Contact The Author: rdlbarton@gmail.com

Ron. Lavalette's work has appeared in these fine publications:



Tuesday, December 24, 2019

No Passport Required

Eleventh Transmission
45 Poems of Protest (Online) December 2019


It won’t happen until
we burn all the flags

erase concepts like

foreigner and enemy

tear down the walls
ignore the borders

and accept that we’re all
in the same small blue boat

a tiny fragile planet
sailing through the void.

It won’t happen until
we look at each other

and say “
Welcome home
instead of “
Papers, please.

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Truth Be Told

One Sentence Poems (Online) November 2019

If the Secret Police come knocking
late at night, armed with terror bombs,
their visors reflecting moonlight
into the dim interior of my room,
I will freely surrender, eagerly confess
that just before they arrived
I sent out a song
on the clandestine airwaves;
that the coded lyrics, deciphered
on distant, receptive shores,
will lay all beings bare of arms,
bereft of all supposed defenses.

Thursday, November 07, 2019

Two Small Threes by Five

HALIBUT (Online) November 2019



he can’t help himself
—the moon is fully windowed—
syllables, calling

This is how it is for him.  It’s pathetic, and even he knows it’s pathetic.  He wakes up; it’s only just after three so he makes himself go back to sleep, but he’s fully awake by 4:20 and he’s got it stuck in his head: something about two small poems, three lines each, maybe formal haiku, maybe some weird Americanized Kerouacian version, he doesn’t really know, only knows he can’t help thinking Two Small Threes By Five over and over again until finally he gets up to write them.
He thinks about where to start with the writing, and he thinks there’s a harvest moon shining in the window, but at first he doesn’t know this for a fact.  He stops thinking about the writing long enough to Google the phrase harvest moon, which, being a good contemporary poet, he has vowed never to use in his writing, but it’s just so very much there, flooding through the window, shining on his desktop, shining on his keyboard, washing across his office floor, sure enough: a harvest moon, shining on.
After the first three hard-won lines, he hits the auto-set for Shankar and the Sandhya Raga fills the room like moonlight.  He’s out of incense.  He’s afraid he’s out of ideas.  He walks to the kitchen, turns on a light, changes his mind and turns it off again. He makes the coffee by moonlight, steel strings still ringing in the next room, where he has left his head, thinking in threes and contemplating the Raga Of The Harvest Moon while the moon, still, still shines on the keyboard.
This is how it is for him in the morning, every morning, early, and even sometimes all morning long: long before even the first cup of coffee, the first thought repeating, repeated in the moonlight, repeated at the keyboard, repeated at the keyboard in the moonlight. This is how he is.

absolute perfect moon
coffee moon keyboard moon raga moon
haiku moon, release me

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Life Of A Poet (Interview)


Poets United (Online) October 2019


"Today we are zooming cross-country to Vermont, to chat with Ron. Lavalette, who blogs at  Scrambled, Not Fried, and Eggs Over Tokyo. I detect a theme here...  Let's dive in!..."


Tuesday, September 24, 2019

What Basho Knows

Plum Tree Tavern (Online) September 2019


fog is good
but god’s a frog
loves the sun
—leaps—

Friday, September 20, 2019

Not The Warmest Greeting

50-Word Stories (Online) September 2019

 
He was quite sure they’d met before. Her smile, though noncommittal, seemed at least familiar, and somewhat welcoming.
 
It faded, though, as he approached her and sat down beside her on the subway.
 
He knew that he’d mistaken her as soon as she pressed the trigger on the Mace canister.
 

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Love Conquers All

Red Wolf Journal (Online) September 2019
(Anthologized)  March 2020
Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023


“I bought you some
poison blueberries,”

she said. “You can
have them with your
corn flakes in the morning.”

She had always been
everything he’d ever wanted
so all he heard was:
“I bought you some
blueberries for breakfast.”

