The Army in the Clouds

All over the world, 

people saw hovering in the sky,

clouds,

their outlines shaped as soldiers.

I saw them from my car, 

but wanted a better look.

Pulling over, I got out and examined them.

Some were black, some were white,

and some had gone grey.

All around the planet, 

there were vaporous outlines of all the soldiers

from all the wars throughout all the years.

While looking up at the sky, it started to rain - 

rain falling as tears.

Wherever they were seen, their whispered chant was heard,

and they spoke softly as one:

“Do everything in your power to bring peace to the world

so that we may finally rest.”

 

 

 

The Horror of Dust

Dustbowl days have found us

with stiff masks, choking, and parched,

for love’s morality. This darkness

threatens us. We seek relief, sustenance

from the deeply rooted grasses torn, displaced,

malefaction is all that is blooming. 

On the still screen the dead lie shriveled-stilled,

a common enough image every day.

There's no tears from the sky, to ease the

furious winds of pain. No tears. Eyes seer. On cracked ground

where feed sack skin hangs from skeletal frames

much deprived of the sensible beating

of hearts with hope. Safety and serenity lie as fossils on

barren, infertile land.

Yet, we must still offer prayers for solace; 

send them to seed the sky, 

with old memory of peaceful footprints, 

even though no longer evident from these vapid eyes, 

before eternal desolation

and the darkness of the dust envelops us all, 

and the wind takes us.

© 2022

 

Thank you to Stephanie J. Bardy and David K. Montoya for publishing this poem in the May issue of The World of Myth Magazine.

https://jayzohub.com/darkmythproductions/theworldofmyth/107/poems/banshee.html

Banshee
By: Linda Imbler 

Hail to the inexplicable bookkeeper, 
who announces that there will be those departing. 
She does not give us a boding landslide of names, 
only trumpets the unvarying strident alarm, 
ear-splitting in its seriousness.

Shrill soprano notes, 
removing all silence from the air, 
cracking open the sky. 
A sound that falls as a superhuman cuff.

Her wise impudence may be felt as displeasing and frightful. 
Even so, 
we should express our gratitude for her talents, 
to she who wears the unsubtle crown of foreshadow, 
so that we wake each morning prepared to accept today's losses.

-

 

Thank you so very much to Poet Vatsala Radhakeesoon for the honor of having my poem included alongside some wonderful writers as we celebrate International Dylan Thomas Day.

https://vatsalaradwritingworld.home.blog/2022/05/11/international-dylan-thomas-day-2022-mauritius-2/

Is Dark Really Right?

In the stilly night, we reviewed our lives,
recalled our best treks through the deepest dells,
through steep wooded valleys called The Dingle.

Handed glad tidings to watchmen we passed,
smiling through dreams, strolling in the green mead,
through aged eyes, searched for high empyrean.

Wondered our fate as the ether darkened,
strove to espy all that made life favored,
tried to keep our thoughts from going afar.

Yet, the sun set with all celerity,
cold seeped into bones, turned corpses niveous.
We were warned such gelid fate would happen.

The best son of Wales gave us the caution,
do not go gently, we should have listened.

 Thank you to Editor Mark Antony Rossi for publishing my short fiction today in Ariel Chart. 

https://www.arielchart.com/2022/05/selective-visions.html

Selective Visions

  

 A white picket fence, built-in front of a clipped, deep green lawn. A garden planted before a small veranda. Small is a limiting word, she means cozy.  Cozy enough for two to cuddle within, and enjoy each other’s company. A perfect home, except for the too loud ticking of the grandfather clock and that thump the shutter makes.  When it hits, it sounds like a car door closing.   

Wasn’t it Henry David Thoreau who said to go confidently in the direction of your dream?  She thinks she’s done that.  She sees a parade of celebrations coming: a wedding, large family holiday gatherings, great festive events.  The only thing to mar those events is the ever-increasingly loud tick of the clock, a more aggressively sounding strike of the shutter.  It sounds like something strongly ominous in the distance.

She looks forward to the long romantic walks around the block hand in hand and arm in arm.  All the neighbors smile and wave as the couple passes.  She sees that everyone knows them to be good people, and a pair completely in love. The neighbors will say this amongst themselves in the most wistful of ways. That ticking is becoming deafening.  And, that shutter, blown by the winds, sounding like a huge door slamming shut.

