16 - 20

16. Off highway 75

There is bar where fun

Rarely goes.

Too many cars

Held together by prayers

And epoxy. Jesus take the wheel.

17. Middle School dances

Should be eternally wiped

From memory to make

Spotless minds.

I digress,

We must learn what

Rejection taste like.

Flat punch, sweat.

You must learn to hug the wall,

Before you can hug a woman.

18. The tattered ship finally moped into the Carolina harbor,

                Home, her name sake, her final resting place.

                                Her crew gone, their last lines lost in the final stage

     Of World War II. One man left. One simple mechanic, now

                Piecing the history of the USS Carolina for show,

                                The people want a show, a names on a plaque,

   A face to forget. The people want to hear the heroics of

                Senior Chief Petty Officer Clyde Jerome Skinner,

                                But they don’t want to see the horror in his eyes

   They only want to see the bored barrels attached to the stern,

                The people only want a show, not the stories,

                                They want to hear how he saved his ship.

                                Not how he watched his brother die.

                                Purple hearts, only cover stone ones.

19. Raw cinnamon rolls engross my formative years.

They always burn on the bottom or are flaccid and raw on the inside.

Those not so humble chemical bums taught me about reduction reaction

At the age of four, but I only remembered the chalky taste.

Don’t eat the raw dough was a challenge, how many faux eggs

Can you eat before someone quits.

Brands bordered my home and kept us fed, content.

20. Reliving Hamlet makes you feel a less

insane. The rouge peasant slave, a tenant of

the mind, an eye to rub, the length he goes

a mad man, needing a doctor, new hope

oh sweet Ophelia, Save this ass of ours.