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
RAINE REFLECTIONS
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.