He ate them the next day
with toast and orange
marmalade and tea.
He went to work and smiled
at customers and colleagues,
sat quietly at his desk
until half-past five, signed out
and, still smiling, headed home
to his Sweetie Pie.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Overheard

Red Wolf Journal (Online) September 2019
(Anthologized) March 2020
Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023


The first words heard on Monday,
smack in the middle of August,
drifted in, distant and disembodied
from the dock of the smallest cabin
across the lake.
                          An ancient couple,
no doubt celebrating their golden
anniversary with a coffee and a
mutual toast, love-talked so softly
that only their voices’ tenderness
and not the content of their speech
travels across the still, wide water.

Sunday, September 01, 2019

Girl Of His Dreams

Potato Soup Journal (Online) August 2019
(10-Word Stories)

He purchased her wedding ring long before they even met.

Saturday, August 03, 2019

Oasis

Dreamscapes (Print Anthology)
Cherry House Press / July 2019
(Line/Stanza breaks re-edited to correct print anthology errors)


I dreamed of her, an oasis
standing by a new house
on a hill in the greening spring
holding a small glass harp,

its strings singing, untouched,
brushed only by a breeze;
its sound, lifted and carried

by the blue air, intoxicating.
I woke up before there was light
and stepped outside, tentative,

barefoot, onto the creaking porch,
with only coffee and the railing for balance.
Another autumn folded in around me:

the intemperate air almost ready
to carry snowflakes; the world, swirling
out of one darkness into another;
the moon on the verge of eclipse.

Then, there she was again.  

 

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Never Date A Geologist

Dime Show Review  (10-Word Story) (online) July 2019

“I didn’t say stoned,” he told her; “I said petrified.”

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Ginsberg's Omelet

Red Wolf Journal (Online) July 2019
RWJ Anthology: "Borrowed Poetry" (Online PDF) August 2019
Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023

 
This is the egg of the Void, ovoid, egg I have come to know these 20 years on frozen flats, in dreams of egg gone mad, unreachable egg, egg unbeaten by Time, unmapped in the flat gray clouded frypan of Imagination, egg unreal, uneaten eggshell egg—
This is the fork I choose to torture the egg, fork of my mother’s choosing, passing through generations, immigrant fork that travels from Prussia, come to rest on American Formica, Breakfast In America fork, Fork of Manhattan 2019, come to beat the egg for real, to make the mad yellow omelet of  Century XXI, feed the starving mass of men standing and waiting to dig the secret bop-cabala of omelette breakfast staring up from the ooky yolky plate with sizzled bacon beside—
This is the milk of lost aspiration, squeezed from the unwilling tit, small milk, spilled, useless milk propped up by demonic farm subsidies devised by Washington to keep the dirty farmer poor, Milk of the Mother, pilfered mechanically, milk I remember from sour nights on the Plains, drifting toward unrequited Denver, lights whiter than mercury vapor under the odd sad laughing western omelet moon—
O Omelet of my soul, sweet yellow comrade omelet, come to me now, I am starved for your Grace, I await you now in early morning America
 
 

Thursday, June 27, 2019

The Wait

Coffee Poems (Print Anthology) June 2019
World Enough Writers

Can I he pointed and of course
her hand replied smiling out
another coffee and otherwise
ignoring his all over her like
every yesterday and today
the same old thing but
what the hell she thought
what the hell her small tips
hung in the grinning balance

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Power Outage

Cabinet of Heed (print & e-Pub) June 2019

How unfortunate to be there
when the power goes out
at two separate places
at two different times
on the same day.

It was one thing, the first time,
when the supermarket overheads
and everything else
—except a few quick-witted
smartphone flashlights—
flickered twice and went black,
flashed a blinding warning signal
—a truly brilliant half-second delay—
before leaving the whole sad storefull
frozen in Aisle 7, startled into silence
and forced into terrifying immobility
for a scary seven minutes.

Everyone survived. Everyone
muddled through; made it out alive.
Praise the Lord.

