While the twilight was turning into starry night,
On the roads of Rose Hill we would walk,
Past the rows of beach houses bestowed on our right,
To beguile the sweet time with soft talk.

In a cardigan sweater that went past her waist,
Incasing both shoulders and arms,
With a mouth whose moist mirth I was longing to taste,
While embracing emblazoning storms.

On a bench as we sat, our duet “Heart and Soul”
Was controlling what fingers were doing.
Her left shoulder of my heart had quite a firm hold,
While below the bench our legs were wooing.

Her laughter was musical, rounded, and shy,
With her smile a conspicuous gift.
Dolce redolent Renaissance brown hair and eyes
In whose gaze in a daze you would lift.

Only eighteen short summers you gave our lakeshore
A rare form of such delicate grace.
But what I, in my mind’s eye will see evermore,
Is your soul through your radiant face.

 

(c) Ken Sullivan, 2020

 

A chaste kiss on the cheek for a farewell,
The haste of the departure guaranteed
No time for an embrace, but just as well,
It seems the more we get, the more we need.
My arm around her waist reminded me
Of evenings from our past, quite long ago,
As flies in amber, chambered memory
Inspected, resurrected joy and woe.
Fleeing and flown, the evening at an end,
Is time well spent expended on the past?
Past Perfect passed perfectly the Present tense,
The question is, I fear,  intense at last.
Add an “e” to past, to create a paste,
Too pasted to the past, a life’s a waste.

WELDing THAYER MIDDLE, her HOLWORTHY WIGGLESworth.
mmmmmmm ass a chu pusey strauss etts

WELDing THAYER NORTH
Pack’er Penny, Pack’er Penny, Pack’er Penny, Pack’er Penny
Greenough,    ough,   Ough,   OUGH!

WELDing THAYER SOUTH
Widener,         W  i  d  e  n  e  r,       W     I     D     E     N     E     R

Stacks!

We LAMONT Time’s passing packs.
pax vobiscum                                                                 pax aeternam 

The Yard                                                                                they come

The Yard                                                                                 the   f a l l

The problem with climate change deniers:
They aren’t biologic logic buyers.    

She was only a poet’s daughter, but her couplets were heroic.
An ancient philosopher’s offspring, his stowaways were Stoic.

The ancient son of an anthropomorph, his fallacy was pathetic.
The simple son of an aesthete, his poems were anesthetic.        

The single son of a son of a goose, yet he really knew how to get down.
The dolcissima dear drummer’s daughter, with the best paradiddles in town. 

What do you do when you’re stuck in a bed,
And your life wanders through the tape loop in your head
For the ten thousandth time?      

 

 

 

RHYME!

 

But,     
           if you can’t rhyme,
Go get gin and a lime, 
And some ice in a glass,
 Knowing, this too shall pass.

Love me tonight, tell me I’m the one,
And I won’t come undone till the morning when you’re gone
                                                           -Robby Seidman

A Jewish Huguenot from New Rochelle,
Whose tunes and heart and humor we loved well
He came to Cambridge to pluck his guitar
In the Oxford Ale House and the Harvard Yard.

A beautiful sense of the deeply absurd,
He stayed true to his troubadour dream,
Drummed up one Sunday, the Sullivan Show,
February of 1964.

An electric guitar, and an amp, and a band,
And a dance, and some girls, this is fun!
Let’s do this again, I can’t wait! We got paid!
she kissed me She Kissed Me SHE KISSED ME!

He reserved his best songs for his shot at the top,
Releasing them one by one, recordings by
Tom Rush, Lynne Anderson, Roger McGuinne.
Then came double platinum Belinda Carlisle.

Finally someone whose last album was platinum
times two, wants you and your song to record.
Not only that, it will be the next single,
Place hotels on the Monopoly board.

Then something goes terribly, terribly wrong,
The video isn’t played on MTV.
A textbook case how not to market your product,
A new way to make musick history.

He then pitched an idea to someone at Disney,
About the lost continent under the sea,
He came back in two weeks and then the guy told him,
“What a coincidence! I didn’t know,
Someone here’s working on the same idea,
Glad you could come, Oh now I’ve got to go,
Give me a call, I’ll be glad to see ya.”

Then came a phone call with really bad news
Leukemia, possibly fatal.
I saw him one last time when there was still hope,
His spirit resilient, no self -pity.

Choosing the artist’s life seems romantic,
The highs are quite high, but the lows, oh-so low.
When the new stars are almost all infantic,
There’s a place where few with sanity go.

Thus some lovely moths, when summoned by light,
Oft become undone, succumbing in flight.