Ballad For Chet

for Chet Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001). Rest in peace.

I checked the headlines just the other day.
They told me you had put down your guitar.
They said that you had gone and passed away.
The sun that rose is now a falling star.
And as I sit here strumming my guitar
I realize that pain is now a lay.
The music that once healed now leaves a scar.
I put down my guitar. I can not play.

Like myself you hailed from Tennessee.
Who knew where that glad guitar would lead?
Your laughing lute was clearly filled with glee
when you played “Summertime” with Jerry Reed.
And everyone that knew you just agreed
that your humility would find the way.
Your picking style was all that you would need.
I put down my guitar. I can not play.

Will anybody ever really know
why we were blessed with such a genius?
On every fret where your deft hands would go
you always made it look the easiest.
The music that you made was always blessed,
but now your magic hands have turned to clay.
The music’s over. You have gone to rest.
I put down my guitar. I can not play.

I’m just too sad. The music is no comfort.
I wish that yesterday was still today.
The music that I play just makes me hurt.
I put down my guitar. I can not play.

The Wordsmith Goes Fishing

tonight I am fishing
in my rough bark
on the black sea.
I am reeling in the net:

that is full of babies,
heads’ hair fine like black faun’s fur
with white twitching
arms and legs.

The skin on their torsos
vaguely translucent,
I can see their hearts beating
like furious cuts of meat.

They are crying like newborns,
splashing like frightened seatrout.

How will I know
which one to keep?
I can’t eat them all.

As I ponder this
one falls in the boat
like a wet sponge.
It smells of fish and brine,

its tiny white chest heaving:
it’s still learning
how to breathe.

Perhaps it is learning
how to cry for its mother
who lives in the depths
where the sun can’t go.

I will keep this one then.
It will be tasty, I think,
with lemon juice and tartar,
perhaps a buttered slice
of honey wheat bread
as well.

And as I ponder
how poets eat their young
I throw the rest back.
With a splash
they swim away
going down,
diving deep like seabass
where the dark
maternal shapes
move like mountains.

Kratos, God Of War

Brave Kratos stood above the raging sea,
in the night as storm clouds cracked and groaned,
poised to fall and softly cried “the gods
of Olympus have abandoned me,”
then forthright threw himself beyond the cliff
into the dark and violent sea below
to find the peace that only death could bring.
But the immortals high up in Olympus
had decreed that it was not his fate
and so Athena came down from the heavens
with godspeed to arrest the Spartan’s fall
and bring him back to the great golden halls.
She said to him, “you will not die today.
Nor shall you die at all or perish ever
not since you slew my brother, evil Ares.
The gods do not forget the burning deeds
of Kratos who possessed the Blades of Chaos,
nor his fateful quest to kill a god.
The songs and lays of Kratos shall forever
ring and echo through the halls of time.
The gods do not forget the fallen Hydra
nor famed Medusa with her wild hair,
the Minotaurs that crashed the walls of Athens
where the Oracle was lost in seeing,
when taller than the city Ares stood
his yellow mane companion to the clouds
of smoke above the burning city that
did echo with the clang and crash of war.
They shall not forget the desert Sirens,
nor the Titans of which Cronos is the last
bound by manwide chain links in the desert
where the hot winds bite and sting forever,
nor Pandora’s Box whose seal was broken.
Long shall great historians remember
your evil pact with Ares, God of War,
the mighty chains he grafted to your skin
with blades that wander but can not be lost,
how your skin was painted by the ashes
of your wife and daughter that you murdered
when Ares tricked you. Thus the song is told
of how you died and yet refused to die,
of your brave journey and of your escape
from Hades, how you climbed the tree of pain.
The gods do not forget the song of Kratos
nor do they forget the death of Ares
and thus decree that you shall take his place.”
So it was that Kratos took his mansion
above the sea where he had sought to die.
Now Kratos wore the title God of War
and as Athena gazed the Ghost of Sparta
took his seat on that immortal throne.

Lines Written In Honor Of A Vicious Forum Administrator’s Girlfriend

It’s no surprise that your communications,
despite his vicious, petty administrations,
come to his calamitous defense
but everybody knows you’re not that dense.
It’s true, you two do make the perfect pair
when you run your fingers through his famous hair,
but oft I wonder if there’s something wrong
when you’re communicating with his dong.
Do you lie on your back and think of England
and bored do you massage his little lingam
to press the point and get it over with?
It’s true most men can’t find the trollop width.
It’s not his fault! At least that’s where you stand,
but would you tell us if the sex was bland?
Judgement deems that you would make him throb.
I’m sure that’s true when he’s not snogging knob.
But as it stands you simply must accept it.
His love of man’s entirely too eclectic.
He is a fool; I’m not afraid to say it.
That’s why I’ve chosen couplets to convey it.
What better way to tell a man to suck it
than to beat his girlfriend with a couplet?
If there’s a better way to fashion slight
I do not think that it would have the bite,
and my propensity to tuck and run
is easily too abecedarian.
That is why I feel I have to say
his fair armoire should be your frank dismay.
He looks like my sister anyway.
Should my revilements have taxed your ear
remember this before I go my dear -
when I lie on my back I think of you,
there in my thoughts your modesty subdue
and dream that you’re a porn star kind of date.
It’s fun to masturbate to those you hate!
Now one more thing before the final rung
is reached by argentite and fatal tongue:
please don’t think my verse mere recompense.
I just don’t like you, that is my defense.

Ron Paul

Ron Paul I must confess that I am on the fence.
Your campaign strategy defies my prior sense.
Your message makes me think my prior strategems
are loosely wheeled, subject to logical mayhem.
Politically… well, you are doubtless indiscrete.
That’s why I chose to write these couplets in six beats.
It doesn’t matter if you choose to arm our kids
with shooters ’cause it’s just a presidential bid.
As far as spam goes I say fuck it, give ‘em hell.
The neocons are starting to look like Orwell.
You’re still not one of them despite the immigrants
that you would send back home for national defense.
And outsourcing sucks would anybody want to say
that losing jobs is the American forte?
But still I wonder, pardon me if I am dense.
Ron Paul I must confess that I am on the fence.