Poesy from Juan and Everette

Freedom‘s Watch: 8 to 5

Does terror wear yellow or red?
Or perhaps an earthy burnt umber,
the color of dead wedding guests
as they become one with
an uninvited drone’s
debris.

God, a world away,
moves the joystick with deliberate
finger -- just a flick --
and His extension returns home in
time for dinner.
_______________________

The Savage Nation

It could be Intelligent Design
or a game show koan
encased in sheets of plastic wrap;
wound too tight with piss and moan like
driving Betty Davis home.

________________________

One from Everette Maddox, the departed poet of New Orleans.

Of Rust

“It struck me today,
while trying to explain to
a student how he should
go to hell, that all
my languages are rusty.

My French for Graduates,
my old Latin minor, my
Berlitz German -- oh
my Esperanto’s hopeless.

All my Englishes, too,
Old, Middle, Modern,
Pidgin, Basic. In Paris
I asked for a room
dans douche. I can’t get

cliches straight: Does
water flow under the dam
or over the bridge?

How will I ever manage to ask you to come
back to me in a sentence with so many
to’s in it?

My fans must be confused
(me too) because “If gold rust,
what will iron do?” (Chaucer).

Somebody said the best
words, in any order,
were Alone in bed. E.g.
In bed alone. In alone
Bed. Bed alone. But
I think the best words
are In bed with you, and
the best order is
In you with bed. Rust

has its uses: They make
old beds out of it,
like ours you painted
white. I remember too
one winter dawn (this was
before we met), some
friends and I, loaded, drove
the wrong way up a hill.

in the fog, and stopped
to hear a small mystery:
birds, creaking like hinges,
saying, it seemed to me,
just what they meant”.