Siesta
 

The last gulps of thought
softening against spine
through our stained eyes,
backdrop Miami’s narcoleptic sun.
 
The bled-dead sexy noon malnourished,
the hex of grandfather’s snore,
the unloved stove of grandmother
between the lingers of the sighing grandchildren,
the thorns exile has crowned us with.
 
There isn’t much grace left
to the starved couple under the digestion‘s broom,
the bow from the factory lines in their posture,
a bunch of dried-out flowers taking up the space
of the left behind memories and friends.
 
This hour we recline and pause
through existential pains absently,
then babble the language of curtains,
until the clock slaps our faces,
wakes the contrite tears
that will wash off the gratuitous sleep.
 
In the nascent moments back,
a startled sense of hearing
withering away from us,
disfiguring everything that greets us.
 
*
 
                                     Silent partner
 
 
A nocturnal splash, vector and hip, animating
currents, hauls woken with sudden curves.
His mustache and growl stretch economically obtuse.
Dancers taken aback by his boldness
retreat behind the console of drinks,
from the prying fist &
Bald crown of the deafening partner.
 
The signs of escape don't insult him.
Marijuana butts & pills, the splash
of limbs at play in a demulcent noise.
Only the capitalist bartender and
bouncers loiter, caught in the tipper's ennui.
But even they are shocked
at his presence, three hounded pounds of diplomacy
padding down the floor before them
as they hurry to stand in line.
 
Solitary at his booth he eats
unfazed by the meek semaphore
announcing it is last call.
He lifts the entire table at last.
Only to promise to the petrified owner
he will come again some day.
When the crowd is a little less shocking
& the welcome carpet is as red
as the palm he extends in warning.
 
*
 
                            Singing, comes up short
 

Her wilder curves,
the ones soon to reach burn,
is all she will have left
to hold on to.  She sighs
into the shower and what she feels
is the trestles of her youth,
in their numinous clarity,
splitting under the torrent
of nauseas meditation,
a brief but essential nomenclature
constellating her watercolored body.
The genocide should have woken her
from these sundresses, and allergy fissures,
at least punch out the veil of teeth
with which she still welcomes
each and every sun bouquet wielding
bridegroom.   Yet her numerously altered
forearm keeps it like a constant itch,
and that is what makes the crescendo
flutter just as it’s about to fill
the vacuous blood of this woman
so what she can’t erase with the amnesiac
perfume of time, she denies by her quality
of herbal product.  The dirt the drain
claims is the legacy of the oven
that evaporated equally both flesh and guitars.
Hotel beds for the survivors,
and their star plucked eyes.
She leans against the flood of foreign
water her back embracing the cathedral
stuffed window.  They sway
like a couple of blossoming angels, falling,
if not toward flesh, then the confessional
signatures of imploded air.  Their shadows
are minimally entangled, frigidly layered.
Memory, whispering like bare feet
walking over broken glass, a wound per step.
Her breathe breaking, her voice
and its blackening spirit rotting toward
the aroma of death.  
 
 
                                           Singing it
 
 
She has put it in my face
like a smiling pearl
and I that can’t sing,
has to lip synch to melancholies
of families sliding past their houses,
and crest myself like a high note
above the zero quo to reach them,
the ancestors I act in private,
away from the moonlight,
beyond the bitter tumors of revenge.
The thin majority,
rubber and wires, is coiled
for a departure from their lips,
those prisons of choice
lucid on the limited folded keys,
the flawed oracle undervalued
by the excessive readings.  
Is it any surprise spectators of plunder
and norm have never been mistaken
for a rising star.  
Redemption and discovery for all.  
The room blows up in gauze and frisson
when I raise their words,
raise their necks and rehash
the wretched armor of safety,
shake up the entire brood of napping emotions
about conceding, and makes them free
from the triumph they have soured.
The way a blackout of media unravels
when a lone pen like a scalpel
cuts through the darkness,
opening up the guilty tears that salute
after being given their pardons.
 
*
 
 
                                                single toil
 


Many servants will reach hell.
In every soil flight elapsing through
stunned face projects a grizzle of excuses.
They gnaw toward the rages of the appliances
and to the tips of the frontier of absolution.
A call, more like an order, of the washed things
sinking in their boxes below the value
of the appliances, the priests ripping off
the frayed, stained collars that defy reason
but evolve from the crooked necks of the godless.
Its children punctuate the gorgeous greed
and liberate the fat candles.  Hint many
impulses in the robbery, all clean and scared,
from which lunches come and the promise
of suffering.  So simple a wish can only
be appreciated in its exit.  The peasants
combust for the forbidden ailments
of those living the full life.
 


