Don't Wait Up


I'm off to Hawaii,
Hold my hat!


He Needs More Outside World


He never did poisons
Like absinthe,
But a corner view
Gets Dickensian
By a prison-brick
Fireplace his keepers
Don't let him use.
He orbits the town green
Three times a day,
Dislikes the crow stares,
Would like a go-free-pass
To the library stacks.
His single visitor
Most days, who brings
The fire to his belly,
Isn't the Mistress Lovelace,
But an anonymous mailman.


Vanity


The best practice after sixty
Is to pass by mirrors with a shrug;
As mirrors punish viewers
Who expect someone younger.


The Jesuit Priest


He lived a double life
As a clergyman
And gay-nudist-activist.
He was disloyal
By carefree lifestyle, detested
Misogynist scripture
And the afterlife angel hierarchy.
He paid for an Irish wake,
Then had drunken friends
Bury his ashes at sea.


2020, a Quatrain, After e.e. cummings


Nature is kind 
When graves
Mount the stairs
And heroes die.