John Thomas Clark

SOUP’S ON, SOUP’S OFF

           

She recalls her little man quite macho,

In happy times just beyond the cradle,

Helping her in the kitchen to make stew,

Soup, perched on the stool, watching it bubble,

Laughing. Those were the joys of bygone days,

When they served up, their merry mulligan.

 

She doesn’t know how she can mull again

Their lives - now a cruel gruel of bouillabaisse,

A macabre mulligatawny of trouble

Because of her. She knows her bodybrew

Served him his awful olio – a ladle

Of genetically gelid gazpacho.

 

The family’s recipe for this sour soup du jour

Is something handed down for which there is no cure.

 

 

 

ONIONS

 

In a moment of shared penetralia,

Perhaps through peach wine bacchanalia,

I might mention Georgia, inter alia,

And link life to white orbs. From Vidalia,

Planted two months before Saturnalia¹,

Their juicy taste merits top regalia

And title. As The Best Onions On Earth –

Nectared ambrosia of vernal rebirth –

These gorgeous globes earn their prestigious berth;

Spanish, Bermudas though larger in girth

Don’t match up. Nor do mine. My onions’ dearth

Of juice is measured each year to unearth,

When doctors takes slices of my onionskin,

Why my genesplice is sulfuric and far too thin.

 

¹ Saturnalia – the ancient Roman seven-day feast of Saturn which began on December 17

  

 

FORTY-FIVE

 

Bent at a forty-five degree angle,

My gait’s a shuffle; my flail arms dangle

Uselessly. I am fortunate, I’m told,

To be middle-aged - forty-five years old,

Having, not forty-six but forty-five

Whole chromosomes. Fortunate. To survive,

Today, when passersby take my measure,

Inflicting my day’s greatest displeasure,

It’s for those looks and my somatic spoof,

I seek forty-five per cent – ninety proof –

Alcohol, Irish, vodka, any grain,

To get bent on my own, to ease the pain.

In vino veritas  – with all this liquor,

The truth is – a .45 would be quicker.

 

John Thomas Clark lives in Scarsdale, NY with his wife, Ginny, daughter, Christine, and son, John and his black lab, Lex. Derek Mahon and Eamon Grennan, editing The Recorder, have published his poems. Currently, 97 of his poems appear in OCEAN, Byline, Paradox, Mobius, EFQ and 27 other journals.  Clark’s The Joy of Lex - an eighty-two sonnet romp describing life with Lex, the world’s best service dog, is scheduled to be published later this year.  He has also completed The Captivity of St Patrick - a 700 pg novel of fifth-century Ireland.