                                 Skinning dipping  
 
​
Natives of Portugal skewering the moist breeze
now fiendishly groping the streets with sonnets,
pause for a sangria pitcher.
Actually it’s an ice tea pitcher,
for the woman is carrying
her belly in her hands,
her legs around the man’s wallet
at unsure ceasefire with it.
The man wants to make pure
the bulbous skyline overshadowed
by the lactating mountains,
unbridled and today bowed down
in orthodox night prayer,
assassin prayers,
finding their pleasure
in the pitcher he is ordering.
They are sitting between
their swath of the cliff and a soft earth
cooling the footloose thinkers
who have taken cover under the stars
because their affair has risen beyond thrifty.
They are old-fashioned,
desiccated in monotones,
but the would be names
are played on that piano of restraint
that once was theirs by upbringing and status.
Leisure, they had planned while the fluids
chipped away stuff about parasailing.
The dimmed down lights covering up
the nervous odors and bunching up
near their mouths like cars
that have been piled up after being crushed.
They try to chew a new title of their own,
cutting up a broken condom into a dinner,
a lock of a dream’s hair,
a bottle’s swing,
and name it the witch rump
or the condor alibi
because this is a fantasy,
sin silly in tonic and lime.  
 
Or they blame the weather,
 
the one that tastes of éclairs,
chocolate covered and sweet,
supporting a candied sun for the lovers
liberated by white icing.
Limbs starting forward or outward
when the icing melts and muscles clench,
and the weather flops in front of the television,
red streaks jiggling,
rum oozing fun,
and they finish to swish in their arms
in their own cocktail world.
As he eyes over the stomach
his worry is that it’ll echo him,
cavern,
and bounce his voice against the walls
until it causes them to collapse.
Intimacy is the twitching nerve
and the inferior warmth of skin.
So the voice chipping away the child’s face
would never calm the man’s mortality.
The woman, now slumped
against her reflection on the glass,
can’t feel the terrific lunacy
of the palm fronds swaying,
hyperactive juveniles,
Elizabethan ladies in waiting laundry lining
the eating and waiting with chastity belts.
These will be the last hours of caring,
and the fitted bathing suits feel expensive after all,
bestial hoodlums,
regurgitating frequented saloons,
because their pressure on the genitals
gets her ready for the metallic pinch
some men later.
Comfortable for a while,
caught in the burgundy basket of moon
between the fickle web of widows like bugs,
then gradually refined to take on
the discretion of mimes made from them,
like dark moles growing along the slope
of their privacy’s shoulders.  
 
This place, relevant with checks signed in pidgin
 
and other codes of perjured folklore.
Coughing with pretense,
toppling over the marina’s deck of yachts
named after their mistresses.
Here there are problems
because there still can be found a story,
secluded yet among them,
in the biting kisses and the obscuring fires.
Those are the whistleblowers of the place.
Pens scribbling in the dark recesses
of thighs spread by failed promises.
The stolen is the pace.
They and the rest of them are here to burn
in all this abundance.
Their indulgence charted like on a map,
or maybe buried beneath the hollow smiles
and forgotten weekend trysts.
As if all it cost them is the few dollars
they tip each member of the hotel staff
to keep their opinions not even to themselves. 
 
 

​Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in a state of desperation engineered by late capitalism, within which his mind is a mere subset of a much larger hallucination wherein men are machines, machines are men, and the world and everything in it are mere dreams whose eddies and currents poets can channel briefly but cannot control. Perhaps it goes without saying that he lives in Los Angeles.

No easy marriage,
Nor any restitution,
in the blockade of the senses under the american night.
Step out, and smell the scenery
Pasteboard and gravitas and weed
A steed made out of steel
And my wheel, cut from my wife,
Running wild over my hand.
 
Our marriage is to one another,
Every tree and rock.
Palpable;
August;
Skewed over the day by the missile sightings.
 
Launch with me our thermonuclear deterrent,
To stop the divorce from reality.
Our bequeathement is rich;
The richest dowry,
A quintessence of poems,
Gnawing out your heart:
 
Come with me to the barricades of pixels,
and to our own eyes,
blinking,
shuddering,
under the white light of our own sun:
 
Each the inheritor of the government
Armed with the greatest nukes
The largest armies
The mightiest bombs and soldiers with knives and ropes and saws and teeth
Filled with universities
Marching in time to Mozart themes and Radiohead timpanis scalding the water of the heart,
Take heed over the lightning for our curse,
Made in lead,
Cut into lead and pushed into the Tiberian walls,
of our slow and silent revolution.


                                                                      ***

the city prisons each its thought
no churning deference
no holy day
its towers rise even in dreams
no ruin can diminish its intent
no lurid god may move its embrace
from around your soul
 
it reaches over the years
over your eyes
celebrating your divinity
your mind and place
 
the shadow of your ordinal coordinates
mapped in time
under the stone moss
 
no holiday removes its years
no holocaust may burn its eyes
it sees you forever


                                                                    ***


no rich font of spent diodes curling off my hair
no spiraling disease, warm to the touch
no smarting eye
bent over the city within you
 
take on the whole;
they circle its edge
you as black hole
moving down into music
 

                                                                     ***

Little Clarendon
 
Now I remember
Who I was
A boy at Oxford
 
No cattle nor mass
No class
 
Just a bully with my books
Looking for the bigger guy to punch out with my knife eyes
So many
 
