A big thank you to Sorina Ivan and the Editorial Team at Universul Culturii for publishing my two poems.

https://universulculturii.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/poetry-by-linda-imbler/

History’s Outlaws Revised

Once upon a time,
the knowers knew,
then devotion to the written word
was squelched.

Once used for remembrance,
there was birthed a forbidden bloom of ink,
and truth, as king, was tumbled from the throne.

The tendency for reflection became lost
as we gave over to the inconsequential,
never more imagining our potential.

It’s easier to hold on to today
than to reach for tomorrow.
And with our history lost
in the dark abyss of forgetfulness,
our destiny will be set by others.

And we’ll go where we are taken.

And all the songs you,
as an individual, now sing
silently inside the now,
will come to fade.

Without convictions,
we stand as cogs
within the clocks
as time marches forward.

The Shades of Smoke

The smell of burning leaves and ripened apples
as Fall closes in

displaced.

Chicago cracked,
the blast of pin on cap,

while goodhearted tramps sleep atop empty knapsacks.

Lay your pen upon the stone,
for now, all colors will remain unwritten

and every child,
lucky enough to have the nutrition
of a bowl of alphabet soup,
will still spell the word “despair” with the letter noodles
as the liquid grows cold.

And they will carry the enduring inelegance
of stiff upper lips
into the future.

Dreams in decay,
while the new Rome burns.