i remember

i remember the good old days the old fashioned ways when a dog was a dog and a cat was a cat and nobody had a problem with that i remember mr jones’s store it isn’t there any more i remember old mr jones with his twinkling eyes and creaking bones i remember old mrs jones scooping and molding ice cream cones the nickel for the cone burned a hole in my pants the screen door banged and the shadows danced i remember charlie chan in a double feature with tarzan w c fields with his thumbs in his vest and john wayne riding through the west i remember stoves with coal and swimming in the old swimming hole a dog named bud who came when you called and the full moon shining over it all i would give your information age with its trillions of bytes of hate and rage its temples of steel and towers of glass to see bud running through the tall green grass

nothingness

a nothing apple falls from a tree on a nothing hill beside a nothing sea the nothing sailors on the nothing boat laugh at the reporter and won’t give him a quote about the nothing princess who never drowned in the nowhere river in her nowhere gown never and forever and all the same the score is nothing to nothing in the nowhere game the nowhere cats and the nowhere dogs howl like houdini in the nowhere fog locked in a trunk with a nowhere lock the clock strikes midnight on a nowhere clock the bubbles float on the nowhere surface of the nothing river with no end or purpose on the nowhere horizon of the nothing sky sweet sue sings softly in the sweet bye and bye