Fortress of bullies
In black and white
 
Guiding their oxen through the water
Sighting men through their eyes
And willing them to bind their hands
To the pyre
 
Sending its signal over the counties and countries
"Heretics, come here!"
"For we shall burn you better"



                                                                         ***
​
spend my bird
under the envelope of your mercury
hoard horrid and entombed bright brittle corridors of light:
 
teach my children the bird
who strikes the night
burning
churning
worlding the day out of his might
exacticon revenge
lurid dreams shaking their midnight soil over the gravity of eons
climbing the rope
to the treehouse
and swinging over the void

Renee B. Drummond is a renown poetria and artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of: The Power of the Pen, SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER, Renee’s Poems with Wings are Words in Flight-I’ll Write Our Wrongs, and Renee’s Poems with Wings are Words in Flight. Her work is viewed on a global scale and solidifies her as a force to be reckoned with in the literary world of poetry. Renee’ is inspired by non-other than Dr. Maya Angelou, because of her, Renee’ posits “Still I write, I write, and I’ll write!”
 

​MS. RUTHA MAE HARRIS
THANK YOU FOR YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (POEM)
 
                                                                             
Thank you concerning the Movement,
with your gift of songs,
Thank you for knowing and singing
“It Was the Blood” for me,
while being done wrong!
Thank you for singing about that “Old Time Religion”,
that we so longed!
 
 
Thank you for singing
“Before I’ll Be A Slave I’ll Be Buried In My Grave”
Thank you for singing
“Just A Little Walk With Thee”
while being brave,
Thank you for singing
“He’s got the Whole World in His Hands”
While Non Violence
was Dr. King’s message of the day!
 
 
Thank you for singing our way in,
and out of those jails,
Thank you for singing
“I’ve got Jesus and that’s enough”,
with no bail.
Thank you for singing:
“He’s so Real” in times,
when you were frail.
Thank you for singing
“We’ve Come This Far by Faith”
can’t turn around,
and we won’t go to Hell!
 
 
Thank you for singing
“Pass me not, O’Gentle Savior”,
and hear my humble cry,
Thank you for singing
“Somebody Prayed for me”
and told Satan GOOD-BYE!
Thank you for singing
“I won’t Complain”
which made our oppressors wonder why?
Thank you for singing
“Walk in the Light”
while always prepared to die!
 
 
Thank you for singing
“Precious Lord Take my Hand”
while you took that stance,
Thank you for singing
“How I Got Over”
while taking that chance,
Thank you for singing to kids
“I’ve Been In A Storm”
and “Respect Yourself” in advance,
Thank you for singing
“I’ve Got A Testimony” to President Barack Obama,
as you ‘RUTHA MAE HARRIS’,
do your Holy Ghost dance
(In Song)!
 

                                                                   Dedicated to:                                                     
Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White Men who bled and died
 For The Civil Rights Movement!
 
 
Published@ The Metro Gazette Publishing Company, Albany, GA.
All Rights Reserved@2015

Rutha’s Freedom Still Dreams!
 
“If the Son therefore shall make you free,
ye shall be free indeed.”
(John 8: 36 KJV)
Rutha,
those songs
motivated the marchers
to march on
with a King,
But we shall overcome
someday
‘STILL’
needs to be ‘sung’.
Or
has we shall overcome;
come and gone?
Just ‘Sing’ Freedom Singer,
 Just
‘Sang’ on,
for all
wrongs!
 
 

…So ‘SANG’ on
Ms. Rutha Mae
as if it’s
the last song.
…Dance
like David danced
with all your might.
Your chorus
rings out
for those of us
who are frighten.
Your melody
is in tune
with none other
than the Triune.
Your Godly chant
stops Satan’s
unwanted blues.
Your hymns
teach us
of
the Father’s
Good (Infallible) News.
Your track record
is impeccable
with ballads
to choose.
And with
God before your solo-
we simply
can’t lose.
 
 
  
…So ‘SANG’ on
Ms. Rutha Mae
as if,
it’s the last song,
…and then
dance
the dance of David,
 while ‘You’ long
for ‘our’ dreams
of freedom,
within
those songs!
 
 

 
Rutha,
You smelled freedom in the 60’s,
You tasted it in the 70’s,
You touched it in the 80’s,
You saw it in the 90’s
You ‘sang’ about it in the 2000’s
…and ‘I hear’ in ‘2017’…
…just like David’s Psalms;
Rutha’s Freedom
Still Dreams on…
 
 
 
 
I love you Ms. Rutha Mae Harris.
FOREVER ‘YOUR’ Pittsburgh Author: Renee’ B. Drummond-Brown
 
Dedicated to: Songbird/Activist, Ms. Rutha Mae Harris,
Original Freedom Singer of the Civil Rights Movement
 
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SERVICE!

