Mortality

“The Dark Night” by Alison Lawlor

dark night of the soul

long running beyond

the marked moments

cadenced by beats of

the clock of the heart

no orbit of planets

will influence time

in the war between

bodily pain and cruel

tortures of mind

it can last for a lifetime

perpetual violence

wracking raw flesh

and blood places

the sunless and airless

pink spaces where

life should find

sweet affirmation

where body and soul

should reach blissful

concordium

nonetheless here is the

permanent battle engaged

pitting forces of spirit

against vicious powers of pain

every moonrise occasions

another new skirmish

enlarging the conflict

a blooding of more and more

cognitive acres

mortality never more vivid

than now in this deadly

dark night of the soul

Origins

“Womb” by karmic katha

 

in a world plagued
by too many words
and too little grace
poetry is inevitable

 

Bullets from Bones

“Indifference, Year of Peril, 1944” by Thomas Hart Benton

 

we are that species

who numbers cadavers

more wardead than

died-in-their-sleep

since antiquity more

bloody years rent with

combat or suffering

siege than at peace

knowing war begets

war we make beautiful

bullets from bones

to recycle their valor

reconstitute sacrifice

crumbled in graves

of both soldiers and

citizens lost in the

billows of battle-fog

all of which pale against

whole populations

entire generations

erased by the wickedly

punishing sword

flame or slavemaker’s

brandiron victory often

takes into its hands

asserting its dubious

rights of immoral

barbaric revenge

oh the genocides

staining each century

back through prehistory

utter depravity

strangling humanity

with our pretensions

to power that mock

the theology vested

in principled ethics of

jus bellum iustum

we know the right

thing yet continue

continue continue

to do what we know

to be wrong leaving

open for all our black

bloodied millennia

questions of whether

or not our apparent

intractable flaws

are perfectible

 

 

 

From my books Bullets from Bones and Legacies (vol. 1)

Abyss

 

Double Crested Cormorant by Audubon

a cormorant settles
the swell of my chest
lunar tides ebb and flow
beneath rice paper skin
its blue disc of an eye
tracks anonymous prey
lurking somewhere
within fleshy oceans
vague shadows that dart
near the surface elicit
its quarter note calls
before plunging its beak
into tumbledown tissues
diving the chasm where
once beat a heart at the
precipice gone now to
swallowing depths out
of sight sunk in endless
black swirls ever down
into bottomless madness

 

 

From my books Bohemian Scents and Legacies (vol. 1)

 

Kiev

“Dome, Kiev” by Anna Sokol

 

writhe at the unseen lingering touch

by Chernobyl fingers of Soviet hands

draw deep cleansing breaths

exhale liberty

over these broad ancient steppes

where the ancestral horse

was first tamed to the bit

and the burden of riders

where breadbasket wheat

sways in capital waves

over savory oilfields catering

menus of sham independence

it’s time for that spirited bloodline

those fiercely proud Carpatho-Rusyns

to rise from repression and

once and for all

plunge the dagger of freedom

right up to its self-declared hilt

in the slavering red hearted bear

 

*******************************************

 

(Originally written February, 2014 upon Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian Crimea)

 

 

From my book Bullets from Bones

COPD

 

“Breathless” by Rachel Nelson

 

dead lungs

black bladders

hang stiffly

from sins in a

crumbling cage

every breath

drawn at rest

nonetheless

a pained labor

for tissues

time turned

into lifeless

sere parchment

the least-made

exertions

trip desperate

cascades of

deep gasping

a breathlessness

drowning in

indifferent air

inescapable

penance for

nonchalant folly

offending the

most precious

gift of a life

penance now

come to due

during this

the last phase

of my moon

Pumpkins

“Pumpkin Patch” by Jani Freimann

 

pumpkins on a vine

press the weight of

their plumping identity

into the life-giving soil

sharing green leaf and

stem born and grown

of a season marked out

by sun-shortened days

in whose hurry of time

they have come to exist

cheek-to-jowl learned

the intimate character

each of the other yet

know not the least of

themselves introspection

a faculty much too

complex for the homely

simplicity settled by

untended botany wild

existence that waits

to be plucked from an

unaware field given

solipsist gifts of real

personal purpose

experiences never

dreamed now laid out

for a sentient month

or more mingling

with alien species now

blessed with a freedom

to think and enjoy feeling

live interaction with

affable beings possessed

of a healthy self-worth

personality even short

lived fully realizes all

that biology down in its

chemistry promises life

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Empire

 

“Gladiator” by Tania Vasylenko

 

haul up the portcullis

enter the stadium

lash your weapons

to your glory burn

torches of flesh

where the lion

surrounds violent

lust with its jaws

giving Caesar his

ease swing your

hammer blade

blunt chopping

granular colonies

slave pieces slip

through the glass

as bones reckon the

timing of empire

 

 

From my books Bullets from Bones and Legacies (vol. 1)

Ephemera

“Fall Landscape” by Russ Potak

 

radiant palette

pigments of rain

drip from flames

brilliant fiery

heralds of change

unfolding itself

in tableaus of

texture and time

turning crisply

through colors

that quicken

the heartbeats

of seasons with

sentiments tithed

to the passerine

psalms reverent

music of arson

that titillates ears

as it burns down

the rustic divinities

shading the sins

come to pray in a

pastoral hushed

woodland church

 

 

From my books Ephemera and Legacies (vol. 2)

Thaumaturge

 

“Abstract Morality” by TD Breslawski

 
homely saint or savant rare of mind
bearing gifts of great obvious secrets
unpretentious he comes
to the campfires of nations of men
stepping into the aura of flames
easy embers enlighten the night
his soft speeches sing settled
and sanguine predictions of
all that the future makes possible
men above all of God’s creatures
instinctively know the right answers
and yet despite rational acumen
live with such moral confusion
as if truth were somehow a mystery

oh what wonders to behold
the deft working of miracles
wrought by his gestures of hands
magic thunderbolts brought
from the folds of his robe
strike the space between earth
and the air with a crackling brilliance
all the power of time since antiquity
now in this moment here for the taking
the breathing of history’s wisdom
one noble man among men
to remind us that right and wrong
come to the grasp of the anyman
willing to hear his own heartbeat