Impressions on a Cold Workday
Where the grass pokes out
In punky tufts,
Watch the Spanish Women
On their way to the bus...
They have rags lashed around
Frigid flesh...
There is jagged concrete,
And some sly Winter left...
When the body is cold
Eyes investigate sights
Of sensation and code...
While their sitting upright
In this Waiting Asylum that's
Moored to concrete
The two Spanish women tap
A dance with their feet...
Woman on the right peers at
Structure beyond
Rather high up the hill...
There are words sprawled upon
The ancient bricked business
That's set for the chop...
Pretty soon with construction
There will be a new spot...
She's intrigued by the structure...
The palatial design...
How the framework juts out
Into festive wild lines
Is how her trembling awe
Makes her humble heart lurch...
She is warmed by this vibrance
In the place where wind hurts...
The woman on the left is lost
Within ersatz lights
From her cellphone that she purchased
After chasing status heights...
She is playing a Soduko game,
While trash blows around both legs...
There's an ironed down chicken hut
That she eyes now with distaste...
The bus pulls up at long last,
Revives both the women out of their trance...
The one on right is glowing bright...
She boards & pays with fleeting glance...
Left woman has head slumped down...
She spills out her coins all over the ground!...
The bus driver bends to help field her through her woe...
Seventy five cents remains expected for her toll...
4/14/24
Bunny Villaire
Edit#4
Rain Upon The Glass of Future Yesterdays
The crux of an era,
When the venom meets the vein...
Tasting blood and beating odds imagined...
Will our lives ever be the same?...
I see a blind black man with a walking stick proceed...
He taps his stick against the dip upon the street...
The echoing of cars,
And other sounds I take for granted
Signal the time that he may finally shift his feet...
Those with sight drive sightless into oblivion...
A flood of traffic swims like Cherry Barbs
Or Neon Tetra 'neath a canopy
Of trees...
The crux of an era...
The eclipse steals us in and through The panic...
Blessed changelings at our heels
Send their last reprieve,
And for a moment we all change to Gold
To momentarily suspend here...
Before it's back to our long suffering Soirée
With hearts and minds outsized
And hurtled 'twixt the future and the Past...
A homeless man drifts by
The frigid glass
Where the blue collar tip frosty brew...
They judge him with a bit of sass
As drunks on barstools and glassy eyes
Watch life outside the fishbowl slide...
The tramp now crossing the empty Street
To some old dame dressed head to toe
In party garb and fancy hat
With droopy feathers
She slows her waddle as he
Approaches her like a swift pariah...
But no, though lousy and threadbare
He reaches for her through a hole
Within the air
That separates their different worlds...
He is her long lost son come home...
And now we are deadly ready fixed, And bleating for the deal
With those fearsome yellow eyes
That years ago would strike our souls With deviled ice
Who now peer out from the Beckoning undergrowth,
And offer some erroneous sacrifice
That aims
To pacify our age...
4/9/24
Bunny Villaire
Edit #3
Field Hand
Priscilla cooks a hearty dinner...
The rain washes the windowpanes...
Now Mr. Jack eats like a winner...
Propped on an elbow, Priscilla feigns...
Behind a coffee cup she snickers...
What pretty dimples will never show...
A shroud of shade hangs in the kitchen...
Her doting husband snags his coat...
Ambitious landowner now calling...
His slaves are ousted from his fields...
Where did Mr. Jack's pretty new wife go?...
His prickly callous heart now reels...
Lo, a lamp hung in the distance!...
Where Jim, the Farmer's favorite stud,
Resides inside with his prized banjo...
Wood shack is slathered; ensconced with mud...
Jack marches out there on a hunch...
Inhaling every danger sign...
The matching set of fresh footprints...
His wife and Jim's make a bee-line...
He sneaks around this hut, and that...
Rotting relics stand for his neglect
For human nature and compassion...
At last arriving at his suspect...
Red fabric blocking out all windows;
The Boss can hear her moan and gasp...
The ugly music of bad bedsprings...
Have Jack embedded in his tracks...
Mr. Jack peers through a slither...
The door is propped an eighth an inch...
Jim Bo has both her legs spread high...
He's driving home his fever pitch!...
Jim's making his long point well known...
Flushed Priscilla has veiled both eyes...
There's cards spread out upon a table...
She's wincing as Jim slaps her thigh...
Jack stumbles back out the door backwards!...
He can't unsee Jim's every thrust...
He's off upon a ticked mad dash....
It's murder or he'll have to bust!...
At home in his messed room of horrors
Each time he blinks he's seeing red
Mr. Jack's gun's up and gone missing...
Gloms can of gas out from his shed...
Spilling some gas upon his boards,
Now Mr. Jack pops off a cork...
He guzzles down some Moonshine quick...
The twilight leaking in with force...
Though filthy with his shame and rancor,
Jack sets at counter for a spell,
And contemplates his roaring anger...
He's without compass drowned in his well...
He stares at pans that hang above him...
He looks down at his quaking hands...
Mr. Jack's whip's hung up in the corner...
For many years blacks drove his land...
