I have walked these streets

these cavernous coffins, sparkling but barren,

her belly bearing the swift and moaning metal tide.

She belches out her disapproval

and hungrily takes her place, an upward striving,

a downward gravity, host to vagabonds.

This headmistress of a language tasting

like rubber, and smoke and old pizza boxes

tossed together in a back alley salad of sad.

Here the fingers don’t touch across

the chapel ceiling, draped in mystery.

Here the collective taunt the painters with maintenance.

The broken, steely sky is punctured through

with a thousand fluorescent lights;

and night is confused with day.

Downtown hustlers shepherd their shivering flock

of skin and leather, studs and paint

so their shoes can match the shiny lights.

Down the sides, around the backs

over the heaps, through broken gates

go the wayward shadows…in the city.

Picture: www.city-data.com

All dialogue hid not her desp’rate groans,

instead were heard her pious reflections.

Since none could know what left her so alone,

from deep within her arose deflections.

* * *

When the way gets lost and roads are ending,

new pathways arise, revealing the way

to life’s redeeming freedom befriending.

Then it is tomorrow’s hope comes today.

* * *

Settle not yourself into the dark of night,

Lay yourself out upon God’s altar of light.

Picture: www.dailymail.co.uk

The identifiable fragrance of Spring-like a poet’s muse

jumps out from behind every bush, reincarnating

the Spring before. Earlier winterish liaisons, now past,

succumb to her shameless, jaunty trysts

with a randy sun. They entangle, twisting

in whimsical lust and, in their embrace,

Summer is born.

Picture: www.auracoffee.co.il

Glory days

Why does he keep coming back?

He doesn’t belong here.

At least his buddies

still think he’s cool.

Or so they say

when they’re not

scared to

death.

* * *

Cafeteria politics

Why could she never sit here?

Her tits weren’t big enough;

her face, not pretty.

So, instead, her

answer was

always

“yes.”

* * *

Behind the bleachers

He fumbles with her bra strap,

his body hot with lust.

Her apprehensions

keep on growing;

something else

forcing

in.

 * * *

“I think I’m pregnant”

“I think I’m pregnant,” she said,

ignoring his disdain.

“Well, you wanted it,”

he said, coldly.

Then turning,

he just…

left.

* * *

Bullied

He knew that he was diff’rent.

They knew he was a fag.

They trapped him outside.

Whimpering there he,

bloodied and

alone,

cried.

* * *

Picture from www.timnaas.deviantart.com

Painting: “Hope floats” by Winnie Givot

The ground lay still, her humped, brown shoulders

shrug off a tacit morning mist.

“What just happened?” she seems to ask the sprawling heaven.

“Things shall once again grow here”, the answer comes.

And the cloudless sky locks eyes with the hopeful ground

and whispers, “yesterday, I tasted royal blood.”

This poem was originally composed as a post-Easter/Eastertide piece. It has enough resurrection pictures in it however to make it fit for our purposes here. Hence, I give you my Easter Sunday poetic offering, “Be-in-tween.”

It seems an eternity for what promised eternity

to wrest itself from dark and dank and deathly cell.

Yet hours have passed, not days and still can’t be

how you would show us life before death you fell.

* * *

Everything we gave and more to stand as one

in your reverie of newness, in time of all that comes

to quell and quiver and quash the forces of un-done

that hate and hold and hammer our daughters, our sons.

* * *

Our group was tall, like trees or hills, a truth to share

to all who hear or have not strength nor shame to hold

the weight of wait for that or this, the just or fair

awakened now but still shadow, pledge, a story told.

* * *

Why leave us in such mean estate of doubt, despair and dark

when but a word, a touch, a look all pain suspends,

and move, retool, redact the tepid toil our sorry ways embark

instead to choose what not you chose but placed in others hands depends?

* * *

But now what cryptic hint of empty rock-èd tomb bestirs

this rumored gossip that comes to taunt and tease, we rue

with quivered tongue and knees that buckle unsure

if this should be a joke, another tale to ruse, all hope undo?

* * *

Silly girls, you babble, burst and blubber forth what cannot be

the news of, what, we cannot say, except impossible to hear

and still remain in dark and desperate impossibility?

No longer face we fear of ending but ending of our fear?

* * *

If this be what I think I see then torn am I from all my knowing,

abandon now my shrinking soul and bursting out with heated heart

I clutch and grasp my tightened breast, my parch-ed throat, now stowing

what vestiges remain of sadness and remorse depart.

* * *

My brothers here and sisters, too, once shattered dreams reborn

as mist of doubt and pain of loss and waves of night congealed.

To satisfy, not mystify, was your intent. You shed the scorn

of those of them and us who turned to shame, our love concealed.

* * *

Severed from the death before, now living, path and joy to bring

you settle down to chat and dine and titillate with presence rare.

All that was then is not what now seems true or right to sing,

Still, in our time be-darked, be – in – tween, you trade your joy for our despair.

Painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch

the skies, now silent and spent

review their own sorry past

for all hope has fled

replaced by the wordless song

of a dead friend

Painting by Wayne Haag.