‘Let Freedom Sing’
 
 
Freedom Singers
“Make a joyful noise
unto the Lord,
all ye lands.”
(Psalm 100 KJV)
Now ‘sang’
while you dance
the dance
of David
with all
your might;
hard
as you can!
 
 
Let that heavenly
skillful choir
back you
and sing
a ‘melody’
orchestrated
by none other
than:
Dr.
Martin Luther King.
The
“I Have a Dream”
song
will be
on your soundtrack
Freedom Singers;
so,
just
‘sang’!
 
 
However,
the music
orchestration
is
the written
‘Word’
by
The Script (ure);
the arrangements
of His
musical composition
should
have never
been
tampered with!
 
 
I too,
 someday,
would like
to join
that
heavenly choir
in that
upper room.
But,
 I must first
learn
to ‘sing’
in the
right key,
without missing
His beat;
while staying
 in tune.
 
 
Cordell Reagon,
 will assemble
the backup singers
at those
 pearly gates.
The tenors,
will consist
of
Malcolm, Medgar, Mandela
and that’s not all
you just wait.
“Governor Wallace”
led by
Charles Delbert Neblett,
 sung in bass
 would be
just great.
 
 
 
 
 
Can’t
leave out
the Altos
song
“Been in the Storm Too Long”
led by
Bernice Johnson Reagon.
I can
envision
the Father
listening
from heaven
and
sharing
 t‘HIS’
music
with His
ONLY
Begotten Son.
 
 
Aint ‘gonna’ let
nobody
turn
you around
from singing
at ‘My’
White House
Ms.
Rutha Mae Harris.
So,
gather your sopranos
and ‘sang’
your stories
with
steadfast bliss.
 
 
Mahalia Jackson’s
earthly voice
once sung
“I’ve Been Buked and I’ve Been Scorned”,
but she too,
 joins
the heavenly choir
and now
sings
“How I Got Over”
in that
upper room
dorm.
 
 
Dr.
Carolyn Mckinstry
will Direct
the
‘Heavenly’ Children’s Choir
 if you will~~~
That’ll consist of
Addie, Cynthia, Carole, Denise
and
none other
than
Emmett
Louis
Till.
 
 
Under earthy attacks
Rutha's
directed to sing,
“We shall not be moved"
just like in D.C.,
because,
 deep in their hearts
they do believe
“We shall overcome someday”
you ‘see’;
 and with
everything
to gain
and
nothing
to lose
Freedom Singers
will continue
to sing.
 
 
The development
of ‘His’
music composition
was pure
genius,
down to
the film scoring,
songwriting,
music notation
background;
lest
we forget!
 
 
Freedom Singers,
make a joyful noise
unto the Lord
until
Heaven’s
roll call
rings.
Continue
to tell us
the stories
about
The Civil Rights Movement
and simply
‘LET’
Freedom Sing.
 
 
 
Dedicated to:
The Freedom Singers
who ‘sung’ songs
of hope
and
motivation during
The Civil Rights Movement era;
when others told us
we couldn’t
they were
‘ordained’
to ‘sang’
to the world
that we could!
SO,
WE MARCH ON
IN SONG.
Thank you.
 
 
A B.A.D. Poem
 
 
 

J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Social Justice Poetry, Scarlet Leaf Review, Stanzaic Stylings, Synchronized Chaos, and Autumn Sky Poetry. 

Dr. Emory D. Jones is a retired English teacher who has taught in Cherokee Vocational High School in Cherokee, Alabama, for one year, Northeast Alabama State Junior College for four years, Snead State Junior College in Alabama for three years, and Northeast Mississippi Community College for thirty-five years. He joined the Mississippi Poetry Society, Inc. in 1981 and has served as President of this society. He has over two hundred and thirty-five publishing credits including publication in such journals as Voices International, The White Rock Review, Free Xpressions Magazine, The Storyteller, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Gravel, Pasques Petals, The Pink Chameleon, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS.  He is retired and lives in Iuka, Mississippi, with his wife, Glenda.  He has two daughters and four grandchildren.

 
                   THE SPIRIT MOVES YOU: A SESTINA

​
You are so pale you must have seen a ghost
No wonder in this old abandoned house
When outside there’s a spreading chestnut tree
Whose rippled reflection shimmers in the pond--
Beyond the pond there is a mounded grave
And all above a beautiful sky-blue heaven.
But now the wind arouses stormy heaven
And awakens from its sleep the shrouded ghost
Where stone cannot now mark a shallow grave
That once belonged to a person in this house;
No life can stir within this muddy pond
Clogged with leaves that fall from this old tree.
Gripping this earth, this ancient sentinel tree
Stretches its limbs and reaches to the heaven
That spreads above and smiles in that old pond
That ripples as if it were touched by playful ghost
Who glides upon the porch of this old house
And dances as if it never knew the grave.
But now it is more serious and grave
As sky now darkens above the ancient tree
And windows glare like eyes in this old house
With not a beam of light from darkened heaven--
Wind devils play in the yard as if the ghost
Is stirring them.  And swirling roiling pond
Flings its spray in air above the pond
More fitting for the spirit than the grave
From which escaped the mischievous rollicking ghost;
The air is warm and damp upon the tree
And sun smiles from a sky of golden heaven
And life now seems to return to this old house.
And now you can return to this old house
A place of quiet rest beside the pond
Most familiar under smiling heaven
As flowers decorate the peaceful grave
That rests beneath the greening chestnut tree
And now provides a rest for peaceful ghost.
 
