Rainbow stone

 Rainbow stone

I got to comparing the rainbow

To the millstone

How with one the promise

Comes

And with another

We sharpen swords

And I dreamed of being

Pinned to my chair

By a dagger thrown

Sharpened upon a 

Rainbow stone.

Idocy

 Idiocy

I do these things periodically 

Like go boot less through

The woods

Leave offerings along the way

Say things that make 

Sensibly sensitive ears burn

Get accused of being cruel

And certainly not funny

It's great 

This idiocy and 

Greater yet

Uncovering 

Idiocy

Crow in mimosa

 Crow in Mimosa

They were Poe's crows

It was Mondrian's mimosa 

All the same I composed 

They flew

and the moment

Was over.

When life comes

 For weeks Melanie was in an induced coma while the oscillator beat on her lungs. The decision was made to stop the oscillation and bring her out of the coma. We weren’t sure if she would come back. You looked into her eyes and they were blank. Imagine when recognition came back. The song Amazing Love, My chains fell off was playing. Such a mystery when life returned.

Camellia

Camellia 

By John Clare 

For no discernible reason I want to swirl

And in a great effort to

maintain control

I stand stoic before this

Dancing girl

And still waltz away within my soul. 

Days of thespians past

 Days of Thespians Past

john clare stokes

Long past the forgotten lines

Well beyond the curtain call

From the bed and down the hall

To sit and mutter from Macbeth

Is this the end of Thespians

In some woodland sparse

Before the fireless hearth

From nostrils smoke leaking

Mute the cheers ringing flee

Mock the tongue tied stammer

Yet do I fear thy nature

Is this a dagger I see before me?

Nought's had, all's spent

Where our desire is got without content;

Tis safer to be that which we destroy

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

37 years

 The way we were

The winter of eighty eight on this day

Kim Eatman-Smith maid of honor, Melanie’s sister

Melanie

Rev Luther Ray Stokes, minister, my father

Magoo, Rooster at the time

John “Hambone” Wilson, best man

Photo by Bob Jones

Whitehurst Memorial Chapel

Williston

A mothers love

The mothers love

Woodlands 2009

Often we think how mamma never tired

Of telling of the day I phoned her in

Crawfordville to tell her Melanie and

I were marrying. It was probably the only time the Methodist preachers wife danced. 

I truly think her love for Melanie outranks mine. I cannot tell the times she'd have the flowers ordered for me, all in my name.

If it all to an end came crashing

It would not have been in vain

For the love it gave Meme and Melanie 

Woodlands Rehabilitation 

I am old

 “Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

― William Butler Yeats

Random

 Pen the tale

Again the poet found

As he spun another 

Round and round

Dizzy bound

Blindfold tight

The absurdity 

Of trying to get

Them to find

The tale. 

Junk Art

The crafty lady

She was livid

The island

Jury

Rejected her

Window acrylics

And a thousand

Chimed

How does the

Island jury

Know what's

Artsy? 

Upon the curve

We live upon the

Bell curve

Oh, it's in Gilchrist

County for some

Those folks will

Always dwell upon

The Bell curve

Literally

While in time

One or two

From many, many

Will come to dwell

Upon the curve

Shaped like a bell.

 Lately all say

Oh why would anyone

Not celebrate love

They aren’t worth your time

Those jealous hateful kind

But there is a rewind

And if they could see the video

The time the eyes first met

In consensual infidelity

They’d see the point of

the Spirit saying

Turn away

Turn away

Roberta Burns

 Roberta Burns

By john clare stokes

It was no small deed for her to rip the

Carpet right from beneath his feet

Spread denim over him rolled tight

Exposing the soft underbelly asleep

For she's heard all the pick up lines

Endured the mis-thrusts upon 

Orange shag plush 

Short-lived ecstasy in Cohen rhyme

As she lay and made cigarette ring puffs

And he wonders why she offered to cut

Taking such vengeance on the carpet

A slice for every mis-placed trust

Makeup smeared tears she cannot forget

Feed her frappe lines if you dare

Just be not surprised when she tears

That new laid linoleum as you squirm 

Cringing at the pain inflicted from one

Roberta Carpet Burns.

In patience

 In patient waiting

For one to come along

They say she walks this path

On her way home

I’ve been here all the day long

And I think they are

Wrong