Poetry: It’s August Again

It’s August again. Just another
one of twelve named collections of days
to mark our planetary position
relative to our Sun, called sol, in our
solar system spinning reliably about
in some outer spiral arm
of our Milky Way galaxy. Our home.

August is supposed to mean something important,
like some Roman title signifying reverence;
to hold in high regard. I don’t do that for August.

As a child, school started next month,
I was often bored, sunburned, a year older.
Halloween and Christmas were far off.
I feared some raging red-faced nun’s pounding footsteps
and bone rattling beads storming my way,
with some weapon of horror in her hellish hand.
Hormones made me feel things I didn’t understand.
I still don’t get all that. Crazy life.

As an adult, August now means hot and dry. West coast
wildfires raging on while US Forest Service bureaucrats
either fight or fiddle for smarter management
policies for mother nature to ignore.

I try to be respectful of August.
It’s the end of summer, the gateway for September
as promised glories of Autumn soon fall upon us. Coolness.
And color. And feelings. October promises more.
My apologies to summer lovers, tanned bodies,
teacher’s times off, vacations (because kids), and to Caesar.
I say it every year. Only Christmas can save August.

Look both ways to seasons past and yet to come.
Mind the gaps in government policies.
They’re only human, even if they can’t admit it, until the mic is hot.

Sammi’s Weekender #121 (thwart)

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Of Gems or Germs

They number in trillions.
Too many to census tally,
on insides and outsides of every
human body, we each have
our own personal repertoire
of microbes keeping us alive.

In typical foolish human fashion
we’ve tried to kill them
with discovered miraculous medications,
intending genocide to thwart some few
deadly troublemakers by misusing
mass murder techniques, all
to our own peril and demise.

Look both ways for the connections of all life,
the great and the small.
Mind the gaps of gods and science and don’t be fooled by prophets or profits.

 

Poem: Black Diamond Banks

They were big, ugly, dangerous,
and ubiquitous to us. Black piles
of sandy slag, hundred foot high
hills of grief daring us
to climb to the top, for no reason,
sometimes at our own peril.

This stuff was soft like black, dry
quicksand. My foot would sink
and the slag would rise above my ankle,
sometimes to my knees,
allowing the scree into my shoes.
Each step was a challenge.
Maybe that’s why we climbed,
for the challenge, the thrill, the view,
perhaps the danger.
We’d been warned not to go.

Sometimes culm banks caught fire.
Children fell into their sink holes
and suffocated. Anthracite coal
was the black diamonds of the barons,
deadly job resources for citizens.
All overlooked, denied, or shrugged-off,
both human exploitation and environmental
degradation. They were witnesses
to the need and to the greed.

I didn’t know it then,
most of the world’s anthracite
coal supply was crushed by eons
of pressure beneath my feet. It was also
why we were there: the sons, daughters,
and grands of the men who built the banks.

Look both ways with two perspectives, theirs and ours.
Mind the gaps as you watch for the traps.

One of several historical societies in Northeastern PA is the Luzerne County Historical Society

Poetry: Sammi’s Weekender #220 (oasis)

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Sanctum or Asylum?

Refuge comes
at great cost.
This oasis shades no reality.
Sanctuary offers
only twisted truth.
Each prison is of my making.
I must move on.
I’ll never be free
of my past.
Change
or paranoia will hand me
fearful death.

Look both ways for any port in a storm
but learn to dance in the rain.
Mind the gaps as you seek the road less traveled.

Poem: Holy Knickknacks, Batman

Holy Knickknacks, Batman

Got my Indian Buddha statue
the next day
after some Catholic Answers lecture guy
told us it was a mortal sin to have one.
First Commandment (Catholic version), no less.

My graven image now sits with my Dragon Chalice,
lion statue, and cowboy with horse bronze art,
family photos, among other things.
He’s been lotus sitting around my house,
mostly in my room, for more than 20 years.
The best years of my life
have been with Siddhartha.

