DEBORAH GUZZI - POEMS

Deborah Guzzi writes full time and travels for inspiration. Her third book The Hurricane is available through Prolific Press. Her verses appears in Allegro, Artificium, Shooter, & The Foxglove Journal in the UK,   Existere, Scarlet Leaf & The Ekphrastic Review in Canada - Tincture, Australia - Cha: Asian Review, China – Eunoia, Singapore - Vine Leaves Journal, Greece - mgv2>publishing, France & Tanka Society of America, pioneertown, Sounding Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Shooter, Aurorean, Liquid Imagination, Tishman Review, Page & Spine, Spank the Carp & others in the USA. Deborah Guzzi writes full time and travels for inspiration. Her third book The Hurricane is available through Prolific Press. Her verses appears in Allegro, Artificium, Shooter, & The Foxglove Journal in the UK,   Existere, Scarlet Leaf & The Ekphrastic Review in Canada - Tincture, Australia - Cha: Asian Review, China – Eunoia, Singapore - Vine Leaves Journal, Greece - mgv2>publishing, France & Tanka Society of America, pioneertown, Sounding Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Shooter, Aurorean, Liquid Imagination, Tishman Review, Page & Spine, Spank the Carp & others in the USA. 


Photos by Deborah Guzzi
​

---

​This is the Way We Roll
After: This is the Way we Roll by MC Hammer

​Trains upon trains--
            exalted trains with pristine potties &
            stewardesses with snack carts, luxury
            trains topped with glass. Only the first
            class can see beyond the concrete shunt
            shuttled through.
 
Avant-garde trains scrolling neon signs
in Japanese, Chinese & English to denizens
who lounge in velveteen seats.
 
            Subway trains with oh, so, polite grannies &
            skinny men in pinstriped suits.
 
            Country trains which have seen better days
            come & go with accordion-hinged umbilical
            connections & polished to perfection
            reflective linoleum floors.
 
Boxed in the riders shake & shutter trundling
now on the route to Korurakubashi.
 
 
 

​A Chanson de Geste for Rouen
 

​No recent clash spewed gore upon the ground I walk
not in revolt, or Civil War; we were the hawks.
Our children left for foreign shores where war stalked.
They did not abstain from duty; they did not balk,
but, few perished here, on the ground where I now walk.
 
So many live in haunted spaces, feast with dead men,
near Omaha, in Normandy, in churches in Rouen.
No blood has been spilled where I rest, thank God, amen.
No Crusades, no WW’s have left corpses in my street;
no bomb has transformed the land or calmness I seek.
Yet, wraiths wander, aimless, in Rouen’s Cathedral bleak,
lost souls from allied bombings, as well as the elite.
Joan moans from a nave of the flames; she speaks.
I shy in my shiver, cold fingers brush my cheek
in Notre Dame de Rouen, Coeur de Lion lies incomplete.
The living and dead abide, their prayers all compete;
I sigh; am I wrong to seek safety and peace?
 
New England fields hold-me-in, ghost-less, and replete,
while death’s horseman, ghostly, gallops in Europe’s streets.
No romance here, dead patriots are war’s reality;
oceans separate me from this dichotomy.
 
 
 

Among the Clints
​

​ 
In this gray hinterland embraced by bay and sea,
between the cracks, all crisscrossed, alpine flowers grow.
Blooms root among the clints sheltering in the lee.
Within each sheet of limestone which streaks the tableau,
the gods have brought surcease with the beauty bestowed.
 
Artful light strays here upon the portal stones
and a hidden river plays music down below,
flowing toward fair Moher cliffs, Hag’s head, The Crone.
Life’s held fast here, the sweetest meat is near the bone
in the birthplace of Kings, O’Connor and O’Loughlin, 
refined here distilled, perfume in a silver cauldron.
 
Lack has not held sway here; pleasures have been honed,
in these treeless, rock-walled fields, butterflies fly free 
reminding us there needs-be a place for small beauties.
 
 
 
 
Lugh* blessed the Burren where the prettiest blossoms bloom
for the waters flow down deep here into Aillwee’s womb.
 
 
 
 
 

Summer in the City
 
Birds singing in the dark — rainy dawn
by Jack Kerouac
 
​
​

​The ringmaster skedaddled from Baghdad by the Bay
but the carnival stayed in town. Erect, proud, empowered
people stride by celebrating life in a Crayola dream.
Awash in color, Bahama blue, scintillating chartreuse--
characters stoked in an antediluvian screenplay,
each aborigine’s walk-about a parceled dream.
 
No surface left to its utilitarian plight, all caressed, redressed,
stroked with the creativity of the artist, all crooned to by
boom box, skateboard smacks, the squeal of low riders
hydraulic lifts or the leather strapped slap of a mariachis’ feet.
 
The burnt bright white light shivers to a Hendricks strum,
and the caffeinated cum—one by one—hooked in to hook up,
to the juke boxes sixties twang. While children play on a soft
foam of green and climb to ride an Aztec snake with mosaic skin
and marbled eyes. Young and old freed from the restrictions,
 
the confines of roles, confound the mainstream: as gay,
trans, straight, bi are all free in The City bleeding poetry.
 

The Balm of Spring
 
     i

​I wake, egged on by a celestial
fry, sunny side up. The sclera
of my eye’s unable to reject
the call of a spring.
 
Clothed in winter remnants, I
circle a manmade pond charged
with early anglers. I too am 
hooked. Pan’s shadow stalks.
 
Alone, I whisk the gravel walk
wrens bush play, a stream races
laving a weight of jade green
grass, loving the tumbled agates.
                       
So often, too often, the light is
scalding bright and sleep a balm
sought each solitary day. A hollow
down warm, depression’s stay.
 

ii

​Today I awake renewed by the heat
of sun, spring is not to be denied.
The auricle of my ear’s unable to
reject the call of birdsong.
                       
The footpath, quartz crisp grates;
a breeze brings laughter from the
swings. Among the lofty maples,
branches embrace a noontime sun.
 
If I was but a nymph possessed
by glade I know I’d never seek
depression’s lure and I’d abide
in this sylvan glade forever more.
 
This sensory place with taste of
winter fleeing, with geese that honk,
and childish sails which race, such as
I would fill my loneliness with grace.