T.O.A.S.T. Trilogy: Telling Old Age Sonnet Tales

My Dreams Get Toasted

My dreams have all been toasted
a bevy of beauties all buttered up
buddies have pranked and roasted
me for days, I feel like a lost pup
my dogs are tired socks all stink
shoelaces broken sweat in my eyes
pollen allergies make it hard to blink
mosquitoes draw blood on my thighs
hot humid bummer summer for sure
t shirt sticks to me I’m sopping wet
oh for some well water cold and pure
actually I’ll take any drink I can get
some of my toasted dreams are French
now to get rid of that underarm stench.
 
Cotton Candy at Cupid County Fair
 
Scent of fried chicken and waffles under my nose
café au lait and beignet, hot corndogs came next
our love was hornier and thornier than a wild rose
as it quickly soared and soured we tried our best
me a prince of fools you quite sober and straight
a growing young chick still close to mother’s nest
so we went arm and arm to the fair on our last date
when we came back I turned left you turned right 
no one could have ever predicted our future or fate
we had no plans for heaven or hell for day or night
as we swam into ecstasy in that hot summers air
the sexual peaks we reached gave us both a fright
Cupid only knows what arrows he shot and where
we ate pink cotton candy at the Cupid County fair.
 
Not Donne Yet No Woman is a Peninsula 
 
Chicken coops aren’t pig pens no woman is a peninsula
sailing around John Donne’s ‘No Man Is An Island’
made my older brother Peter smile and keep smiling
if you were very fat and floating around on sea water
might you at least be considered a very small island
not every dog has its day nor every cat live nine lives
too much smoke and mirrors bees can’t find their hives
you probably could roller skate in a buffalo herd
if you were an 18 wheeler or a big Kenworth diesel
but could you ever paint like Vermeer or Paul Cezanne
with all their colors on your pallet and a large size easel
turkeys will run through the straw and fields of corn
you can’t catch chicken pox from a skunk or weasel
but you can eat canned peaches as sure as your born.

Joey ‘Pepe Batbon’ Connolly (Special to the Saipan Tribune)
Joey “Pepe Batbon” Connolly is a retired teacher and has been named a poet laureate of Tinian. He has taught English in CNMI public schools for the past 30 years. He has also taught in Alaska, New Orleans, and Las Vegas.