Thank you to Editor Mark Antony Rossi of Ariel Chart for publishing my poems in the April issue.

Defying The Odds

 

In One’s Favor:

 A winsome cardsharp,

 ready to ante up,

 feeling that tingle that precedes 

the accumulation of silver coins.

 

Out Of One’s Favor:

 The ministry of chance,

 making pithy observations,

 trying to manage the scandalous,

 eager to tighten the grip

 on a catalog of activated and far-flung probabilities.

 

In or out, 

both,

 such seemingly fathomless pipe dreams.

Learning Curve (Fibonacci)

I

once

believed

that to hear

one’s lament is the

most beautiful thing in the world,

but I am now aware that our most breathless moments

come from positive experiences that lend themselves to the best consequences.

No Critique Too Small

 

My spiteful, antagonistic co-worker,

mistress of the pipeline that scowls and gripes.

 

A savage bobcat with far-reaching mandibles,

a windstorm, a prickly cactus,

a winged basilisk that sees me as carrion,

a pitchforked wolf

digging into a deep canyon, 

shoveling up doggerel with glee.

 

I sit inside a mini hoop of self-protection.

I am penned in.

I handle my boo-boos

with the intent to not draw attention to myself.

 

Yep,

everyday,

there’s no critique too small.

 Thank you to Deborah Edgeley of Ink Pantry for publishing my poems.

Awakened From Beginning to End

As an infant with booties and cowl,
I strove to overcome the barriers
making me unable to stand on my own.

I searched for an antidote
to a crippling childhood,
a pitiful position for one
harboring such intense fantasies.

A young adult’s silent silhouette,
the impact of being lost
within a catacomb of sheets in any given hotel.

The reluctant glee of parenthood,
trying to carefully carry so much more than I should.

Today is the farthest in time I’ve ever come.
I feel that any minute, fatigue will set in,
and produce that moment when agelessness fails me.

It’s in the Bones

We are predisposed while in the womb
to act a certain way.
From our first toddling steps,
through the measured time of our lives,
ancestral memories, long prepared,
by the earliest civilizations,
sensibilities first given forward,
then curving back again and again,
are willing to inform us
of some brand of zealotry.

We collectively embrace a trend
toward devotion to the arts.
We’re still shining cardinal features,
ready to be summoned.
Accepting widespread patterns
for the shaping of our cultures,
in the hopes that all this will become
a prelude to a single tradition.

The Echo in my Old Necklace

A necklace chain adorned with links of gold streaks,
interspersed with beads representing the wax and wane of memory,
interwoven threads of recorded thought
belonging to earlier days.

A necklace pumped full of memories,
this particular jewelry’s unceasing watch,
whispering echoes into halls of the mind
directly dictated to my heart.
Those visions I do not wish to share.
And the ones I hoped would keep me aware.

What falls back is the truth,
that we’re no longer friends,
a wealth of past hurts.
I remember the real version of last time on the road home.
Rejection was my only antidote to delusion.

Startling thoughts about what might as well have been just yesterday,
starting to silence over time.
Someday perhaps no thoughts of those days will remain.
I wonder when I’ll know
that they will not return.

 

Thank you very much to Editor Mark Antony Rossi of 

Ariel Chart for publishing my three poems in the March issue.

Leaping Frogs

Liken them to a series of leaping frogs. 

Those wanting events to be moving swiftly forward

with no backward glance,

jumping along the fast forwarding of events due to

what this new breed wants in this current space of time.

They push forth brashly,

enormous daring at their elbow.

Now they are facing the consequences, 

seeing the exaggerated impact

of their senseless question.

What can I do in service to myself?

They become conscious of the wildness before them 

on this new land’s portion,

as their dreams fall into pieces.

The bigger question is ‘what now?’

Healthy Feet Grounding

The easing of pain,

the shaping of bones.

Time doesn’t saunter, but we can,

and dance to the tune

of our own shine.

We can easily sway,

prancing across dusty ground,

or pacing halls with angst.

If you hopped up and down in the rain quickly enough,

will you not get your feet wet?

Healthy feet can take us every place we wish to go,

defy gravity with light steps,

no plastic on our feet,

one step closer to a triumphant way to travel.

Subtrahends

Inside a neighborhood school,

there’s a criminal mind,

with a catch dog slant,

and a hookah strangle.

The terminus catered

in this photoelectric age

by servants of freezing steel.

Chewing on intentional catnip, sold on streets.

From home,

kindergarten spitballs to teenage backstage hoodlums

with teenage wages.

The make-believe of a social language.

The wild chill of booklore boomerangs,

some wintergreen and some the ungranted bookish.

These cowards win the booby prize,

steal antiseptic notebooks caressed

by the tenderhearted. 

Pull the twine cord.

The tension never windproof.

The smell, the stench

of a magenta gargle,

after the captain of boomtown

spreads his cancer,

no manhood to be found,

no carols to be sung,

no handsprings to entertain.

Empty cartridges canonized.

Those taken away,

the subtrahends,

lie fantastic

at history’s stream,

lie as a caravan of sergeants,

once scared, now only scarred

by what can only be called

another manmade bacterium ID’ed.

Thank you so very much to Editor Doug Stuber of Heron Clan

for publishing my poem.

Applauding The Page

How does inquiry begin in one’s head?

The answer is quite possibly

that it starts

near the magic of the archives 

where we discover the intrigue of emphatically vertical shelves;

used bookstores most noted attributes,

carrying:

a variety of tutorials,

the most eccentric ideologies of philosophers seeking truth,

poetry that shows tremendous range of emotions.

The emotional appeal of used bookstores 

is that they serve as a conduit to future worlds, 

or feudal lores

where, within pages, is found evidence of antiquity.   

The histories of ancient nations   

stand as castles of our most mental challenges.

There are also important works

on the fragility of humankind.

Patronizing a bookstore,

filled with writings,

frees us from too tight a niche of thought,

and lets us enjoy the gray of erudite contemplations.

Whether meeting a novel for the first time,

or renewing old acquaintances,

for a little while,

until bloodshot eyes set in,

and too full of a brain

demands we step back,

we can enjoy

woody scented charms,

books made of paper from trees.

Try it,

the walk through the forests will be stunning.