It’s coming up on Decoration already,
But I swear it has been more winter
Than Spring this turn. Sarvice and Redbud
Has kept the faith though and I am right 
Sure the weeds and vines has plumb took
Graves, along with the stones and markers. 

Orville’s grave is new and the stone not yet set.
Tom, the stone man is spending his scarce breath
To carve his name. So it is time for me to be about taking
Taking care of Orville with the others now passed,
As strange as that seems. It just don’t fit the tongue yet. 

The kids has been slipping down to Ethel’s
Making them crepe paper flowers. Not a 
Word out of them, they’s scared it’ll just
Start more tears, late suppers and silences. 
It is way past time for me to do better bt them.

Packing a basket is a good thing for Decoration,
Kids love a picnic, and it’ll give us a chance
To look toward something instead of always back. 
Mommy and Aunt Sudie are sure to go. They 
Never miss a day with our passed on kin. 

Might ought to ask Minnie Howard and the kids. 
Their daddy is gone, too. But there’s no grave
Or stone. His grave marker is Black Mountain,
Easy to find, but a heavy burden for his skinny
Bones now crushed into the very coal he worked. 

Decoration is good, I know it’ll make me cry some,
But remembering is the most we have now, refusing
To look back on the good, would most likely force
Us to draw up into a stub, no good for anyone. How
Would that please Orville? It plain would not. 

So bring it on, picnic basket, flowers and grubbing hoe. 
We aim to honor them gone ones, and find all their good
There was to laugh about and love them and be glad. 
The heart may bleed some, but I swear I’ll smile
For them kids and tomorrow and their hope. 

K. Bruce Florence 
June 29, 2016 

Day Three on Poros    

I write poetry.
I eat lunch at a dockside
café, moussaka, white wine,
coarse bread, & feta cheese.  

Other tourists move antlike
through the shops nearest the sea
until shop owners close
for their 2-5 o’clock siesta.  

The heat reminds me of Kentucky
except without the oppressive humidity.
At night, the men will come out
to dance & drink in  a taverna.  

I follow their lead,
& sleep for the afternoon in a room cooled
even temperature by thick walls,
whitewashed to deflect the sunlight.  

When the sea absorbs its share
of heat, I will come out
& move up the hill
toward whatever merriment awaits.  

At midnight, I go down to the dock,
give my Campari & orange to a young
woman, perched on a wall, crying into
the dark night and the cool air from the sea.  

She gives me a sea smooth rock
in return. “Did you hear my song flung
up to you? I never had this drink you
scoundrel,” she said. “It won’t get me  

drunk enough to go to bed with you.”
I say nothing and she asks, “Will you
grant me one wish tonight, gentle fool?”
I hear a stronger voice, in her request.  

“Unless a poem will satisfy you,
I cannot promise more. As poet, I do
words better than grant fantasies, beautiful
siren, & if that is the object of your quest,  

I will begin.”
“No,” she says. I will wish for poetry
tomorrow. Tonight I have finished my song.
I want to dance like a southern gypsy.  

“Only then
will I grant your one wish; the poetry
you write must be what has gone wrong
in my life, so far nothing good, you’ll see.”

black cat

stares at the sunset

shape shifts

pure gold takes the sky

spreads out to tulip pink

black cat

stares at the sunset

shape shifts

pure gold takes the sky

spreads out to tulip pink

the deeper you go
in these mountains

the more likely
you may drown

in the darkness
when it crests

the ridge, spills
over the tree line,

fills the valley,
until the rising

sun reclaims
the light hoarded

by her sister
moon each night

again the darkness reaches for her
with sensitive lover’s fingers and she longs to feel
her soul between its teeth

(folksong in D)

If you’ve worked for two companies
I guarantee you’ve been screwed
Worked overtime, laid off, lied to
You crated up the equipment for shipment overseas
And watched your job roll away to some foreign factory

And they say
“This is just business”
They say that quite a lot
but these decisions have human consequences
Like the next time you say “It’s just business”
You’ll be taken out and shot

Take a lesson from the Russians
Easy to see
The people starved on land 
owned by the bourgeoisie
The people got together 
cooked up a little plot
And all the people with soft hands were taken out and shot

and they said
“This is just business”
They said that quite a lot
but their decisions had human consequences
Like the next time you say “It’s just business”
You’ll be taken out and shot

So here’s to the boards of directors and to the government elite
Try to see through ruthless greed, be a bit more discreet
‘Cause legal loopholes and reasonable doubt 
mean nothing to an angry mob
And everyone who ever ripped us off
Will be taken out and shot

and I’ll say
I might say that quite a lot
but my decisions have human consequences
Like the next time you say “It’s just business”
You’ll be taken out and shot

The next time you say “It’s just business”
You’ll be taken out and shot

mind wanders more than usual
not as many accomplishments
as yesterday I stare
into the menagerie of figures
I’ve collected over the years
from all parts of the globe
I ask myself not where I’ve been
but where am I now going?

I’m so glad I get to be one of the last to die
Blessed I won’t have to compete
I hate my phone most of the time
I hate all this concrete

Implanted nanonets will bring strange dreams
Blue eyes, huge member and Afro hair your 3 parents’ crazy scheme
Can’t get fat, forever lean
Named you after Grampa Goldstein

Don’t be tempted not to pay that price
To spend your credit on something nice
Install the right wetware, it’s best left unsaid
Of what that virus could do to your head

Your boss said you don’t have enough fingers
To run the new screens
New recruits have fourteen
No reason here to linger
There is no in-between
It will suck to live forever
and be obsolete

The children of the very rich
will do amazing things
The rest of us, as we always do
Will feel somehow incomplete

But we really will be