John K. Lawson
Rayful Neal
And so it goes
The sunny side of life laced with Rayful Neal
Hits on local radio fm.
Kinda toe tapping rapping with this rain.
Moments focus on many miles later crossing
A mighty bridge in some sense of awe.
Cool perhaps in the idea a memory is true to follow.
If the senses are awake moments have a chance.
I question what I am carrying aside from the usual contraband
Can expel given the chance a chance to shoot saccharine
In the foot kinda like listening to
Sun crests laced with a delta swell.
No matter how long thirty three odd years might leave scratched
No dent on the sides of our tug boats so far.
A fog rolls across the levee inspiring in sorts
A shabby remains of a Stephen King novel.
Safely past the prison gates we are in my first ever
Beat up truck broken tail gate to boot.
It’s like a bad ass nightmare sitting on my lap she says
Laughing as the clutch quits close to extension.
Obviously we were lost again on River Road.
In a section of Louisiana reclaimed for now as Cancer Alley.
There’s a neon beer sign, I guess unconvincingly.
I think that’s the Rockin Red Rooster.
You can’t go in there.
They will think you’re a Yankee.
Sure we can.
I’m far from hope.
Enter a room filled with Christmas lights.
You haven’t been here before, a bartender smokes on a cools.
Folks like you don’t come down this far, unless there visiting Carville.
And now it’s after hours.
I’m researching, the plight of armadillos, I reply sizing up defeat.
Defeat sized up I bulk, you’re full of it.
Alas that too.
The room filled with eyes now glares in one direction.
My gut says it’s the boots I’m wearing.
My girl says you cut the heads off chickens here.
That does it right?
And Ray is once again playing.
We cut the heads off a lot of things.
It’s called making Gumbo.
Eyes became daggers.
Daggers return to eyes accompanied with laughing at my not so cute ass.
Where’s the nearest gas station? My now patron saint, once girl asks.
Far from Hope, the bartender replies.
Where’s that?
Sunshine, he says. But we still call it for what it is.
You’re joking right?
Nope. They changed the name after the song came out.
By who?
A Governor.
No shit.
There’s no cussing in here mirror the daggers.
Can i get a drink?
That depends.
Depends on what?
How fast you can drink it.
I can drink pretty fast.
A can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a plastic cup with ice appear.
A dollar 11.
What’s this? I swagger pointing to the cup half filled with ice.
It’s called a to-go cup.
And don’t expect no change.
Outside the fog remains a bad ass nightmare.
I’m cozy locked inside a LSU dorm mid-term hours later.
As for Rayful
Well, you do the math.
He went out and still is
Done good and doing it.
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