You cherish memories in this old house
And quiet days of fishing in the pond
Under the shadow of the chestnut tree.
 

 
                                              GOOD GOD
                                                           (a Double Gloss)
 
(Based upon the following lines from
“Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cuillen
 I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die….)
 
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And , led by His Holy Spirit, we will find
Blessed happiness, a core of peace,
And in the middle of our strife release
From struggle and a joyful, peaceful mind--
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind.
 
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The worm must come before the butterfly
Or human hearts, when softening, must break
And flood the eyes.  But then how could he take
Notice of all the little hurts we cry
Unless He stoops to quibble and tell why?
 
The little buried mole continues blind
With little cares of what he leaves behind
Because within his world there are none who see
Or strive to rise out of the earth.  But we
Still question Nature that would forever bind
The little buried mole to continue blind.
 
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Invade the realm of mole, in earth to lie
While all above us continues as before,
Not knowing, until then, that death’s a door?
But then we understand God’s reason why,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die.
 

 
 
 
CHRISTINA’S WORLD
(An Ekphrastic Poem)
 
In the painting
‘Christina’s World”
Andrew Wyeth
Depicts
A black-haired woman,
In skirt and blouse,
Raising herself
Off the ground and
Gazing up a hill
At a gray
Unpainted house,
Barn,
And outbuildings.
 
Is she longing
For a past love?
Is she seeking
A lost
Childhood?
 
An air of mystery
Lingers
In this
Composition
That will always
Make us wonder.
 

​ 
                        IF YOU WERE A PENSIONER

 If you were a pensioner
 Would you prefer the past:
 The days your children went to school hungry
 The weeks they walked miles on feet
 In old raggy uniforms,
 The years they dropped out of school
 The times they were sent home,
 The examinations they missed and took all over
 Because of fees?
 If you were a pensioner
  Would you sign off your arrears?

  If you were a pensioner
  Would you praise the past:
  Those months salaries were unpaid, delayed
  When you borrowed all from all
 When your enthusiasm almost cost your life,
 If you were a pensioner
  Would you sign off your arrears?

  If you were a pensioner
  Would you rather not be at peace,
  Would you not have been at rest,
 Would you not have utilized your gratuities,
 Would you have signed off your arrears?
 If you were a pensioner
  Would you have fallen sick without money and care?

 If you were a pensioner
 Would you have worshipped the powers that be
 Or adored the government that ruined you?
 If you were a pensioner
 Would you have cursed the integrity you maintained?
 Were those years of selfless patriotism regrettable?
 If you were a pensioner
  Was trusting your fatherland a nightmarish betrayal?
 Would you have signed off your arrears?
 
 
                      CONQUERED AND DEFEATED


 Swords of vengeance in humming caskets
 Fanning their blades of death,
 Vultures and serpents
 Punching their adversities,
 Monsters and mermaids
 Pounding their adversaries.

 Cohorts of witches in their covens
 Bees of bondage in huge romance
 Advancing troops of lust
 Shuffling legions of hate,
 Galleries of passion, clustering
 Bands of zeal thundering, begin!

 Home of skulls, caves of skeletons
 Mission for peace, mission in pieces
 Fathers of agony, seeds of disharmony
 Brothers of rage, battles of siege
 Defeated in victory, victory for defeat
 Conquered and vanquished, victor unhappy.


 
                                 CUP OF BITTERNESS


​
 In the frailty of our frame
 Hides the vanity of our fame,
 And the fogs that freeze our freedom
 Instead of saluting our stardom,
 Yet a feature on the future of our fixture
 Beyond the sanity and our shame.

 The muse of the fuse we refuse
 Bends and sends the echoes we lend
 Because the fine wine we line
 At the edge of the village
 Stands tall behind the wall of our fall.

 Though the bitter letters glitter
 Far from the honey that ruins our money
 Together they boil and foil and spoil
 Like the digger that daggers when we gather
 And steps up the cup of bitterness.

 So like fishes we frolic
 Trying to fence our defence
 Like a flock, we block
 Wanting to patch and hatch
 Yet that cup overflows
 With hate, violence  and war.

                The Playground Monitor’s Lament
 
I
 
The children are playing their games.
They run in wild, spiraling bursts
away from the schoolhouse.
 
Before they reach the tree line,
I bring the whistle to my lips.
 
I wonder how deep they would go
if I ever stopped calling them back.
 
 
II
 
There are times I imagine my face
at the center of the circles they make.
 
Their tiny hands
                                 clawing at my clothes,
                                 exposing my breast,
                                 peeling away the layers,
                                 all those hungry little mouths
losing their smiles.
 
