|
A Lament for Sylvia
Regarding Sylvia Plath
She is polished by the sun,
the moon, the veils of sorrow
So hurt by, yet so in love with memories
that forge concepts into poems.
And they wax the eyes of our melancholy days—
Could we accept pages less cold to touch?
An unopened birthday gift rests on her desk
as benevolent bees sting blue stars
And death is a concept buried
beneath that future winter.
(previously published in Skyline Magazine)
It isn’t her fault . . .
It isn’t her fault
that our hearts fell from their cage
or that something like god
pulled broken the strings.
Now it’s tar and tears, a new pavement
over the old road we drove:
intersections, car crashes;
dead love merging with the moonlight.
Those memories we made
now a bitter lick of blood,
falling from the edge of yesterday…
drip
drip
drip . . .
into a widening pool.
I hope it will end soon—
I prefer silence when thinking of you.
Kicking Sand in
the Face of Indolence
It sits, like a wet cotton ball.
Covered with dust, hair,
and false starts.
Hours have dropped from the clock,
the insolent wind has carried them
away.
But time still goes, and goes, and
goes.
The cotton ball? It lies, it lies,
it stays put. Festered. Festering.
Willful, but left without device.
What’s been muddied in the mind of
it?
How many tires have squealed by
and yet it does not flinch?
It is restless, waiting for a wave
to crash,
to wash away the washed-up
rhetoric
which convinced it it had nothing
left to say.
To leave its dead crab countenance
on the shore of this black-ink
sea—
And my brand new feet come by
and kick on it the white sands.
To cover it. To bury
it.
To see it dead, and something new
arise.
(previously published at
LanguageAndCulture.net)
Morning Rain
for Kelly Sturner
This morning there was much rain,
forcing the birds into trees,
the butterflies beneath leaves.
I stand at the open window,
listening for the cool silence
between raindrops.
I begin to wonder
about time machines,
about being fully absorbed into the future:
The full view of a sunset
from our porch chairs,
a cat resting at our feet.
Faces aged, a hand
holding a hand.
And the wind
comes down from flowered hills,
filling the home with fragrances.
Everything is golden orange
like a softly glowing jewel.
I blink and turn from the window.
Another routine day begins.
The echoes of my heartbeat
will mingle with the rain.
(previously published in River Poets Journal)
Stopwatch
Everyone is dead.
Slumped against steering wheels,
on the floors of kitchens and bedrooms,
face down in swimming pools.
Bodies litter the malls,
the halls of prestigious universities,
they're in hospitals and sports bars,
at desks in corporate offices.
In the center of the oval office
lays the body of our president,
maggots crawl out
from beneath her eyelids.
The rats beneath the streets
lift their heads and twitch their noses.
Vultures fly off trees
into waves of decay.
Remnants of humanity crumble,
are buried, eroded and grown over.
We are dust and fossils; we are history.
The planet is lush and productive.
Out in an unnamed ocean
a new breed of dolphin is born,
its flippers more like modified claws.
One day, it will use them to grasp the shoreline.
(previously published in The DuPage Valley
Review) |
