THOMAS LOCICERO - POEMS

Thomas Locicero’s most recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in vox poetica, Bindweed Magazine, Birmingham Arts Journal, Clockwise Cat, Snapdragon, felan, The Ghazal Page, Red Savina Review, Abyss & Apex Magazine, The Avocet, Speculative 66, Lit.cat, Kestrel, The Beatnik Cowboy, Mused—the BellaOnline Literary Review, Loch Raven Review, The Wordsmith Journal Magazine, and Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity; Sunset Liminal, and The Poet’s Haven, among other journals. He lives in Broken Arrow, OK.

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​The Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso, The Weeping Woman, 1937

​ 
She is not herself today with her glass tears
mourning Guernica, not just another
woman, not a mere suffering machine
but one who knows war, who smells it, and whose
eyes water from its awful plumes of smoke.
Her tears make their way to her right ear where she
hears the dripping of her own heart. Her eyes
are also glassy, unblinking, appalled, wreaked
with grief; slaughter-filled, they will see the same
image when their lids close for the night. She is
the Mater Dolorosa at Calvary,
who looked upon her son as He took upon
Himself this very sin that caused her dread.
Pieta. She wears funeral clothes, glowering,
her hand at her mouth Eucharistically.

​Three Degrees

​
In an unsuspected martyrdom, the light,
black-hole swallowed, transforms to a still night,
and stiller still are the shadows that encamp
the empty atrium beneath the faint lamp.
Nothing grows there; there, nothing can survive,
though once, seemingly, the glass came alive,
and everything within that was once contained
was on magnificent display, window-paned,
the greenhouse equal to art’s gilded frame,
where nothing is touched, yet is known by its name.
But the sun is not the same as it used
to be; flowers that had once thrived are bruised
and bent, their heads bobbing in a dead garden
like condemned men begging for their pardon.
Now, things that we know are things of the past.
Then, we were naïve to believe they would last.
Nothing is what it was designed to be,
not sun, not ice, not sea, not earth, not me.

​We Stare at Stars

​The stars had been before us, their stitching
displayed like a celestial roadmap highlighted
by recommended destinations, but then they
were gone in a clear sky as if our eyes became
cataractous and we knew we were destined
to be gone as well. Not today. Perhaps, today.

This is what we do now. We stare at stars.
There are too many to count and none are
lucky save the north to the traveler. It does
its duty as though it somehow knows of it.
A star need not know it is guiding to guide.
We sit as if packed, as if waiting to travel.

A little wine, a little small talk, too little awe.
What will it take to draw wonderment? I fear
it is death. There will be a night when either
you or I will stare at stars alone while the other
is awash in a far brighter light in eternal veneration.
I will wish upon the next star I see, for that, for you.
 

​Toasting Us When We Were

​
To straddling time, to taking it to task, to asking
and to being answered in a truth that will stand
the test of itself, to unspooling it, to revisiting
the womb of first love, to making love
forbidden, to making forbidden love
in untried skin, with younger blood,
to staying our pulse, to opening our throats
without kiting the hair nearest the scalp,
to being silent in the moment, that moment,
to breathing in the scent of a flower plucked
so long ago and to filling its lips with revenant
tears, to playing our hips like biblical instruments:
trumpets and lyres; to sighing, to plucking at tautness
long departed, to alighting a sacrifice,
to taking this occasion in fledgling hands,
to molding it and to never altering it,
to holding it with open hands but not
as carelessly as we did when we were us.
 

​Time Ghazal

All eternal things exist outside of time.
But I, for whatever reasons, live in time.
 
Metronome rhythms remind me of my heart.
Even the heart is oblivious to time.
 
It is a small thing to have been come against.
Every misfortune is paid back in due time.
 
The ashes are blended with soil to plant.
New life and old life will meet at harvest time.
 
A life that is spared is a life with meaning.
The meaning of life is discovered with time.
 
With sin, souls are sold; salvation was purchased.
Glorification is the future’s “past time.”
 
A photo is something we take for granted.
A press and a flash seal a moment in time.
 
A martyr of his faith expects his reward.
A martyr of murder learns the truth in time.
 
A poetic drumbeat can stir the nations.
Without urgency, hearts are not stirred in time.
 
When will we see the dismantling of evil?
When the trumpet blares, it’s a matter of time.
 
Mountains are moved by faith; no one notices.
Wonders occur always, though not inside of time.
 
A dream is unseen and attached to a gift.
Will I recognize when I am out of time?
 
A man begs for time as though there’s not enough.
He wastes time complaining there’s not enough time.

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