Spring and summer blossoms populated
our family tree that stood so straight and tall.
Then the blossoms gradually faded into fall
bringing the fruit that we so eagerly awaited.
When our winter hesitated and finally never
came, apparently because of climate change,
our blossoms bloomed and flourished once again.
An Indian summer in which to bask forever.
(Image is of the esteemed poet)
It’s true that your Jesus came back. His bar mitzvah coincided with the end of the First World War. As eldest scion of second generation Nazarene immigrants, he no doubt had his work cut out for him in the heartlands of a newly ruined Germany.
As you’d expect it was his talk brought the grief, the trouble. Said he had such news as would overturn the world and so forth. In short, words best whispered, or better yet, left unsaid. Those who rejoiced to hear them would soon lose their ears. And soon enough he and his raggletaggle crew were among the ten thousand others on the slow train east.
He did everything he could, your Jesus. But it was no good. Some clocked him as a collaborator – owing to that enemylove spiel of his. The bread not in his belly started to show on his face; but still he shared what few scraps he could procure, making himself no friends by doing so.
As for his ‘fate’: it came without warning, during morning roll-call: he was hanged along with two others before the work detail set off. His executioner was a man known as ‘Ape’ – a sobriquet supposedly derived from his reputation for “going ape” when beating people to death. ‘Ape’ himself was promoted to captain shortly before the end of the war. He disappeared soon after.
Geraint Jonathan
(Image by Christopher J Ananias)
don’t you dare say marl
nothing deserves it
likewise heft or skirl
avoid them as you would
verdant
& if it’s evening keep it that way
don’t go with gloam
anymore than you would darkfall
darkfall being
like gloam
down there with
verdant
the sky can never again be azure
anymore than the stars above can twinkle
though sooner by far the stars above twinkle
than a sky ever again be azure
& if deny yourself mulch you must
then do so
mulch having about it the very vetch & sedge
& graunch to convey the earthy
itself a proposition of dubious provenance
wouldn’t you say
mulch?
it’s not down there with verdant
but it’s close
there’s a leatheriness survives i suppose
a compact sogginess
wet as mulch is
generally
Geraint Jonathan
(Wonderful images by CJA)
His fractured kaleidoscope
of a childhood obsessed him
with symmetry. He’s transfixed
with how it glistens
in snowflakes, sparkles
in diamonds, graces
the wings of butterflies
he pins to savor
up close. He forces
snips for his girlfriend’s
lazy eye, insists his wife
arrange the furniture
just so, and requires symmetry
during sex. He balances
his desire with an equal
measure of deceit.
When he overhears
his wife’s phone whisperings,
she laughs
How do you like your fucking symmetry now?
For the first time he knows how it tastes.
(end)
A waitress finds her
wailing and convulsing
‘midst porcelain and tile.
A fighter, she held on
‘til methadone prevailed.
Her history scares
couples wanting to adopt.
She grows up wandering
in a forest of fosters.
When she’s thirteen,
a man sneaks into her room,
puts his hand over her mouth.
She takes to the streets,
her body her coin.
Robbed of innocence
too soon, the child
leaves her own behind
at a storefront.
Tempting fate once
too often,
she imagines floating
high above rooftops
and rickety fire escapes.
She crashes so hard,
the earth’s axis tilts,
imperceptible but real.
Like her life.
(end)
(Image provided by DWB)
There’s nothing wrong with me
that death won’t cure
so why not live forever free
from crippling pressure.
Stand up to those who would oppress,
don’t give the oligarchs what they want,
return with interest our distress
like Groucho meted out to Ms. Dumont.
The mime motions for a volunteer.
A young man emerges from the crowd.
The mime tips an imaginary hat.
The young man likewise.
Chuckles mingle among the onlookers.
The mime holds his pretend hat
to his head, leans
against an imaginary wind.
The young man does his best.
The mime nods.
The mime presses his hands
against the walls
of an invisible box,
crouches and pushes
his chin to his chest.
The box is shrinking.
