MARK KATRINAK - POEMS

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Mark is now a resident of Santa Fe, NM. He enjoys woodworking, fine wine, electric blues music and spending time with his family on their property of 13 acres.  

July 19
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​                             Attentive to the dark, the wind
                              interrogates the peach tree leaves
                              and violates the junipers.
                              A thunder in the distance adds
                              its measure to the wind, this locus void
                              of any mortal din. Ahead,
                              a little artificial light
                              indicates a hint of human life,
                              another evening consequence
                              upon this water colored canvas,
                              a darkened weather now internalized.
                              The sky now indigo, the quiet here
                              retains a value greater than a gem,
                              silence always a strong economy. 
                              Without a notice wind has left
                              and coming fruit’s alone with stone.
 

Mountain Aspect

                             ​Four directions, four dissimilar skies:
                              a brightness left uncovered by the clouds--
                              as if a winsome child were born
                              from ripping seams of painful marriage--
                              defies the turbulence out east.
                              North, it’s everything dark, like one’s abyss,
                              a mouth incapable of parting lips.
                              The west, indifferent to its neighbors,                        
                              is calm and clear, a woman with a scarf
                              who never leaves the house. And south,
                              where afternoon had worn bright baby blue
                              and twisting yellow ribbons in its hair,
                              plays politically correct tonight,
                              weaving dark and light left and right.
 

Rain

​               Rain coming gently down
               as only rain on dim perimeters
               can make a pleasure song, make dark
               soft, opulent, upon gutters, rooftop.
 
               More love is falling down,
               as only love on rainy mornings brings
               a child to mother’s outstretched arms,
               her sympathetic heart.
 
               Mother, as irreplaceable as rain.
               Rain—harder—coming down. Don’t leave;
               patter upon my frail peripheries
               until you saturate my soul.
 

Scholar of Darkness
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                             In light, among the happy shouts of children,
                              the Ferris wheel and roller coaster screams,
                              popcorn, pretzels, little pieces of doubt
                              lost in confections, carnival laughter,
                              batons are tossed into the air. It’s hot.
                              Rings are aimed at plastic yellow ducks. 
                              The wife’s cosmetics brighter than the sun,
                              rosier than the afternoon and red
                              enough to blot a husband’s circumstance.
 
                              Scholar, Ph.D. in Darkness, find the demons
                              scrawling within, away from carousels,
                              the horses neck and neck, convex mirrors,
                              a labyrinth of doors. Sunlight itself
                              cannot find them. Demons come out at moon,
                              when emptied bags of candied corn are blown
                              into the vacancies of amusement parks.  
                              In seeking certainty savants confront
                              the shadows cast upon erroneous thrones,
 
                              and separated soul that never came back home.
                              Confronting them in dark’s the only war
                              that’s meaningful; that lightens twenty dead
                              men lowered into twenty graves. Scholar,
                              dangle mirrors in front of each of them;
                              these reflections retaliate and slay
                              the Eve- and Adam-heavy emptiness
                              until each demon catches flame and burns
                              so you can live in calm shadows of peace.