Mincing words: We shred them, till you can’t tell
What they mean, like sausage hiding the meat.
Was that “Bless your heart” or “Go to hell”?
Too much spice, so add a little sweet.

Don’t mince words! No need to cook the carcass!
Serve in quarters showing fur and bone.
Don’t mince words! That hammer truth might spark us
To start the fire to roast those words alone.

Don’t mince words! Let’s lay cards on the table.
Tell it like we think it is, just to show
That though we’re in the dark, we’re still able
To state the case like someone in the know.

It’s easier to swallow the absurd
From a butcher who’s skilled at mincing word.

Monday morning sonnet only talks about
Itself. Nothing else has happened. We restart
The week on Monday. Reset. Old news out.
It’s the horse that comes before the cart.

Giddyup, Monday! We can win this race!
Out of the starting block, never too soon
To set priorities. All things in place.
We aim for the sky and shoot for the moon.

Then comes that Tuesday cart. Now it seems
To drag nag Monday on down the road.
Wednesday we hold shiva for Monday dreams.
Dusting off the week then trying to goad

Ourselves to redeem the week just in time
For Saturday’s funeral on Friday’s dime.

Dad played piano but put it aside.
He played clarinet but then he sold it.
All for the family that needed a ride.
He did all that he could just to hold it

All in the road. A rebel and yet,
He gave us all of his money and time.
His Whizzer, his leather, his clarinet
Were all for sale if he needed a dime

For guitars and saxes, clothing and shoes,
Whatever it took to give us a break.
He played boogie woogie, swing and the blues,
But gave it all up, that and more, to make

Our lives that much better. Thanks, Daddy Ray!
I wish I was there. Happy Fathers’ Day.

Snapshots: film, digital, watercolor, sketch,
One quick note — That’s all she wrote in the dust.
Snapshots: Finish line; who won in the stretch?
Memory in a jar; remember, you must.

A string around a finger, mark or jot.
Oil upon a pile of Holy Land stones.
Bread crumbs mark the path we nearly forgot.
Hieroglyphics on an old box of bones.

You remember your way; I’ll use my own.
Your mundane to me looks quite creative.
Notes on scraps of paper are just on loan
To the future. To the past, they’re native.

Lullaby rhyme till logic takes a nap.
It’s just a jot upon a sonnet scrap.

Low-country boil: It’s food and it’s weather.
Steamy, spicy, buttery, hot, salty.
Where cowboys wear baseball caps, never leather.
Slow and steady. Strong. A little malty.

Leather on the Bible, leather on the feet.
Cotton grows around here, and cotton breathes.
Leather in the belt, never on the street.
And leather gloves to shield the hand that feeds.

Low-country boil: Sometimes, an attitude.
Don’t be hasty. Keep your cool. Let it simmer.
Give the culprit room to show gratitude.
Otherwise, he better be a swimmer.

God had a plan for aluminum foil.
Greatest gift to man, that low-country boil.

Maybe I’m just preaching to the choir.
Maybe we have always been this way.
Lying liars lie about the liar.
We miss the point, but who cares, anyway.

Cause no one’s changing hearts and minds and votes.
Everyone is just playing solitare.
No one’s sitting at our feet, taking notes.
Soapboxing in the cyber village square.

Adoring fans and hecklers may surround
And listen as we boldly state our cases.
But no one wants to hear opposing sound.
We want the ears; we don’t need the faces.

Nanny, nanny, boo, boo. I can’t hear you.
I’ll just tell my people why to fear you.

Hawking’s Robo-Voice radioed to space
Where it hits a black hole. How sweet. No, what?
The price of sending not him to no place.
A black hole? Super-nothing, is it not?

Hawking’s Robo-Voice transmitted from Spain
Out to 1A O six twenty O O.
Thirty-Five Hundred light years plain
The best known black hole by a few specks below.

Ashes scattered twixt Darwin and Newton.
“Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking”.
Mortal was all of what Hawking knew on
This earth, where he said mortal’s the only thing.

Spirit may hover or soar. That will be
Stephen Hawking’s next great discovery.

 

If carrots had feelings what would you eat?
In that case, we would eat mushrooms and moss
Or find kind ways to lull carrots to sleep,
And every salad would be gently tossed.

What if fishes knew they would be dishes?
Would they still take the bait? Jump in the net?
Bovine are dreamers; what are their wishes?
Turkeys and chickens aware? Place your bets!

Life is a pain on top of the food chain,
But we give a lot more than we receive.
Why must we humans be so darned humane?
No, wait! Not us! We don’t do; we believe

That everything’s okay with what we do
Cause everyone knows we’re better than you.

A Rhyming Dictionary … Bite your tongue!
Never canned sermons here, and no canned rhymes!
Way too old to cheat that way. Load of dung!
Way too bold to eat that whey. Curds and crime!

Rhyming Dictionary … Never seen one.
Guess I Googled one, but not this decade.
Fake it just this once? But here comes the sun
Can’t hide those counterfeiters in the shade.

Rhyming Dictionary … Guess I need one.
Then again, I’m not doing this for pay.
Rather do it poorly, rather bleed one
Than steel one in some other easy way.

Finding rhyming lines is not a big deal
If you don’t think too much, don’t try to feel.

Golly what a gully-washer that was!
Mighty rain, mighty rushing wind out there.
Don’t the weather give us all a hat buzz?
All that weather! Weather everywhere!

Mamma, what a scorcher we got going!
Air as still as pudding in the fridge.
Muggy as a sauna. Ain’t you knowing
Here’s the hell we get for sacrilege?

You know that snow in twenty seventeen?
Never thought we’d see anything like that!
Sometimes seems like nothing heaven seen.
God and humans must have had a spat.

One nice day in spring, and one more in fall.
Well, I guess that beats no weather at all.