Bourbon & Rhyme

c.2021 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(2-21)

Bottle seal broken

Like a canyon, my brain lies open 

Split by a wild wash of winter whiskey

Flowing

All-knowing

From the bluegrass flask

Questions I’ve never dared to ask

Peering into the dark expanse

A trembling soul

A nowhere man

An empty glass on the nightstand

A tickle in my throat

A prayer of hope

From Heaven Hill to those below

I remember old men sitting by the courthouse

Bath County, in 1969

Whittling sticks, talking politics

Nattering nabobs, and Agnew obnoxious

Richard Nixon, and fumes most noxious

From the fires burning in protest

Sad things uttered in jest

That today would cause a stir

But being what they were

Backward, bent under the strain

Of Elvis crooning ‘Kentucky Rain’

Clans and cliques

Church suppers

Where we passed the dish

How often I wished

To be somewhere else

Able to find myself

Beyond the sunburned necks

And calloused hands

A wandering heart

With a cartographer’s plan

The worn wrecks

Of pickup trucks

Driven by wise old men

In working-class duds

Crushed and criticized

Yet hardened inside

Along for the ride

Rusted, rattling, rolling

Fortified with godly talk

It never occurred to me

That we might face the sun’s primal gleam

With a similar dream

Each on our team 

Reaching fast

For the looking glass

To see what others think

Yes, I recall it now

While raising my glass of drink

Tonight, hard memories run rife

Like lightning from the afterlife

Causing my hands to shake

While another shot, I partake

Too drunk to wish this moment away

Though today

I can recall that horseplay

Free of pain

Far our house from Wells Avenue

There were struggles and strife

Like I never knew

Sin and sorrow

Fools fighting without hope for tomorrow

Blind to the holy word

By false teachers, deterred

Every Sunday, I heard

Instruction from the good book

The guiding light

The might of right

Rock of ages, and newspaper pages

Only if I turned on the transistor

Did I hear of war and draft resistors

Brothers yearning to be sisters

Depression and drugs

‘The Stooges’ or ‘The Fugs’

Not yet on my table, turning

Cities burning

Streets red with blood

Ruled by atheist thugs

It was frightening enough

When in those moments after dark

I tuned in

And began to listen

My childhood aim

Was to feed the cat

To bravely swing a baseball bat

Or take out the trash

To our burn barrel in the back yard

Mom and Dad on guard

Against the humanist canard

Those who did not believe

Were strangers to me

I knelt humbly on the wood floor

Said my prayers before

I began to snore 

Now, when the day is done

And I sit here with my bourbon

That world I ponder, gone over yonder

A poet and scribe

Still mystified 

With the randomness of life

By chance, sent asunder

Pitfalls and blunders

When they finally put me under 

That emerald green

I hope in the casket

Wrapped in my funeral blanket

Will be a bottle for eternity

Written on my iPhone SE