But then,
again, hours later…


Friday, June 07, 2019

Shame, Shame


Pure Slush Books (Anthology)
7 Deadly Sins / Volume 7 / Pride (Print & e-pub) May 2019
 
This was supposed to be something.
This was supposed to be worthwhile;
supposed to be something that
summed up and crowned his works,
glorified everything he’d done so far. 

He wanted to be proud of his work;
wanted to be approached by readers,
wanted to see their heads still spinning,
their hands eager to shake his hand.
He wanted to hear them sing his praise.

No one even seemed to notice. No one
approached him for an autograph or
formed a line for a photo op. No one
betrayed the slightest interest. No one.

He gave up caring. He put down his pen.

 

 

Wednesday, May 08, 2019

Drought's End

A Story In 100 Words (Online) May 2019

It was almost dark and he pulled into his driveway a happy man.

He had planned to be home in time for lunch, or at least to be at home at lunchtime, home in time for his favorite talking heads to read him the news he’d missed in the morning while he showered so as to make himself presentable at his favorite café, his best black journal open, crying out for him not to allow yet another eight-day lapse without so much as a single penstroke.

It was almost dark and he was happy to have generated three whole sentences.

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Still, Only He

The Drabble (Online) April 2019


He watches everything around him
unfolding in super-slow-motion,
but no one else seems to notice
despite the fact that they’ve all
been standing in line for days.


Even though the line never moves,
everyone banters and chatters away
at a normal pace. No one else
seems to notice that everyone’s
clearly frozen, motionless, in place.

Saturday, March 30, 2019

The Medium's The Message

Potato Soup Journal (Online) March 2019
(10-Worder)

“Excuse me,” he said, not realizing his fart was inaudible.

Face Rocks


*82 review (Print & ePub) March 2019


She sees faces in the rocks and small stones she finds in the yard, faces staring back at her, smiling or reproachful, young or old. She hands them to me and sometimes I can see them, too. The ones I can see I give names to, first and last, and hand them back to her to see if I got them right. I almost always get them right, or she says, “No, she looks more like a Pearl or a Maude to me.” Then she’d put the smallest ones in her pocket, set the larger ones aside and, later, we’d carry them up to the steps, give them a nice shower from the garden hose, let them bask awhile in the sun before bringing them inside to our box of face rocks.

Sometimes I wonder what became of them after I left. I wonder if she tossed them back into the yard and garden before she moved to the mountains, or gave them away to the kids in the neighborhood, or if she just included the box one day with the other trash, dragged to the curb.

In my office today I have a large water cooler bottle filled with corks. None of them have names, though. I have a tea canister filled with Chinese fortunes, a small galvanized pail overflowing with red plastic coffee scoops, a display case for my hundreds of tin boxes, half a dozen terracotta balls, a sizeable collection of rusty railroad spikes, and about half a million books.

I wish she could be here to see them.

The Space Between

The Linnet’s Wings (Print & ePub) March 2019

She sets out for the coast, stops
at the notch to admire the mountains,
makes note that these are truly
mountains, not the soft green
rounded foothills she calls home.

Left behind, he comes home from work
to an empty house and thinks about her
traveling through the mountains
toward the sea she loves, driving along
with all the windows fully open,
waiting for that first whiff of salt air.

Two or three times before the sun
goes down, he steps out onto the deck
to count and recount the giant hay bales
in the field below the house.

Miles and miles and hours away,
under a just-past-full moon, the road
ceases to unfold before her. She sits,
gazing out at water, satisfied, having
melted her mountains in the sea.

Around midnight, before bed,
he goes out to stand on the deck and
count the bales one last time,
the way a shepherd counts his sheep.

He stares out at the horizon,
thinking about how ridgelines
remind him of waves.

 

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Two Below, Two Twenty-Eight

Six Sentences  (Online) March 2019

He does not envy the window washer, just outside the glass by his favorite street-view café table, her breath immediately vaporizing into massive sub-zero clouds blown away instantly by the wind-chill winds.
 
It's clear, though, that she's completely absorbed by the task; that the frigid conditions (which she had, no doubt, already encountered an uncountable number of times in the past) hardly even register; almost certainly neither distract nor impede.
 
