the king of the world

I once met a man

who told me he was the king of the world.

I laughed at the beaming king:

He donned a weathered suit robe

and sat on his throne in an abandoned station.

His subjects knelt loyally,

most on hand and knee,

others merely bowing for loose change,

for to feed the slits in worn metal boxes

that would bring back the chariots and screeching silver horses

who shoot sparks from their noses and carve two parallel tracks.

Then the wine wouldn't relapse into warm stale liquor,

and the banquets he hosted would be much bigger

than the space that his mind could grab and unfold,

but this story may have been better left untold.

For the king climbed down to the pit of his chambers;

across the parallel tracks he made his bed.

Tonight he was mistaken, this is not the abandoned station,

and tomorrow the king will wake up dead.

song of the south

Oh, would that I had been born in the South,
Land my longing heart calls home.
Fate then, perhaps wouldn't lead me about,
A stranger through foreign fields to roam.

For dreary are the fields of the city,
Where man endeavors to build a lifeless cage
'round Nature, to tame and bind her—she holds no pity,
and rends those feeble prison walls in rage.

Take the shrill of the streets and crowding skyscrapers,
Give me the song of crickets and trees five stories high.
Rose of magnolia and cypress, silently mourning in wait for
The summer that will bloom bye and bye.

To see the unseen, to hear the unheard,
To speak what is ineffable. . .
Fate, carry me south, where my every word
Might be sung in sweet, wild honey lilt affable.