We were all there...

Square of the Artists in Parisby ricardomassucatto

We were all there, at the cafe in Paris, on deck chairs
Drinking and laughing, Ginger dancing with Fred Astaire.
Toulouse painted Hookers as Queen Aretha sang,
Riley wrote lyrics, I sat next to her in the evening air.
Hemingway toasted us Bourbon, ignoring our faults
whilst Offerman sipped his aged double malt
Marlowe sang in time with Will a bawdy tune
Emily said that our deaths would come all too soon


We were all there, Americans and ex-pats in the movie
set in a timeless year, in the city of lights in France
daring to rebel, find the secrets of artists, romance
maps of adventure, mystery on sun painted streets,
Riley and I asleep on tie-dyed rainbow sheets.
The world an oyster of words, the rhythm of
Ice-T and Eminem ever staccato alliterated repeats
Byron lording over his odious melodies while
Browning mocks him, his grin framing her smile
fading in my head, soon I'm to bed, deluding denial.

We were all there, standing silhouettes in the Louvre
like Platonic shadows with nothing else to prove
Riley and Armin stepping into the groove.
Jackson paddling on the car, lawyers in love,
Mona Lisa singing Ava Maria from above
Amanda rolls the ivory belting out defiance
Rembrandt paints it black, Jagger to dance
Gaiman himself summoned Wednesday to bleed
while Anansi weaves, Pan on his wicked reeds
a sacrifice, the papers rifled, the ink stifled, King
does his standup routine, a Welsh whisper to
unnameable indescribable weird things said
to remind me it's all in my head,
soon I'm to bed, counting sheep to sleep.

Cezanne is in the Boat.
Riley and I holding hands
along the Seine
Stewart dances in the rain
Statues in the Or'Say Park
Rodin caught kissing Freda
after dark.

She took to a Traveling Man

Lord, she would have never done it 
if she hadn't got drunk.
Oak Ridge Boys on the radio.
singing gospel and tunes
some years back in June
Hotter than hell in Louisiana
summer in the Southland
Ice tea and shine, ice cubes
clink in my mason jar, granma
fussing on the low slung swing
afternoon shade as we stare out
across the glades.
The South as it will never be
I won't ever remember to ask
Barbara Sue to marry me.
She took to a traveling man
left us for some foreign land.
Come back home to my home
down in Dixie, where we are
outdated in our mediocrities
racial faults aren't purchased
but blood-bought, old folks that
modern times has forgot.
The colors are here for all to see
statues and gravestones and the
myths of our collective history.