They would devour me,
and still have room for milk and cookies.
 
 
III
 
At night, I whisper
these secrets and more
into his pillow white thighs
Let us walk backward,
I say, toward our birth,
toward the empty cup,
toward the doctor’s latex hand,
toward our exhausted mothers
shackled in the stirrups of an imagined past.
 
We can leave it to the children, I say.
This is more their ground than ours.
They understand the way to swing.
Our bones have grown clumsy.
 
We can beg the stars, I say
to answer for the state of the weather
and relieve ourselves of questions.
We can sing again,
the way rivers bend.
 
We can grow thin
over centuries,
learn to cut stone,
our backs against the ocean,
splitting the surf like razors
 
We can tell the children
we never stopped.
We can walk backwards,
ride shotgun with the wind.
Just put your hands up.
It’s headed that way already.
 
 
 
 
                               My Old Town
 
                                        I can’t call it home.
                                        I wasn’t born there,
                                        but I lived there as a child.
 
                                        I’ve lived a lot of places.
                                        I can’t call any of them home,
                                        but I remember the faces.
 
I remember them all,                                       I don’t remember one
except the one where I was born.                   from the other. I was drunk
That was before my time.                               most of the time.
It was really more                                           like a dream than not
 
                                            whether woke or asleep.
 
 
 
 
                       After Midnight Melancholia II
 

I think we can agree
we’ve all been diligent
taken each lesson
without sigh or complaint
but what have we learned?
A kind of Hardness?
A sharp blindness?
To be blank razors?
To mouth the laughing echo
in the shadow of canine teeth?
 
I don’t know about you,
but as far as I go,
it’s not enough.
 
Besides, it’s a low wall
and the world marches
along on such long legs.
 
Can you imagine more?
Does it keep you up at night?
Your head vibrating like a hive
with all the bees stuck in the honey,
buzzing on the branch of a lightning-split tree
the field at dawn gathering in the sun
becoming liquid light
a thousand, thousand tendrils
licking at the wind
like unharvested wheat.
 
But we both know the measure of dreams
pressed against the metal
of good old American steel.
It doesn’t amount to much,
Not enough to fill a thimble
let alone an empty hotel room.
 
Do you remember being young?
Not a child but young
in the burn before jacket flesh,
before all the tides and ties and tried(s.)
Do you remember the hum?
The tremor echoed
in our lips when we kiss,
in the static arc before we touch,
in our spine with every step,
the big gray, the other other,
the open wound that smiles,
swallowing our silly spindles of design.
Do You?
Well…do you?
You must.
 
 
 
 
                    After Midnight Melancholia V
 
 
I
 
 My hometown was littered with churches, a bell in every one.
 
They seldom rang.
 
But some mornings the towers would sound in a strange, staggered collusion, blanketing every corner and crevice in an web of conical vibration.
 
You could close your eyes, and, like a bat, know your distance by tone alone.
 
 
 II
 
 When I was seven I fell from a tree.
 
I remember the breaking best, the dull sound like a cough suppressed, like a knee driven to plank by ecstatic ankles.
 
Both my wrists shattered.
 
They became like limp snakes, two Hognoses playing dead at either ear, five tongues flailing from a coiled body.
 
That was a morning of bells.
 
I laid on my back, stupefied by pain and engulfed in the sound.
 
 
 
III
 
 The bell has been with us from the beginning, an instrument whose longevity is rivaled only by the drum.
 
Strangely anthropomorphic in form—bells have a body, ears and eyes, lip and tongue—they are like a lover who by intense, extended proximity takes on the semblance of the other.
 
If the drum is the heart, the bell is the voice.
 
Ringing through millennia of ceremony and state, we live in that sound.
 
 
 IV
 
Long after the body of the bell is still, the loose hammer swings the space between, bones unwrap and the cross-stitch bond of muscle unwinds.
 
I was Seven, barefoot and shirtless, toes splayed over the crown of the branch, ready to jump.
 
The neighbor’s son crouched in the branches above, face in the leaves, smile like a sickle.
 
I don’t remember the leap, only the snap, the branch in both fists giving way before the fingers could curl, the body cut free becoming Seraphim, something like flight, and then earth, arms first to save the face.
 
The hinge of the wrist reduced to frail shavings.
 
 
V
 
How can you find comfort in solid ground when once you were a missile?
 
Your neck, sore and stiff from a constant craning toward the sky, learns to hang limp, studying the feet in disbelief.
 
Gravity is the greatest cruelty in a universe of cruelty becomes a mantra.
 
 Until the mind stops moving forward and the mantra swings, learning a circle.
 
Cruelty is the greatest gravity, it says, in a world of gravity.
 
The words swim, become meaningless motion, a flailing in a lake.
 
Greatest is the gravity of cruelty.
 
The body, finally surrendering to the flatness of earth, gives up its ceaseless fountaining of cells.
 
Only the sound remains, the bell’s tongue echoing the day still licking at the lip.
 
