(Ballyheigue
County Kerry
Ireland)
That man over there
with his head in the well,
his thumbs in his ears
and his arse in the air
like a zeppelin at moor,
if he can write poems
the Ha-Ha’s will read,
all of the Ha-Ha’s,
no matter the breed,
even the Ha-Ha’s
from Old Staball Hill,
if he can write poems,
then poems he will.
More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com.
The first greets those who promenade
through the foyer to a sunken
living room; its steps—wide with
carpeted tread—ease beneath gilded panels
lined with portraits of staid patriarchs
long dead. Bright red lips brush fair cheeks,
besitos de cultura alta,
as these elegant guests parade
through the living room past a massive
dining table and walls affixed
with innocuous ceramic buttons,
doorbell fixtures to summon the help
from the kitchen hiding a second staircase:
steep, jagged, and above all concrete.
Servants—rough hands wrapped in skin darker
than the mahogany furniture
they rub to a high shine—trudge between floors
carrying the weight of meals, loads of laundry,
flutes of lemon water, and whispered curses,
triggered by constant buzzing commands.
Meanwhile, quiet worms of hate burrow, deep
yet imperceptible, into their hearts.
More at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/a-former-life-by-bill-cushing/.
Basil seeds black in our kitchen,
Their close aura is the aura of mellowing,
And my mother, entering the room softly,
Takes a seat at the table, takes up the task
Of expunging the extra dust away,
Even half ripened ones are sundered gingerly.
She makes sure to prepare the seven glasses of water of basil seed
For this, I am grateful. I explain, this task
Would love to save everything like,
Regulating blood sugar, building strong bones, relieving stress, cooling the body, etc. She smiles at me
As the basil seeds at the touch of water begin to swell,
With a translucent white film coating each black seed,
They become twice their size.
What can I do? I ask finally. Nothing she says, let me finish my glass at the nigh time of Iftaar.
O lovely flowers! incessant redolence! with what colorful aroma and sweetness and light of eminence my brio loves scattering the seeds of prestige!
All the hours of the day
I spend in the garden of flowers,
Consoling my all lethargy,
Endowing me spirits of euphoria
Oh, how it solaces and spirits my body! Hark! in what music and rhyming,
Awakes my soul,
Rises the whiff of beds of roses,
Bees, butterflies, all things
Adore them in their kinds
Thus all are innate in sanctified music and tranquility, the great knell of nature.
O let me live
When I die!
The soul surceased
by an hour, like not seeing a shooting star
Oh my heart aches
Deep inside me,
I, inhumed in a hole dug
in the ground,
As yet with a deep aroma of flowers,
In my life beyond the grave.
To the casual eye,
a roomful of old, dusty objects,
scrolls of great words
containing broken promises,
the hardest days of time captured,
man’s progress built one culture at a time.
And while the present stands full
of promise and difficulty,
the past did send forth wings of hope,
some forgotten, some ignored.
And it’s good to embrace
the backstories of so many forgotten nights.
In this sea of iron, stone, wood, and fabric,
it’s amazing to see
how beautifully imperfect we are.
I play the game of what-if
Trying to backtrack
Trying to unweave
The paths that have gotten
Me were I am today
Even going as far as diving
Into my ancestors’ paths
Wondering how things
Could have ended up differently
Would I have been someone
Other than this person
I see staring back at me
maybe I would have been a person
Who has her life together
Living up to her full potential
Would it have even truly mattered?
I remember a wild teen
darting down each path
no matter the obvious
warning signs, No thoughts
of how those one lane roads
may have changed everything
Some better not taken
Now in hindsight
Wishing I could go back
to fix the glaring mistakes
Knowing and feeling
As I do now
this older mature self
Wishing I could click
my Nike tennis shoes together
Sending me to the past
to give my younger self
Much needed advice
Heeding the dangers
Of cause and effect
Knowing the game
of what-if leaves
me broken in my loss
and guilt, a scab
I just can’t leave alone
One pointer I’d give
my younger headstrong self
Though I doubt I’d have listened
Pushing away all good advice
and running foolishly headlong
into blissful ignorance
Not ever regarding
Cause and effect
How she must have missed
those green hills of Ireland.
Walking along hard grey
streets in Brooklyn.
Remembering scent of
grassy meadows hurrying
along ten long blocks
to climb the filthy subway.
Her marriage failed, her health
gone. Nobody seemed to care.
Her smiling days were over.
The unlucky are often alone.
Missing those sweet soft pastures.
On her way home from work
buying day old bread and searching
for dented cans and items on sale.
How she must have longed
for songs around the fireplace.
Another beautiful Irish colleen
torn from that emerald island.