 A huge thank you to Editor Scott Thomas Outlar for publishing my three poems in the 2022 Edition of Setu Magazine.

https://www.setumag.com/2022/04/Western-Voices-2022-Linda-Imbler.html

Stopping The Impossible

A new vision of equidistant pigeons,

stuck mores tangled in imposed grinds.

No one gets an uptown lease.

Predestined railroad tracks,

and running upon them, irrelevant trains.

The engineers feel we live

within the trapped understanding

of invented occasions, useless styles,

and give expected, sweet patronage

to every complete infringement,

to every exact approach of all they prescribe.

There are solid objections

and revolutions inside us,

instilling a rabid reacquaintance

with the questioning of governing headlines.

Even half a turn

will change those,

and reconstruct each person’s individuality.

The unsuccessful wrong now stands corrected.

***

That Certain Pure Light

When eyes critique the sky,

and views of silvery stars above astonish,

each like a diamond, 

with carats and memories sharply defined,

what is seen and felt is:

Pure illumination of the sacrosanct

perfect sparkle of the devout

sheer bright of the honorable

unsullied luminosity of the enshrined

immaculate twinkling of the hallowed

radiance and shine of the omniscient

saintly blaze of the pure.

Each of us sees our individual heaven there.

One favor to grant as we wish upon any star.

There’s an unspoken elevation of the heart,

inspired by all the lamplights of the sky,

making us dream,

and search for serenity.

Within the stars we share one soul.

There everlasting peace is found,

and all good remembrances are saved.

***

No Seasons In The Dark

Talking forests of inspiration

stand profusely appareled with green,

or bare branched umber.

Yet, the clad and unclad both speak in riddles.

Neither is clear,

because communication is in the roots below.

That’s where the codes of honor

are laid in the silence of the holy, 

but exhibited in the strength of the earthly.

Seasons do not hold sway here

in this unlit sanctum.

All that’s inviolable is buried, 

lucky in the dawn, day, or dusk,

the undefiled that reaps the benefit of incisive artifacts, 

of things that grow best for us.

My Mother’s Secret

 

I found my mother’s secret

tucked away in a

drawer beneath some bras,

after she had gone away,

inside five boxes

of feminine pads.

Pills of all descriptions

without prescriptions,

such a canny mind.

What I first thought as gross forethought,

in fact was brilliant,

the elegance of her secrecy.

All these years of mindful outlet

with numbness as the goal met.

She, closeting her pain,

keeping the pretense of

a younger woman's necessity

when in fact, no younger woman could harbor

so many years of ache.

If Only

As Tantalus pleaded,

All only ever out of reach,

So shall I,

For the alchemy of properly positioned syllables,

The perfect mathematical equation of sounds

Whispered out from a broken heart,

That allows me to have

That one last minute again

Before you take your last breath.

As Garbo bid,

From well lit corners of her stage,

So shall I

To get that perfect retake,

The best possible script written,

Delivered in most dramatic fashion

To re-create the final scene,

To assuage my grief

At the stunning irreversibility

Of your death.

 

Thank you to Mark Antony Rossi of Ariel Chart for publishing my poem.

https://www.arielchart.com/2022/05/contemplating-mysteries-this-or-that.html

Contemplating The Mysterious This Or That

 

  

Can anyone tell us for certain what the mystery looks like?

  

Grubby windows and beyond are leathery landscapes

 

                                                            things must be beautiful there

 

Gardens piled high with weeds

 

                                                            kind and inviting soft grass

 

Saprogenic legends thrown atop a  putrid lot

 

                                                            poplar branches in full bloom

 

The judas hole in the door exposes evil

 

                                                            a bag of treasures left on the doorstep

 

Corruptible knockers spotted striving for entry

 

                                                            highly pleased to see today’s company

 

Emitting radar of danger after one opens the front door

 

                                                            the perceptible easing of fear as one views a friend

                                                            

Each room reflecting every hidden double cross

 

                                                            the whole house furnished with poetical legitimacy

 

Furnished by the now exposed, boorish innkeeper

 

                                                            by a jovial superintendent

 

 Ragged pieces of paper upon which are written all of your sins that can never be hidden

  

            a version of peace and harmony ever nestled in the heart as code for companionship

                        

 A hostile power spoils the eternal food

 

                                                            each morning a beautiful, full English breakfast for two

 

The forced chasm of turmoil

 

                                                            persuasion as a way to peace

 

The fleeting trickery of duplicitous disconnection

 

                                        an occasional shattered ecstacy liberated and reassembled for all time