My family has conquered many demons.
I’ve beaten cancer (for now), completed 15 marathons,
written hundreds of poems, cheated death
and heart disease (also temporarily),
lost twenty pounds (several times),
and today I mark 75 years since I squeezed
through Mom’s birth canal. Sorry, Mom.

My mother claimed I was a contrarian.
Dad said I was only half-Irish and my sibs
considered me a spoiled brat (that’s still true).
The (younger than I) lecturer from the diocesan chancery
died two years afterwards.
Wrong statue or just superstition, I guess.

Look both ways at life and nature.
Question scripture. Make room for doubt.
Mind the gaps where you find them.
Buy a buddha. Acquire art because you can.

 

dVerse Quadrille #132 (stream)

A forty-four word poem (plus title) written for dverse prompt of stream.

Pluvial Passion

Let me feel your kiss.
May your wet tongue lick.
Run into my eyes, down my face,
under my clothes,
over my body.

My passion, you pour copious streams
of love upon me.

Touch me where you can.

Where are you, my sweet Rain?

 

Look both ways for summer showers.
Mind the gaps between the drops.

Poetry: Enigmatic Paradigm

Bukowski said
he dedicated much of his life
to avoiding people.
Humanity, he said.
Yet he wrote about people.
So, I assume he failed,
or he lied.

An allegedly unwilling celebrity
bemoaning attention,
lambasting unlively banality,
complaining constantly
about women. His ladies.
Many men, too.

I understand the blessing
of being alone.
I like many fine souls, yet I confess
to not always being kind
(yet not exactly cruel) to
undeserving deplorables.

Hank asks; is he ugly,
unkind (sometimes),
misanthropic, or misogynist?
Some thought so. Maybe he was.
I really don’t know.

Crackpot, with no hope of love?
Bitter and unfair?
Did he put glass in our sandbox?
Was he without morals or mercy?
(Maybe he was.)

Is he my phantom’s mask?
or am I his? Or yours?
What is truth? What love?

I neither know nor care
what most others thought
of Charles Bukowski.
He’s long dead. But
I read and re-read his poetry and prose.
I must have some reason.
Do I want to know my reason?
Do I care?
Or, is this one of those things?
His paradigm, or mine?

Look both ways when considering and discerning humanity.
Mind the gaps. Every day is judgment day.

Sammi’s Weekender #218 (tessellate)

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Geometric Memory

It’s one of those words,
comforting to hear and speak.

To say as tongues touch teeth,
not lips, a fun word to think.

Fifty years since projected
mosaics, as she asked,
“Does this tessellate?” We
learned patterned meanings.

No use for the word, till now.
Yet, I remember the day and teacher
who taught me how polygons tessellate.

Look both ways teaching and learning lessons.
Memories are forever but mind the gaps for irretrievable loses.

Friday Fictioneers 7 – 16 – 21

PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll

Untitled flash fiction for Friday Fictioneers. 100 Words.

We were fifteen and looking for a place to shoot. I carried the pistol.

We walked railroad ties near idle coal mines.

Jimmy saw abandoned warehouses and ran ahead.

I heard him scream. I clicked off the safety and saw two men kicking Jimmy.

I yelled, “Stop!” One guy charged. I shot. I’d dropped the gun when it recoiled.

The other guy charged. I picked it up and shot two more times. He tried to run away. I shot again.

We pushed the bodies down an old coalmine shaft.

Jimmy is gone. I alone know where those assholes are buried.

Look both ways and keep your powder dry.
Mind the gaps between the ties.

Sammi’s Weekender #217 (requisite)

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Tread At Your Own Risk

American men and women at war,
fighters. May I call them warriors?
For their military service
we want to thank them.
Combatants
share experiences
only they understand.
Only they feel it.

Requisites are hated enemies,
courage, weapons, desire for glory, fear,
comrades, pride; and a cause
to die for, one worth killing for.

There’s more.
Much more.
They carry much.

To fear death, or not? To love
and despise simultaneously?
Is war forever part of humanity?
Are we the only creatures
that kill our own for no reason? Just to kill.
To cause death unnecessarily?
Is that combat?

Look both ways for glory and dishonor.
Mind the gaps between mind, heart, and soul.