DUSTIN PICKERING - POEMS

Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press, publisher of the award nominated Harbinger Asylum. He is a host for two readings in the south Houston area. He was a Special Guest Poet at Austin International Poetry Festival in 2013, and was published twice in their anthology di-verse-city that year. He also was a feature for Public Poetry that year. He is published in Lost Coast Review, Seltzer, Artistic Muse, Pyrokinection, Texas Poetry Calendar 2016, and others. His interview with bestselling author Kiriti Sengupta was published in The Statesmen, a popular national newspaper in India. He self-published The Daunting Ephemeral and The Future of Poetry is NOW: Bones Picking at Death's Howl. His latest work is called Salt and Sorrow published by Chitrangi in India. He lives alone and doesn't watch TV. He is an autodidact, songwriter, visual artist, and book reviewer for Yellow Chair Review.  

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                          Purple Judas
 
The bride blushes
near dawn’s awakening.
She kisses her brush,
and chases the night into
a corner of her heart.
The dark bridge hides the mask
of purple Judas.
 
The eager will enter the havoc
of sunlight,
combed in bliss.
Her hair is in tangles
but the morning will sort them.
The mask is worn by her followers--
dense morning at the altar of forgiveness.
 
Abandoning the bridge,
nothing seems right to her eyes.
The kaleidoscope rises
but the Father is still asleep.
 
Now His curtain rises,
but His shadow is what is seen.
Where is the Father?
He is where He’s been.
 
The past we forsake
but our fortune comes late.
Past is Future in our hands.
We make of what we seem, to sand.
 
 
                                Pulse
 

At once I am certain--
the throbbing of life,
the pulse of existence,
is not only within me:
 
it is concealed beyond me.
Concealed like patterns, hidden,
the atoms of light
create a room of their own.
 
I am within the room itself,
the Presence is near
and a gift is eternal
only if it is shared.
 
 
                     To: a bullied youth
 

Although your heart is darkened
by steel assaults,
your happiness stays
the day’s golden glow.
 
Laughter in the halls
causes emotional duress,
but you can offer
another some happiness.
 
(Shelter your dreams,
keep them in a black box
where only darkness
will awaken them.)
 
Giggle like a babe in the morning.
Embarrass them with your smiles.
The world will still turn.
 
 
                           She Asked
 
​
A black woman
taught me how to read and write,
the greatest gift next to life.
I lived in a small Mississippi town
near Jackson, where robed men drowned
a black kid decades before.
I left my books at the table,
adoring her boundlessly,
a love only a patient mentor knows.
‘Spite old Jim Crow, though a threat no more,
Ms. Mary Ott read beside me.
 
She asked about me before she died.