Candled Darkness
She dazzled—
blindingly brilliant.
I was humbled, dim and dull—
overwhelmed by sadness and shame.
Yet, in her glitter and gleam,
She loved my blackened heart,
kept me close, when other
men were blinded by her glare
She smiled.
Au contraire, mon amour.
Darker nights make brighter stars,
the moon shines even more.
Look both ways but listen with an open heart.
Mind the gaps for that’s where stars shine brightest.
The young, attractive, angry suicide survivor glanced at her phone before reciting
an angry poem in contralto voice which obscured nervousness,
each sibilant rapidly voiced in pitiful pain.
As you look into their eyes, look both ways when they tell their story.
Mind the gaps for hidden meanings in of the human condition.
Tanta Belleza
En la ciudad Mexicana de San Antonio, Texas,
Fiesta: eleven April days and nights of wild jamboree
fiestas where diversity is celebrated with parades galore,
like the Battle of the Flowers with royalty;
titled Queen of the Alamo, the Charro Queen,
King Antonio, or King El Rey Feo in his royal ugliness of medieval rivalry,
there’s a Queen of Soul, and La Reina de la Feria de las Flores,
everywhere you’ll find dancing and music, muchos happy people,
if large crowds are your taza de tequila.
Look at crowds both ways for the fun within the melee.
Mind the gaps for the light-fingered chaps.
Neverending
It’s how I remember the year that she died.
I watched for weeks while she suffered, and I cried.
It made a big impression on me although I was still a young man.
Her life was over—suffering ended. I still do the best I can.
Look both ways year after year.
Mind the gaps as we try to remember, and we try to forget.
My inspiration:
Time would stop,
no mellowness
or ripening dead,
no ageing,
green callowness everywhere
on everyone;
sameness would be
one forever season
as it was for me
to never return home again.
Look both ways but remember that life is lived in the eternal present,
planned forward, understood backward,
and we each have a story.
Mind the gaps, and keep a nickel for the exit fee, or you may never return.
***
Sammi’s weekender (as I call it) is a word use and number/count challenge. But I am often called to music and songs by prompts, as in this case. The chorus from the song M.T.A. (or Charlie on the MTA) written in 1949, and recorded and made famous by The Kingston Trio in 1959, (one of my favorites) while unrelated to my poem, is still fun for me. If you buy a ticket today for the (now MTBA) Boston subway (if you go, ride it), it is called a CharlieCard because of this song.
“But did he ever return?
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearned (poor old Charlie)
He may ride forever
‘Neath the streets of Boston
He’s the man, who never returned”
(33 words, but not my entry)
Brevity: the art of saying nothing at all in very few words.
Mind gaps both ways.
Damn Reality
Here I go again reading
Bukowski’s clear vision voice
poems lacking picturesque pastoral principles,
with plainly different aesthetic dispositions
of attitude nobody loves.
We know that deep inside,
his way is part of us;
part of him, hides in us.
How many ways
can we paint the same picture,
or tell the same story.
Look both ways reading anyone’s poems.
Mind the gaps hiding deep within when writing your own.
Booklovers
Unlike the discomfort people feel toward harmless book collections, fearful of those pillars of civilization, even dumb readers are smart. Readers aren’t rich, poor, intelligent, or stupid. They zestfully relish reading books like the ignorant cling to guns and unread bibles.
Look both ways and cherish lifelong learning. Mind the gaps and be who you are and what you are, enjoy life, and read on into eternity.
Mission
Never liked real or imagined
spotlights
except from the catbird seat.
The Spotlight movie—
religion’s villainous clergy
and journalism’s reporter heroes.
Look both ways to find the sorry ass truth.
Mind the gaps but tell all to make a better world.
The 2015 movie trailer, if you’ve not seen it.
Pointless vers libre
I wrote this poem
impromptu, an
extemporaneous literary
ejaculation written to a prompt,
which, oxymoronically, means
improvised unprompted.
An unemotional, virtuous
pronouncement, to wit, I was
fully unprepared
by the fulness of time
to provide profoundness
of contemplation.
In my vernacular,
I pulled it out
of my ass.
Look both ways even on one-way streets.
Some contrivances must be assembled quickly.
Mind the gaps because the Russians are coming.
Our Literary Journey 