Lone Ranger Sunshine

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Some buttered beams of light assured him that

His world was not just treacly tombstone jewels.

The shafts were shining from a cowboy hat

Of boyhood where his brothers’ bang bang duels

Were Roy Rogers fun.  The barrels shot,

And groans of clown face pain, remind him now

That he was innocence in mornings hot

Naïve with yells.  The bullets went KERPOW!

But they were less than plastic, more like pale

Vanilla days that stretched from morning through

To mother’s mindless meals more like a Braille

Sans dots or like a manna’s dried up dew.

  No Tontos figured, hardly any blacks

    And gays but one dressed up in Sabbath slacks.

~ Phillip Whidden