He sits too long, watching and attempting to accurately record her persistent diligence. He's fully aware that he, too, has tasks and chores to complete; activities perhaps not as arduous as arctic window cleaning but which, once completed, should yield as much satisfaction as sparkling café glass on the last day of February in the coldest winter of the last half-century.

He knows he should get up and go about his business, but he takes one last minute to write one last sentence.

Driving away, he already longs to return.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

He Da Man

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)
7 Deadly Sins / Volume 6 / Envy  (Print & e-pub) March 2019

                                             
I see all the women who follow him around;
follow him into restaurants and bars;
the ones who never leave before closing time;
the ones he gets to choose from; the one
he chooses: a different one every night.

I’ve seen the tips he leaves the barmaid;
watched him sign the tab, watched him
peel off half a dozen nice crisp twenties
just for good measure; watched the barmaid,
beaming, wishing she were off the clock.

I see him, always chauffeured everywhere,
climbing in and out of his spotless limo,
never having to worry about a schedule;
never opening a door for himself anywhere;
never the tiniest smudge on his tailored suit.

I could go for some of that; I could be
the king of the world on only the tiniest bit.
I could be in heaven if I could only have
the merest fraction of what he’s got;
one day like his day, once or twice a year.

If only, if only, if only.
 
 

Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Almost There

50-Word Stories (Online) March 2019
Editor's Choice: Story Of The Month

After the hospital, the bookstore café beckons. The geezers have already gathered. Although they still do not offer him a seat at their tables, when he comes in this time, limping, they shoot him a longer glance than usual, which seems, he imagines, to confirm the likelihood of imminent inclusion.

Blood Test

Potato Soup Journal (Online) March 2019
(10-Word Flash Fiction)-
Anthologized (Print & Kindle) May 2020

She was undeniably hot-blooded.
He had it all over him.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Dejaburger

Potato Soup Journal (online) February 2019

Everybody else in line is impatient except him.

He just stands there, smiling, behind the ancient lady and her elderly son who reads and re-reads the billboard menu to her, explaining the items as he goes, trying his best to understand them himself.

He tells her the burgers are all the same size, but you can order one, two, or three of them all on the same bun; that “large / medium / small ” refers to the size of the drinks and the side of fries, not the burgers themselves.

Everyone in line can see that the old lady’s almost blind, but adamant, too, because she keeps insisting she just wants a burger with some fries and a soda; doesn’t want to order a combo because, A combo’s too fancy, and it sounds like a rip-off,” she says.

Everybody in line is scowling and muttering curses under their breath, watching their lunch breaks slip away.

Not him, though; he just smiles at them both and thinks about how much he misses his mother.

Saturday, February 09, 2019

On Second Thought

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)

7 Deadly Sins / Volume 5 / Wrath (Print & e-pub) February 2019

I had to bite my tongue. I
had to bite my tongue and
count to ten. Slowly. I had to
take a few deep breaths and
count to ten eight times.
It was all I could do. I barely
managed to zip my lip, keep
my cool—
.............—no, wait a minute;
that’s not how it happened.
I had no real cool to keep;
I guess I let my unzipped lip
remain unzipped; I guess
I bit my tongue to no avail,
bit my tongue and squeezed
the trigger, counting the rounds
and the bodies as they fell. 

Wednesday, February 06, 2019

Revenge, Once Removed

50-Word Stories (online) February 2019


“That’s what I would’ve done,” he said. “I would’ve asked all the same questions; would’ve been sure exactly who I was dealing with; would’ve made certain he’d done exactly what they said. But I don’t think I would’ve pulled the trigger on him. I would’ve gone looking for his sister.”

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Honeymoon

50-Word Stories (Online) January 2019

They’d only been married since the weekend, but she could readily identify his writer’s block.
She suggested that he might at least try to write something short, perhaps about a convicted criminal in his cell, awaiting the executioner’s call.
“Nah,” he replied. “I’ve never really been that much into autobiography.”