wayne mason

The Human Parade

Youth has
slipped away
through cracks
overnight and
now mid-way
through my
thirties I
sit here a
poet laureate
of my dirty
garage with
the door
wide open
to the world
outside here
watching the
world drift by
too hurried

Pavement
plays on an
old radio
electric white
boy blues

This is my
mountaintop
my nirvana
cold beer and
the wailing
guitar with
notebooks and
blues hoping
someone may
read my quiet
confessions so
life may not
fall on deaf
ears unheard

And if it does
there will be
other six packs
and meandering
Sunday nights
the human parade
will keep marching
an absurd march

Currency Of Words

On the line
my bones
move to
industrial
rhythm of
machines

Thinking
how they
laid off
seventy
people
today

I watch
technicians
tearing down
an old line
for shipment
to China

Before too
long they’ll
export our
souls too

Thank God
I thought
there’s no
money in
poetry

or it likely
wouldn’t
be long
before my
rants were
shipped
overseas

I’m thankful
poetry is an
economy all
its own
a currency
of words

I am a
rich man
pockets so
overflowing
with poems
that I am
literally
giving them
away