Thibodeau

Thibodeau came to me in the middle of the night
while scratching my own back. I went downstairs to check him out
on Yahoo to make sure he wasn’t carrying some hex from a cane field or Botany Lab.
No, the coast was clear, I could spell him anyway I wanted, my Thibodeau wore a wide hat,
said little, but always carried a big sack full of surprises.
©Peter Bray 8/14/2018
All rights reserved

You and Fyodor and Change

You and Fyodor and change
came down to my place
in the summer’s sun
and brought with you
the nighttime
in all its splendid colors.
And it pulsed me
through the evening
like some mammoth
trucker’s tailgate,
hauling onions from San Josie
to the East Coast
through the night.
©Peter Bray 1976
All rights reserved

Identifiers of Sorts

I was looking for an identifier
of sorts that might remind me
of who I was in case
with advancing age
I was slowly losing my marbles,
or maybe just one at a time,
maybe like a scrap of DNA,
but who knows what
that might look like
so I looked high and low –
This early tired sweat shirt
still looks like my kind of
current dress code
and then this other stuff too
in case I get lost
on the train of thought
coming home.
©Peter Bray 8/10/2017
All rights reserved

OzCat Days

I’ve been downtown, been on the waterfront
and the alleyways, read my poems a thousand ways,
been on the carpet, been on stage,
sang songs under blue lights, on and off the page,
headliner and marginalized, Lost and Found,
then returned again. And again.
Been on my hard drive, AOL, Facebook,
up and down the social media, but now they tell me,
NOW they tell me, these are OzCat Days.
Sang my “Buy The Farm“ today,
wonder what we’ll do next?
Next time it’s an OzCat Day.
©Peter Bray 8/9/2018
All rights reserved

Songs from the Psychiatric Wing

I sing my songs like they’re from the Psychiatric Wing. They’re from inmate to passenger, nearly monotone sometimes, sung under duress of creation to either stop you from bleeding to death or to quell your fear or trauma of a manic attack. To relate to you the listener something that brings you back from the cliff’s edge or up from the rocks of the romantic river’s travail. They’re not theatric or enlarged for drama, they’re exhaustion songs or liberation songs or “I escaped This Crap songs, and you can too.”
I never realized this until now, so I have to thank you and Cathy probably the most,
for giving me this mirror to look through or into.
©Peter Bray 8/10/2018
All rights reserved

Most of my songs are on YouTube.com:
Two Right Shoes  Colitis Blue  Buy The Farm  I Buy Jam  Dog Food Commercial  Can’t Find The Pharaoh (Quarry Song/Rooms & Brooms)  Bottom Back  Life’s Just a John Prine Song  East Benicia Jail Song  Daddy was a Hard Drive  Methane Jane  I’ve Been Better & I’ve Been Worse  Laid Off American Man  You Are The Song  5150 Holiday

Raw Meat for the Dogs

During the day, I’m caught up in labor, trading my repair skills that others need, for the dollar that I need to buy groceries, mortgage, utilities, night-out etc. But before work, if I can sit in my recliner, prop the laptop up on my chest, bang out my day’s creative workload, then the rest of the day just scoots along. After the Poets’ Picnic this past Sunday, I spoke with a lady and told her it was like “supplying raw meat for the dogs.” Something I need to do so basic to me, that “the heart pumps, the nostrils snort, and the psyche flies around the room.” Only then can I go out to work and meld into the flow of other things.
©Peter Bray 8/13/2018
All rights reserved

5150 Holiday

Somebody’s gotta call him on it,
save him before he falls upon it,
his own blatant stupidity,
his own far-reaching, blatant stupidity.
He’s gotta fleet of sleazy lawyers
keeping his golden-plated drawers so high
above the law for so long, for so long –
The over-stuffed, Do-Nothing armchairs
of our cowardly Congress can’t get off their duffs,
or maybe they’re Complicit too, how much did they all receive from the NRA or Putin in Turkey and Gravy offerings from Russia for their silence and Lack of Science or Missing Moral Courage?  My hope is that Mueller indicts them all into 10,000 little, easy-to-vacuum up pieces for Impeachment & Prison. We’ve got all the numbers we can call, I keep them on my telephone wall –
If you or your Quasi-Putin-elected President are a threat to themselves or to World Peace, the Environment, Women’s Rights, farm labor, due to his Tariff-constipated economy, call 5150 for a Pickup and 72-hour Hold and Psych Evaluation. Maybe it’ll lead to Impeachment & Prison for his lifetime.
©Peter Bray 8/10/2018
All rights reserved

Peter Bray lives, works, and writes in Benicia
and has written this column since 2008.

Sharing is caring!