My hometown was littered with churches, a bell in every one.
 
They seldom rang.
 
 
  
 
                     After Midnight Melancholia IX
 

The moon looks angry.
Wrapped in a few loose clouds,
she looks like a marbled fist,
a hand about to unfurl its fingers.
I can’t help but wonder
what she holds cradled in her palm.
Something tells me it isn’t chocolates.
 
My guess is fire,
something like what Moses saw.
But I ain’t no Moses,
so I take another slug
and give the finger to the moon
before she can give me five back.
 
When it comes to fire,
I’d rather be tied to a rock
than lug commandments down a hill
and break up a perfectly good orgy.
 

 
                                              Circularity
 
“Where the historian really differs from the poet is in his describing what has happened, while the other describes the kind of thing that might happen.”  --Aristotle
           
Cold berries, pliable as nipple, cut to seed. 
Their circularity censes praise.
I stalk these aisles for answers,
 
sniffing the known
around every unknown round:
not smooth, and/or supple, or both,
 
but tough as a carved raccoon
in God’s raw creation,
packed with claws displayed,
 
still inspiring questions.
Reeds scent my beard,
and it hurts
 
to lick wounds
or pick up what’s dropped.
When we meet
 
in blessed undergrowth
crushed by hills
and incense,
 
holes in my walking boots
open and press, leathery lips  
kissing you much like this.  
 
 
 
                                         Silent Stones
 

At the borderland
of wood and quarry,
I sunk along sumac.
 
I like to snap
twigs and hear lambs’ ear
in my forest furnaces.
 
Every molten generation
sits in flush
and smokehouse pink, 
 
like a wandering lad
who sees deer
in nude exchange.
 
Those rocks mark
my mother’s weeds.
I’m a tramping kid
 
who dropped off
the quarry’s edge.
It killed her insides
 
like a stumble
of silent stones
above our yard.
 
 
 

                                             Sippy Cup
 

Clipped nails:
of no use to you. 
 
We need force
to open a tin,
 
tear a packet,
switch on nostrils.
 
You breathe
the beginning
 
of desire
in plantation mint.
 
My honey bear
slides a spoonful
 
into your sippy cup.
Hot liquid
 
presses against
the roof.
 
We tuck it there
for seconds.
 
My eyes intercede
for yours.
 

 
                                          Mourning
 

Sad wires
have set themselves
to humming in the backyard.
 
Unsettled peace 
greys the rows
of tree fuzz.
 
Cardinals peep
contrapuntally,
slightly anxious.
 
My facial tics
pause in memory
of my bent neighbor.
 
She pushed
her walker
to the green plastic barrel.
 
We heard
whispers in the alley
off the main road.
 
Now, maudlin electricians
are raising new poles,
re-stringing wires,
 
giving the dead woman
many mourners.
Orange-lighted trucks
 
process along the alleyway.
A leaf turns
to remove its hat.       
 
 
                Sugared Orange Slices Under Glass
 

Sugared orange slices
obscure themselves
in pressed glass
 
that teases your thumb
as it rubs
the squeaky surface
 
below a castellated ridge
before climbing down
into the dish
 
and grabbing up
candied appearances
that dissolve
 
in sucking sounds
until what remains
is you grinning
 
at me,
both of us
toothless.
 
 

​Ken Allan Dronsfield is a published poet who has recently been nominated for The Best of the Net and 2 Pushcart Awards for Poetry in 2016. His poetry has been published world-wide in various publications throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. Ken loves thunderstorms, walking in the woods at night, and spending time with his cat Willa. Ken's new book, "The Cellaring", a collection of 80 haunted, paranormal, horror, weird and wonderful poems, has been released and is available through Amazon.com. He is the co-editor of the poetry anthology titled, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze available at Amazon.com. A second anthology, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses will be released soon.

                                     Defiance of Heart
 

Life's challenges always squeezing
temperamental vows of enumeration
careless whispers voiced upon a star
blasphemous scriptures of defiance.
Gallant of breadth upon a red stallion
brevity and valor born of the cutlass
an exultation within the remembrance
of glorious red roses dead on a vine.
A flickering flame of the iced candle
life within a waxed obtuse blessing
old shoes silent on that night in May
must tread lightly upon blue stardust
In crystal clear waters off Key West
big jagged rocks hold wrecks in coral
Spanish doubloons warm the blood
within wishes whispered upon a star.
 

 
 
                              Spanish Moss Sways
 


Porch swing moves in rhythm
with gentle southern breezes.
Floorboards noisily creaking
while rocking chairs dance.
The smells of honeysuckle
and Granny's fried chicken
wafting through the fields
of peanut, cotton and okra.
Fond memories return of
Sunday's after-the-service.
Friends and peach cobbler,
end the day as twilight calls.
Ducks fly by heading west,
into a tangerine colored sky.
Remembering warmer days
as the Spanish Moss sways
in gentle southern breezes
cooler nights in a haunted fog
chasing frogs in the old creek
cat fishing at the old town pond.
Sweet southern style reigns as
memories in my warm heart.
 
