.

For Choate Road- A gift from Fred R Kane

Escorted by a company of wolves:

riding to a new unknown.
Mist covers where my tread falls, and
at the fork I make my first decision.
When the road, she speaks with fork-ed tongue,
doesn’t mean she lies
(truthful intent can be seen
in viper smiles, and serpent eyes.)

Dead spirits dance with tombstone angels.
Pigeons from hell alight
on epitaphs as the fog
yields to the cross
roads in moon light.
Ask Robert Johnson which one to take,
he says: “Don’t matter, they all go there..”
So I leave the pack,
for Jesus’ right arm,
or left should the cross be inverted.

Choate deal:
perfected, complete, and certain:
No win ahead, and nowhere behind-
conquest dreams and a beggar’s heart-
just, an act long over before the curtain
falls.

Choate Road-
unpaved, between earth and hell,
no when ahead and nowhere behind,
just the now that is  all -
thirteen blocks and a wishing well.

Thinking, “Faust has got nothing on me, my soul is still with breath,”
I pause and smile at the old grave yard (some are born to laugh at death,)
then ride to a pub with lamp lit tables: a place to lose the dust
(get it off with absinth and a woman I can’t trust.)
My muse says I should write the devil, so with my knife I scribe
some wicked lines on the table, then toast the local tribe
who sing dark songs, tell red jokes and smile at morbid puns
I feel a warmth that says I’m home: I know this kind of fun.

Autumn people
stroll in the cemetery air.
“Forever night,” says the barmaid,