Now abandoned, there sits an old home
convent campus of providence sisters,
a cloistered retreat,
once a thriving worshiping community.
Now greedy developer fodder,
this sad waste-like memory rots,
loved only by climbing and scratching
brambles of blackberries. There’s
no salvation for the old.
Look both ways for revitalization of the past
and for the hopes of the future.
Mind the gaps for invasive species.
Hear pathetic, peristeronic sounds,
glorified pigeon’s monotonous cooing,
hunter’s prey, called white-winged Mexican Doves.
Sounds and shots signal long, hot, dry August days
in El Paso, Texas, at Walmart,
where hateful hearts sang out in murderous joy.
Supreme white-hot hate hammered home death
& destruction to familias con niños.
Pathetic politicians paraded past.
Look both ways into the hearts of men.
Mind the gaps. If you see only good, look again.
***
Explicación: Next Monday, 3 August 2020, marks one year since 21-year-old gunman and homegrown Texan terrorist, Patrick Crusius walked into a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, with his legally purchased assault rifle and murdered thirteen Americans, eight Mexicans and one German, and randomly wounded 23 other innocents, including children.
The dVerse quadrille is a 44-word poem, excluding any title, using some form of the prompting word: Bramble. Click here for link to the party at the pub.
Small troops of proud pickers pounce
and probe with plastic cups and buckets seeking
drupelets of prey, searching brambles
to score secret sweet’n sour ingredients
plucked from aggressive blackberry tangles.
Juice-stained fingers hunt hearts of cobblers,
tarts, buckles, crisps, and jams.
Perchance, some wine?
Look both ways even when picking berries.
Mind the gaps,
we share all of this with more natural consumers.
Gray Matter
Nuance is the difference
between sage and schmuck,
between friend and foe,
between dusk and dawn,
between lust and love,
between wine and whine,
between fortune and folly,
between poetry and prose.
What is between
black and white?
Look both ways for discernment and wisdom.
Mind the gaps, lest life be a fool’s journey.
Thanks to Mish and the folks at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, for Open Link Night #270 (click for link). This poem messes with where my head’s been lately.
***
Combatant
It could have been me.
A nod, a blink, an okay
and the next forty-five
years …
had I not been killed, maimed
or driven insane
(as many of us were)
… would not have been anything
like what I look back to today,
fifty-six long years hence,
with contrition, feeling the loss;
Personal, hidden, illogical
survivor syndrome. I can’t
make sense of it. The feeling
of a warrior who wasn’t.
Life choices often made
thoughtlessly, in a blink.
I could be dead. Change the past?
Not on your life or mine.
***
Look both ways at guilt for life: fortune or folly.
Mind the gaps in the mindless wars with reality.
Sounds, like blessed drops
falling as heavenly clouds
grace Earth and bless my ear.
Rhythm now a bit more than
gentle drops of above
playing ecosystem tunes
– distant thunder.
Doves silent in trees, other birds
sit quietly in Mother’s shower
(they’ll return),
The sounds of tires rolling wet
on water, splashing in puddles,
trailing droplet ghosts,
and pleasing me.
Look both ways in rain or sun.
Mind the gaps but enjoy spaces between drops.
Lannan banished him to Marfa, city of minimalist art,
in the hinterlands high-plains desert, a Trans-Pecos cowboy patch
in far west Texas. Controversial, wrangled, and angry (bless his heart),
Bloodaxe English poet Peter Reading endured being sacked
For having gallish cheek, remaining ununiformed 22 years,
being poet, For the municipality’s elderly,
as a mindless weighbridge operator and lover
of fine wine and birds, with gruesomely ironic humor.
Peter and I were born on the same Saturday,
he in Liverpool, I was not.
His revenge – Marfan and Shitheads.
Look both ways for hammering truthful humor
and light romantic comedy.
Mind the gap, said the man to the day tripper.
Thorns are in gardens,
And colors from pretty flowers,
Rose pedal jellies are sweet.
This world of sounds,
Voices heard, long before birth—
Mother, father, sister, brother.
Sounds of nature,
So sweet and quiet,
Some warn of danger,
Others safe passage,
Voices of friends,
A love,
Some grumpy old men.
In time,
Life’s pleasures wane and wither,
Music comes not as before,
Beautiful sounds are
Nothing to waste.
Disallow atrophy
Of lust
For a wondrous life.
Be alert.
Sounds. Enjoy them.
Be aroused
By smiles and touches
Of troubadour drums.
Surround yourself with pleasures.
Hear every note
With silences between.
Waste nothing.
Mind our gifts.
Take care,
my love.
Some things shall not
Always be there.
Look both ways with eyes and ears.
Mind the gaps between notes and words.
The Cavalier
Never been there,
but I’d like to go
to The Cavalier
in East Austin.
Located across an Interstate
divide, from the University of Texas
proper and the rotund
Texas State Capitol building.
In the
other side of town,
from the Colorado River,
to no farther than
State Highway 111.
It’s real weird as Austin.
No more impulsive days
of let’s go
check it out.
Look both ways driving through Austin, both east and west.
Mind the gaps, the differences, and the history.
***
You spoke, and I awoke,
yet I fear
the time is near
when the dark depressing truth
of humanity
will take root on its tail
and then devour itself to
end it all
forever. Maybe
that’s our difference.
You claim
god so wants it,
I say let’s ask
him
or her
or it
whatever.
Look both ways.
Because you were alive yesterday does not prove you will be tomorrow.
Mind the gaps in thought and deed.
Our Literary Journey 