Rock Bottom Tea

John Mason

Walking Papers

If you forgot the word for water
would your grass get brown
plants all die          horses
could you walk to France?
Would your rice be hard
skin be soapy   pranks fall flat
strokes get airy
if you left the word in a drawer somewhere
would your clothes be wet and moldy
or your papers stiff and thick
would you go to work with a dry mouth
and forget the word for work?

the sleek voter
skiis to her
trite shiny altar
chimes in poser:
labor’s my spice.
voters all tripe.
crime it’s clear
the poser’s shine.
radar spies shekels
a boner’s tripe.
whose roper shines?
later valor aloft
sleek goner who
ate the alpo.
in a trice
tribe’s in arrears.

I totally refused to be elided.
To be unlit I’d be undelighted.
My bright smile would be benighted.

4.28.23

Swilo

It was out of my
I could not
Sharp it?

Every chord needs a
Can I have a
Drift?

You store expressions in
You cannot sing the
Swilo?

See you on the street,
Tip my hat, say
“Dowdy!”

Her voice had a
grasp

He landed with a
third

They offed many birds with the
lingo

The welling all starts in the
howdy.

5.22.23

Assange

time to resist
to speak up
you can be
where are we
who are we
are we awake
our eyes open
or just nodding
off in dreamland
who are you
taking messages to
where do you
draw your line
who can you
trust to help
when do you
keep your distance

Give me good eyesight
in this life of mine
Let me see clearly
in my own time.

3.21-27.23

Owly Obly

Who would agist our lost
lambs? We rouse them
daily, for what ought?
Is it folly to find food for
fifty? The flock has no plank
in this vessel, he said obly.
It was tough to face the apish
blast, you couldn’t pay me in coral.
Whogh! Something’s amiss
when the lowly are treated so
cooly. She has to look it in
the face every day, despite her
degrees, as a whole country
shifts to new enemies to
hate hotly. Someone deserves
a good slamp. Golly, Lora,
it’s a tough thicket, said the
owly ageist. But it’s a blast
raising the clang, said Owly
obly, as the silent thunder
rang the lowly larm.

6.14.23

Cooperation

Who put the U in build?

You and I came together

for once in a birthright

Not without guilt

The Homage to Quarrelsome

Words we built

The sleeper in the food

co-op café snores

in the only easy chair there

While a worker on his

break sits at a table

watching the world go by

then rising, pushes in chairs

so each empty table is

ready

Thus quoth a poet

If you want I could

teach you a bunch

and guarantee rock

bottom grades

You & I put the hell in

quilt, stood in a cue

and had rock-bottom tea.

Thus quote the peach.

Some like to invade, but

the faded jade with the mad

mead on the dazed beach says

to evade is

a far better idea.

All that’s left is the

bit about birth falling

from the, quoth, proud cloud.

“Enjoy the view,” says the view.

6.5.23

Taken

It’s taken!
Just walk away
it’s taken!
You could do me a solid
Jack if you took a
powder.
The slick blimp
bumped into the
eagle barging into
the cocktail lounge
She’s taken!

Doing covid is no
excuse for avoiding
the clean bliss of
wakening the
 L  I O
   O D
       L
Can you glean this
in your lager bliss,
Galea? It’s kneat
it’s legal, it’s
soiled, it clicks,
it’s taken.

5.23.23