(Today we honor old Fat Jack. The Drifter has kept him in my mind lately, so the old knight rates a poem. In fact I think that I can dedicate this to His High Rotundity as well as the co-Editor of Saragun Springs— LA)

(The Raccoon in the image is named Falstaff; a truly fitting individual)

i

Handmade gods do not laugh

Even when they employ a staff

Of dull scribes, Bob Hope funny,

He who bought bad jokes with Chrysler money

ii

Go through pages and seek jolly sages

And learn good Will penned the man for all ages

Tankards of ale, sack and wassails

Falstaff lives on after all else fails

iii

Prince Hal was a pal till power spread him nebulous

‘Twas crown and church made him lugubrious

Yet Jack kept laughing and blessed the saints of the doomed

Hallo Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, Drifter and Harold, may your keeness for-ever, Bloom

iv

Kings lose their humour when see good

In split heads, spilled guts and land by the rood

Yet Hal neither lived long nor richly

Nor was he guided home by gentle Dame Quickly

(Image of the Messianic Squirrel, Manette, WA at sunrise)

i

On the tongues of angels devils dance

The right words are made but not by chance

If the truth and sound should ever meet

We’d hear “it’s cheaper to let them sleep on the street.”

ii

The keening of youth wears thin in time

Like hippy power ties sold in eighty-nine

The passion disease is easy to cure

With pots of gold and rainbow lures

iii

Sleep tidy in peace is the lucky sin

God loves you more is how it begins

Luxuriate in false security long and well

And but once heed the toll of the bell

iv

And as one hypocrite tells another

“The fault lies with our fathers and mothers”

Yet seldom do parents concede

When devils dance on the tongues of their seed

i

I was walking home and met the Ghost of 1983

Clove cigarettes, Orange Julius and Plug-in potpourri

It seemed a pity that it had to wander without a mall to roam

I wanted to do something nice so I brought it home

ii

The Samaritan has hit the skids in millenia number three

No good deed goes unpunished is the modern screed

But I rather like my dayglo phantasm born in cheerier climes

Before everyone got a branch from which to bleat full time

iii

So now I share my roost with the Ghost of 1983

Clove cigarettes, Orange Julius, Plug-in potpourri

If I can be good enough to open up and make a little room

Then maybe I shan’t be so alone when sealed in the tomb

i

The Spring is the thing in Saragun

It creeps up from the nether-nether land

Located below the meanest sin

Where you can fry Peter without a pan

ii

It smells of charnel houses and sulfurized souls

Mouldy shoes, dollar store cologne

Lovers lies and quitters’ scorn

And the still rooms of the should ne’er been born

iii

And yet it is the best of devices

A sucking abyss for idiot crisis

And it leaves our air cleanly grown

Fresh to the lung not previously blown

iv

Yes the Spring is the thing in Saragun

It takes out the trash and dung

It’s a happy exit for the aggressively putrid

We wave bye bye to anti-Cupid

i

Moonfog Madrone nods in the lush field

In vegetable dreams seldom revealed

Little goes against Moonfog’s serenity

Save humankind the greedy enemy

ii

Little colored flags and a for sale sign

Once entered the doze of Moonfog’s calm mind

He cast an enchantment into below

Where the little fey gods flicker and glow

iii

“Bring forth a shake to unkind human steps

Those that never feel the earth is kept

By Forces more elemental than gold

Little gods I say do as you are told!”

iv

The flags and for sale sign went away

For when humans touched the field it swayed

Some said nature, others, the will of God

Moonfog cared not, for he was on the nod