Kings at the Half King

surly adversaries

after hardly a pint

proud of our heady resolve

and might

making our plans

over soggy-soft coasters

the loud happy babble

of still-youthful boasters

let decades slip past

and revisit these scenes

as hardscrabble years

claim the hardest of dreams

true resolve doesn’t die

but grinds away

and lives on

as the quest will consume us

in our own haggard song

Battleships of Union Street

aglow in the night

and early morn

blaze of light rumbling by

flushed with bustling humanity

vessel for the warrior poets

out to scrap for daily bread,

home for those

touched by the mark

with dreams dancing dark

in their troubled heads

roving land ships

loaded with joy pirates

teeming with mind crime galley slaves

soldiers in the hand-to-mouth

soulgrinding slow motion suicide

and poison pen samurai

ready for the best defense

somewhere shuffling home

is our tragic poetic overlord

looking for his children

and planning 

the next artistic holy war