When it appears the mime
is about to be squashed,
he strains his hands above him
and, arms trembling,
struggles to his feet.
The young man tries
to imitate the maneuver,
but the invisible box
continues contracting.
The young man’s mouth opens
in a silent scream until
he disappears.
Someone holds up a phone,
shouts Viral video!
The mime sweeps a bow,
motions for another volunteer.
Twenty hands shoot up.
(end)
Juan de Valdés Leal was a Catholic,
a devout believer in the four
last things: Death, Judgement,
Heaven and Hell, as illustrated
by his paintings, the postrimerías.
Acutely aware of the brevity of life,
and that Man’s faith and works
would be weighed in the balance
to determine whether he entered
Heaven or was condemned to Hell,
he also adhered to the idea that
Ars longa compensated for Vita Brevis,
so, his canvas entitled In ictu oculi
shows a skeletal, hollow-eyed Death
standing on the right gazing at us.
The fingers of its right hand
are touching the adage In ictu oculi
to snuff out the flame of life.
A coffin is tucked under its left arm,
while its left hand clutches a scythe
that has raked over the baubles
of earthly glory: a tiara, a crown,
books of science, rich vestments,
the accoutrements of high office.
Death’s sinister foot presses on a globe:
mortality is the great leveller.
Life is over in the blink of an eye,
but the art of Valdés Leal lives on.
William Carlos Williams, famous
local doctor, spark plug
of his landscape, set of wheels
for his community, delivering
babies among sexy
poor people who couldn’t,
or wouldn’t,
always pay, and some of them
I loved a little too well, and one of them
I loved,
much too well.
Herman Melville, harpooneer
of Moby Dick, became an Inspector of Things
with no visible promotions
for nineteen years.
But I was working
by the seashore, near the sailor
who broke my heart, which usually
made me feel better, because,
by now, I was
the mystical mariner, and the sea
was in my eyes
wherever I was.
Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote
and was windmill-tilting
Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Dapple, Rocinante, and
Dulcinea, gorgeous, beautiful Dulcinea,
the most perfect love,
romantic angel,
with such a long pen,
was a tax collector on horseback
for too many years.
People would throw things at
us.
And I wondered
how I had become
this.
I said to myself,
“How have I become
this
weary, sad-eyed, wine-soaked,
broken-hearted old soldier
with a bad hand from that long-forgotten
sea battle no one seems to remember
but me.
Next, I was a slave,
captured by pirates.
Later writing many
chapters of my only, endless
book while locked up
in their jail.
For something I probably didn’t do
and don’t remember
if I did do it.
Because someone stuck up
was down
on my energy.
As a noble Roman said somewhere, in jail
being where
more than one good book has been
penned.
For love.
In blood.”
Two teens talking
around the turn table
in 1983
A.D.:
“Maybe they were just unseen,
trouble-making vehicles
for bringing new, pure and cool,
lasting, low, good, flute-like hill tunes of old
to the people’s plains.”
“The trenchant word that well stings the eyes
of the soft heart from the eternal, hidden streams
at earth’s core.”
“Sometimes…”
“So soothing to a needy few…”
“Law man, doctor, debtor or fake, banker,
horse-back tax collector or user nurse, draftsman
or driver, musician, druggist, jailed, and jailor,
sailor, librarian, book thief, art thief, drunkard
delivery dude, public urinator…”
“Traveling teachers of all kinds blood humming
the Underground Railroad songs of another America
across a Missouri of the modern musical mind…”
“All the black and white rappers, sax, trumpet,
Charlie Parker, guitar player,
and she, she, she.”
“Was a Wichita piano player who landed in East St. Louis
on the dime
and somehow she died
on the morphine line.”
“My Christian Science
Fiction
Kiowa
Cowgirl who always pushed it
just a little too far!”
“On purpose!”
“Rise from the provinces, be normal enough
most of the time but always
further along.”
“And she seemed too young.”
“And that was the end of her one,
good song.”
Saragun Springs 