He wonders if they all despise him...
These slaves that Mr. Jack assumed
Were dumb as rocks, and made for labor...
Inside his skull they shared no room...
...No, not until this ruined moment...
Mr. Jack lingers, deep in thought...
He feels a bulge inside his jacket...
A half smoked stogie long forgot...
He lights it's tip; discards the match
With little caution on the floor...
His ornate house erupts in a wall of flames!...
In vain Jack searches for an unblocked door...
Back at Jim's shack, the lover's pause
Their limbs entwined give off a playful scent...
A look of concern creases Jim's brow...
A gruesome scream slipped through his vent...
Priscilla and Jim stand out upon the porch
Watching the white hot flames erupt
Where once the Bossman's house had stood...
Mr. Jack's storybook's now shut...
Jim drags a hand down 'cross his face,
And stumbles in to get his hootch...
Thinks now the farmland goes to the slaves,
Least until a new Boss comes home to roost...
4/2/24
Bunny Villaire
Watering the Concrete
Gazing down at my feet
As they drag me
On my way...
The feeling has
Long since relinquished
And I wonder as I stray
Far off from the center,
Or is it nearer
To the middle?...
I've been walking
On these piles of clay
Since I was very little...
Malm, that is the sacred
Chalk material
The lowly brick
That makes
Myself a house
Fast, bound
From the wind
Of wolves...
Their breath upon my livelihood
That rises through
The cracks and chimney stacks
Aloft as every earthly thought
Crumbles and falls
At these relic
Foot prints
That I've pissed off
Pounding at the plates
And streaks
Of the lines
That branch out
Every which
Until they chip away
At my small reserve of
Steel intent
Until my tennis shoes
Lift off
And leave this gravel bed
Behind
And I suffer no more
Hard edged thoughts...
Only discord with the night...
Floating like a Chinese lantern...
Losing time
Like a car
Leaves a hitchhiker
Frozen in the rearview,
Disappearing til she's only
A cold dot upon the horizon...
Mavia &
Bunny Villaire
3/27/24
Cricket Ensemble
A Poem In Honor Of A Cat Mourning Another Cat
When the dark is suddenly flooding in
Like a symphony of woes...
Tho you cross yourself
Where the daggers dance so
High above your clothes...
There is still the unkempt
Terrace with the lattice
Shawled in vine...
You can linger there
In a seam split chair
Til the quintessence of time...
Or gaze into the outgrowth
With your eyes honed down
To points...
You'll become aware of the
Subtleties of all
Cosmos, cads, and squeaks...
Your nerves will be
Riled to the test
Where the
Cloaks and
And the willows weep...
Peer deep, and deeper still
Until you can't separate
The shapes
Of your ass and elbow,
And the kitchen sink...
Make a stab at that
Second take,
And when you're finally truly
At a loss,
Then the truth
Comes billowing in!...
It's in darkness that we
Clutch the gauntlet
Of what's vital to begin...
3/26/24
Bunny Villaire
Edit #4
Flim Flan Van
The Flim Flan Van parked
Down the street...
A man stepped out...
His guise was neat...
He made some scratchings
On a sheet...
A couple people formed a crowd...
A woman dressed in denim
Howled...
A man with barrel belly brayed...
The van had parked far from the shade...
An older couple swooned and shook...
The Film Flan man gave
Them a look,
And then he opened up his trunk,
And hauled a table out
For kicks...
He placed some gadgets on it's top,
And pretty soon he couldn't stop...
His words went down like
Fancy wine;
Molasses in a summer rain...
The people in the crowd were wowed...
They never seen such
Sparkling jade...
Across the street a teenage boy
Brought bags of trash
Out from his home...
Into the dumpster
He pushed in three...
Two tumbled out in his melee...
He almost left them on the ground...
But thinking better of his place,
He scooped the can,
And paper waste;
And pried them back into the mouth
Of that stuffed dumpster
Where just one breeze
Would overturn all if it please...
A bird flew in as he walked back
Into his house for what he lacked...
Within three minutes he returned
To shove more trash
Into the urn...
He then retreated to his shack
His dreadlocks bouncing
On his back...
By then the Film Flam Van
Had left...
The crowd dispersed...
The air was dense
With thoughts of prospects,
And undoings...
These wraiths returning to their
Broodings...
3/23/24
Bunny Villaire
Have I Tricked Myself Into Truth Again?
I was living with my nose
Buried squarely in the sand...
Reaching for the beer that's froze...
All I knew came from a can...
Then a strange eruption sprang
It's wraith attacked me at first sight!...
In my efforts to erode myself
With a smorgasbord of spite:
Cancer culture; Politics; the Arena
Of Dismay...
Somewhere in the
Shit-storm sandwich
I ingested something grey...
A little grey area dipped
And camouflaged in grime
Made me think I flagged the
Barmaid
For the standard party line...
...O, but no!!!...
This was not so!!!...
This stunk of a new seed!...
Had I gone and done it??...
Climbed the summit???...
Passed out on the tour
While the bus in question
Without mention
Dragged my
Riddled heap
O'er the fence and
Through the woods
To the place where the willows Weep?...
