21st

Let me recount a memoir
In shards of besmirched recollections
And serrated blades of deviations
Over bottles and quicksands
Of a lifeline's merriment
From enduring further two decades
Of a constant teeter-totter.

It was enthused by my best man
With the candor of his own men,
Mellifluously caressing the pallid
Tongues of blazing resistance
To divulge the lion's soul
Beneath the asunder escritoire
And harlequin guzzles.

By God, swell it was!
All four of us cloyed by the seawalls
Of alcohol, nicotine, and the saccharine
Innocuous chances of guffawing
Until I scampered too far
Squandering a forbidden road
And astray in the fastidious voyage
To kiss a released double-decker bus
And there goes the endless topple
And the rapine of the verisimilitude
Of a birthday celebration.

I can reckon a shivering star
Though she was inert and tepid
‘Twas my vision that undulates
As she slewed away my interstate,
She was mantled in macadamized clouds
Soothing in brambly consoles
And that was all that there was.

poem by Norman Santos
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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