The vines are so spent
nearly devoid of fruit,
a few bunches hang on
only to be plucked later,
late harvest is sweeter
more prized for enduring,
the skies grey chill
tule fog rushes in,
cold silence then storms
that promise new birth.
Mother, the poetry that I write today is a whistling blowing song,
discovered in the wind that ruffles my surroundings. Yet it was at
your behest that I recited verse moved by music and the sonority of words. I did not possess stage fright as I recited poems written by others.
Yet today poetry has a special making, a deeply troubled voice as I
reach arcane depths to discover voices, my voice: protest, anger,
sadness like a gladiator sparring. Yes, Mother, poetry is what you took me to, adventurous, when I was just five. And, today at fifty nine, poetry stirs the everyday nuance of my soul. Not water tight, but a deep breath, disabling stoic beliefs.
Spectres and spectacles of wild wants
ironclad links
and oral history of oral histories
counterintuitive improprieties
in the halo of time
art machines of a clandestine flow
very intact
heart full of napalm
at the dawn of a sizzling moan.
More at https://twitter.com/rusdaboss.
Dog howling, head pointed
towards the stark moon,
what is there in the moon
that makes it bark,
raucous anger and then petering into a whine, abysmally low,
everything is quiet,
as the silence is punctuated by the howls
the moon climbs up fearing this creature
the dog curls to sleep,
dreams. I shut the door
of my childhood, and the howl continues late into
the night. The winds of March and April lash the window panes.
Everything merges suddenly into litany of silence.
I heard your
warble voice come through
clearly on Sunday
not just when we telephoned
but in my own voice
calling back to you
echoes of one another.
Bold man and bold news
take out the trash
watch the sky for wind
water the tomatoes.
Heat rises into the apartment
I keep busy on the computer.
Long loves rinse clear in years
my hands older than my face.
Break out the pitcher plant face
to catch flies
and liars
practice gritting your teeth.
Whatever war is coming is inside
more than any gun
I fear who I’ll become
in summer.
More at http://www.robindunn.com.
Find in me
the soiled and sustained
history you
have been searching for.
See in me
the trembling hands
holding hope
at the feet of
a new land’s monument.
We are thoughtful. We shoe horses
so that they leave traces
along a shimmering collage
of fractured shells.
In hard-packed sand
their footprints are comma deep.
We are helpful. We shoe horses
and their feet
etch alphabets
in looser sand,
almost literate to a depth
of three inches.
We are engrossed, infer stories
as they enter water,
seaweed shackling
their hooves,
aquatic censorship,
though we see no traces,
and when they run free,
hock-high in foamy waves,
the garrulous surge of sea
added to theirs
make sagas,
scholarly tomes.
Observing them, we long
to scribble narratives
in lost planets,
galactic clusters,
probing deep space
with the point of our pen.
More at http://mariemacsweeney.com.
Like a dog bowl full of cherries.
Cigarette burns in a fake fur coat.
Wax or plastic fruit.
Cats with no tails.
A musical record broken in half.
Books with no covers.
Indigestion and headaches.
Sand in sandwiches.
Balloons that do not float.
There is something horrible
about broken pebbles.
It’s just wrong.
More at http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.
Take it away, this acyrlic
heart, take it away and give
it to hospitals, underlie your buffeted dreams in a nether world of
importunate sorrows.