Have I tricked myself into
Truth again?...
It seems so though I can't
Lay finger one
When the deed is done...
Am I Fly eating Spider's Aunt?...
Have I tricked myself into
Truth again?...
All the bad luck broken glass
Couldn't bring me back
To my crack house shack
Now I've tasted what I lack...
3/15/24
Bunny Villaire
Ericc Tascott. A Man of Legendary Heart.
Ericc Tascott...
A man of grand sight
And sweeping scope!...
His visions proceed him...
Watch as his hand cuts
A stunning mountain
With holes cut through it
Like swiss cheese,
And with swift stretch of arm
An entire field of peculiar flora and
Fauna thrive on paint alone...
A prickly petal bursting,
An exotic stamen bubbling and
Infiltrating the desert eye
So sly but faster then a blink stampede
O, yes indeedy!...
This man was my mantra...
Like a sutra thread whistling
Back to the source
He fed my mind and body
And eyes with dots,
Always electrifying
And supplying me with his
Newest psychic infusion...
This man who loved his cat,
And fed all the neighborhood strays...
This man who taught his cat to
Perch upon his back,
And stretch his
Kitty spine by pulling at
His own tail that was held
Securely in Ericc's loving hands...
He held the keys
To the grand alternative
From the hustle and bustle
Dog eat dog...
He wasn't squatting over his visions
Like a rain sapped branch
Promising himself that one day he would
Get off the pot, and take a chance
On that faraway dream,
He was living it 24/7!...
His art vibrant and distinctive as his
Fashion sense...
He often wore his abstract art,
Draping it's aboriginal designs over himself,
But never talked about it unless prompted...
Staring back at you as you'd enter
His museum like abode
With all knowing eyes
That this was the right way,
And he had found it...
His pie in sky all laid out on his walls
For all to see...
It was never just the art though...
The man was a profound listener...
He wanted to know always what was
Going on with me,
Rarely talked about himself except in jest,
Always thought the smallest aspects
Of life were hilarious, and seemed
Fascinated in all the intricacies
Of human nature...
We talked Family Guy...
Celebrity gossip...
Philosophy,
Music and the Grand Rapids
Underground scene all in one
Breath, and I always
Felt welcome and
In the warm embrace of a friend
Who truly cared...
My eye would always wander while
We jawed and guffawed,
Catching a painting or odd detail I'd
Never noticed and he'd tell me
With that clear as bell memory
Where he was and what he had
Been doing on the day he breathed
Each vibrant and breathing work into life...
Music went hand in hand with his art...
He taught me a handful of musical
Experiments that were as unique as
I'd ever heard from the rarest of
Underground musicians,
And always had a tape player hammering
Out a tune
While he splattered his soul
Onto the canvas at a rhythmic, but
Thoughtfully steady pace...
It would take him days upon days
To apply his dot technique
And create this mystifying effect...
Such an enamoring gift...
Reduced to an ash of himself
I visited him with my then pregnant wife
After he had been diagnosed with
Parkinsons...
He had refrained from painting
At this time...
The shaking taking the place
Of the spasmodic creativity that
Once ruled his life...
His eyes now plagued with fear
When once they were brimming beatific
And rich with life's answers...
Generous to a fault he sold me his
Painted jacket that was a life achievement
And transcended any
Clothing art I had ever seen;
He had confided in me once that he had
High hopes that Mick Jagger
From The Rolling Stones would buy it
From him if he could talk to the right people,
And I never doubted that if Mick had seen
It that he would...
This was to be our last meeting with Eric
For the next five years...
He was forced to move with family because
Of his debilitating disease,
And then I was to discover very recently
That he had developed terminal cancer,
And was very close to death
At St. Mary's in the Hospice area,
And choking back the tears
I fled to see him with my wife and child...
My boisterous boy Rémy kicking and screaming
While my loving wife respectively
Tried to calm him outside Ericc's room
As I pushed back the door to reveal
What I assumed
Would be a withered shell of what I once knew...
But no!...
Here he was so beautiful and almost floating
Towards the ceiling...
His chest lifting like he was drifting on a cloud
So proud!...
His face with mouth wide open
Taking in every breath and energy
That he was allowed in his short time...
His eyes closed but not sealed...
His daughter once seated, saw I was in need,
And swiftly rose from bedside
Saying I could have my time...
A sublime gift...
She left and gave us space...
I took out the drum I had brought
That Ericc had gifted along with
My purchase of the jacket...
I remembered him beating it between
Paintings, and it had his love
Radiating from it...
I started thumping away at it as I
Told him about all the good times
Trying never to show pain...
Ericc's edges of his face lifted in a smile
And his hand gripped mine,
As I continued to share our adventures
That meant so very much...
That was all I could ever ask for...
This and I hope he goes very swiftly in the night
Knowing that I am forever grateful
And transformed...
I hope he's as without burden as his
Thin angelic flesh seemed to be...
I'll always thank him, and be in hope
That I can see him in the next life
When it's time to check my bags...
3/13/24
Bunny Villaire