 
 
                              Minuet of the Ice Fairy
 


Ravens sing in a shrill harmony
soaring above a scarlet fiery pyre.
Sprite-lings flying dodging flakes;
seeking boughs of red cedar cover
Ice fairies waltz a loving minuet
on a clear ice crystal snowflake.
goblins dressed in Easter attire;
soft kisses with lemonade pouts,
awaiting many passionate desires
as love of a cherished mystic's soul.
Whilst opaque diamond stars weep
during that icy passionate dance,
crimson blood shall rise and steep
flashing tease of an ocular ellipse.
Peeking full moon in pastel clouds
edge of a gnome's rapaciousness
inhales of a pinkish twilight unicorn,
dance a Minuet with the Ice Fairy.
 
(CTU Anthology Poetic Shadows: Ink and the Sword)
 
 
  
 
                                  Footprints of Winter
 

​
Walking on pebbles in sands of white
skyward watching as stars now peek
moon glows from a blanket of clouds
lights from ships are horizon bound.
The inviting ocean impassioned bliss
of salty smiles and a springtime hug
admission, the price of a sand dollar
seagulls following schools of baitfish,
Dogs running free and enjoying play
evening’s first star, we make a wish.
sky of twilight in red or purple hues
serenity whispers in calming breezes.
Geese and ducks slowly moving north
days are longer and nights a bit warmer
footprints of winter left upon the dunes
a lovely quiescent wispy edge of night.

Author of the novel Finding the Raven, Patty Dickson Pieczka found her start in writing poetry. Her second book, Painting the Egret's Echo, won the Library of Poetry Book Award from Bitter Oleander Press. Other books are Lacing Through Time and Word Paintings. Winner of the ISPS, Francis Locke Memorial, and Maria Faust Sonnet Contests, she has contributed to over 50 literary journals. A native of Evanston, Patty graduated from SIU and currently lives in Carbondale. 

                              GROWING OLD TOGETHER
 

If you'll be a splintered guitar
blossoming its song to the sky,
I'll be contentment that curls
beside drums of dissonance
and lulls them into silence.
 
If you'll be the lip of the lake,
your sand molded into the shape of dance,
I'll be clinking bracelets,
swirls of red skirts,
the fragrance of kiwis.
 
If I am deep satin ripples
shimmering the evening sky,
would you be a heat mirage?
A twitch of leaf? The day
winging from its crimson perch?
 
And if a handprint stops the wind
and crows swarm, plucking dreams
from the dark, I'll be a wild red rose
thorning its way through tooth and stone
to lift you up my body's trellis.
 


                                         MISPLACED
 


As the clock wanders
its senseless circle,
my father asks who I am.
 
My name becomes
the wrong shape,
a broken song,
its swollen syllables
thick on my tongue.
 
Letters drop from my mouth
to my lap, surprising
as fallen teeth.
 
My voice is a goat's bleat.
My voice is carved from ash.
My voice summons crickets and moths.
 
The years collide
and slip into
my father's shirt pocket.
 
He looks at me
through confused eyes,
the frayed air
creased and yellowed
as an old photograph.


                                     THE NIGHT SKY
 
                                         “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in                                              our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the                                                     interiors of  collapsing stars.”
                                                                                                    Carl Sagan


Open your shutters and find
the first star. Drink it in
until your breath glows
and your veins silver.
 
Feel the tiny lanterns
swirling within you
then open your ribs,
and show the world your soul.
 
Kisses will be tossed,
rocks thrown. Many
people will never realize
they are of the same source,
the same blood,
 
the same liquid moon
that dreams you across the length
of the pond and sees
the shine in your eyes,
your rippling hair.
 
When dirt fills the sky,
its last star shoveled over,
grow small enough
to slip into a thought
and become the dream.



                                                 VISIONS
 

We live in houses built of dust and smoke.
Rattlesnakes with eggs in their mouths
 
coil at our feet. A hungry wolf breaks the light
of morning, leaves us his hollow song.
 
I split a stone and see a dead ocean,
a crumbling river, showers of poison,
 
split a stone and hear the earth's breath,
plumes of gray gasping in yellow air.
 
The desert is a mound of feathers,
the pond a withered face.
 
The future rumbles, but voices are mute.
Nighttime gnaws the bones of day.



               JOHN MATHIAS WALKS HOME TO GREENVILLE — 1865
 
​
My bones move without me;
I trail behind,
a skeleton's shadow.
 
All my friends are dead,
my boots murdered
in a Virginia field.
 
Every horse
and gut-shot tree
is soaked in blood. Always  
 
there when I close my eyes—--
this deep red stain
of the devil's baptism.
 
He steals souls,
eats our lives,
picks his teeth with our bones.
 
I hunger for sacred
water, for the sweet melt
of a mattress,
 
for crumbs of holy bread
to mend the rips
in this walking scarecrow.