KYLE BRANDON LEE - POEMS

Kyle Brandon Lee is a Texas born writer of poetry, prose and plays. He's published at Mirror Dance, Furtive Dalliance and Soft Cartel. If someday they open an old and dusty tome made of pecan bark and armadillo hide, perhaps they'll find is work within. Hopefully, it will be plentiful.

​Cry the Engineer

​The lowly engineer admired the fine oak
through the bottom of his glass.
“Well built,” he thought, well inspected.
Someone listened somewhere.

​The snow made visibility nil.
But the engineer trusted in the system.
The tracks remained clear,
even if the skies had not.

​Nor gray nor green, he knew his work
but still others loomed above him.
He knew structure and mass
both from schooling and politic.

​Three hours from Denver if the delay held
but he knew the bridges and turns.
He knew what the snow and ice brought
and the weight of getting to the station safe.

​Some engineers were just set in their ways
and no matter the gravity of the situation,
nothing could persuade save a higher price
that no oversight could track.

​The engine and its line rounded the corner,
speed high but safe to move through the storm.
But then the engineer saw what waited,
a bridge mangled, angled into the abyss.

​The bridge was old he said, in dire need of repair.
The next winter should be its last.
But they pushed him aside, satisfied that what worked before
would work on. Oh what great engineering!

​No engineering could slow them down in time.
Nothing short of a miracle would bring a stop.
But he tried, oh how he tried.
Profanity and prayers, cried the engineer.

​The radio reported of the missing train,
now late running from Denver.
Heads would roll in the coming days.
There was nothing he could do. So cried the engineer.

​Sonnet #3 – Even as She Sleeps

​Even as she sleeps, she’ll reach for my hand,
land and space between us makes no matter.
Shatter any expectations of
love taking a second chair to all others.

Brothers! Sisters! Learn this lesson captured.
Enraptured I find myself, this flower.
Cower? I dare not, for I must behold,
told before by lovers past, loss – risk not!

Blot out worry of an unworthy self.
Wealth is measured not in image or fame.
Tame? Not her want for closeness nor passion.
Fashion me a love stronger than her heart.

Art and song may fill her dreams but its I,
high above, she’s chosen to believe in.
 

​Orange in a House of Lions

​His calloused hands turned the earth
undaunted
as the heinous sun oft beat upon him
uncaring
The lion toiled
untroubled
unwanting

An orange fruit he’d take home
unquestioned
for his loving pride oft sat beside him
unending
The lion lived
untroubled
unwanting


For WHL