Still, you’ve made it this far

past the ’too long to read’ acronym,

so there’s still a little hope

for a curmudgeon like me.

I’m no performance artist

my strings too threadbare

to be animated by hip halls

and the spotlight

of slamming poet’s passion.

 

I can see how they dig it,

in the streets of the young

and outraged.

I have a slow-leaking pen,

a mellow voice,

and shaking hands,

but I’m still here

and here you are

I guess you stuck

with me.

www.RaineReflections.com

© Christopher Raine

Handcrafted

 

The muzak is slick in parity;

steeped in the handcrafted ambiance

of a sawdust-artisanal lounge.

 

It takes you back

to the good old days;

a corporate blue period

of faux-fashion-fading trends

and coriander courtesy

a bearded resemblance begging

the comfortable nostalgia

of nineteen-hundred-fucking-something

tempered with the mild sincerity

of a hippy-camp hippocampus

psychedelic style, all "Peace and Love,"

sanitized of the grubby

Robert Crumb reality

where the message lies

somewhere beneath the dust

of a soil-stained mattress.

 

I know you were expecting

someone else right now,

a stoic cartographer to navigate

the virtue signalling

of synthetic suffering,

but I plead a quiet sorrow

sure to disappoint

freshly manicured muppets.

 

I’m an old fashioned

papier-mache-cheap

marionette,

armed with a puppet’s

peeling face,

dragging stick-rag poems

and a cracked-lacquer smile.

​RAINE REFLECTIONS