into my nose.

They have words for men gone past their prime,
an old pervert, a lecher, or a fool,
that mounts the stair one slow step at a time
to find he's no exception to the rule,
that every man will have his days to blaze,
and when they're done, he'll slowly slough away.