Whirlwind

 

“Ezekiel’s Whirlwind” by Patricia Kimsey Bollinger

 

the wind and the whirlwind
the sand and the sandstorm
blow through my spaces
the places inside where I
fought all the good fights of
autoimmune heart and mind
vice and virtue engaged in
their life and death struggles
to clinch final judgment

empty chambers now sapped
howling voids all the fight
long gone out of me never
achieving conclusion just
wartorn and weary arenas
where standards of sinners and
saints snap like windsocks
in gales of abandonment death
when it comes mere formality

 

 

From my book Bullets from Bones

Annunaki

 

“The Whore of Babylon” by William Blake

 

seven judges
alive in the sky
long before
Greece imagined
the sisters
of Pleiades
fluent astronomers
royal of blood
gods divine of
a fiery flesh
cosmogenic
inducement of
human endeavor
between sacred
rivers whose
waters gave rise to
beginnings

beginnings
of letters
of history
scribed into clay
a cuneiform
seminal literature
power manifest
sparked by a
language designed
for the eye
and it pleased them
those gods who
would scrutinize
men and their
use of the intellect
given with hushed
cosmic breath

cosmic breath
who pronounced
on the wind
these remarkable
people of Sumer
these builders
of ziggurats
masons of
civilization
should cast
fertile crescent
hegemony
fattened through
four thousand years
giving life
a new order of
progress

progress
in its many
manifestations
of change
seven judges
became several
hundreds
in light of new
unholy ways
of transgression
even Gilgamesh
torn and revised
by the claws of
of that dark
whore of Babylon
her evil sown in
distant modernity

 

Boyhood Inventory

 

Photo of Old Cigar Boxes from Pinterest

 

cigar box secrets
possessions with
powers of privacy
curious objects of
preadolescence
talisman childhood
artifacts taken as
innocent prisoners
of quiet discovery
culled from adventures
and escapades
brimming with fantasy

compass and whistle
flint arrowheads
penknife and snake
rattle fossils and
seashells a dragon
tooth world war two
carbine shell feathers
and rocks with some
eye-catching features
a dinosaur knuckle
a rabbit’s foot coins
from a buccaneer’s lair

all tucked in their
art-paneled vaults
among sneakers
and baseball gear
guarded by underbed
mists of incipient
unformed tomorrows
every possible future
just waits to emerge
from shadow to shape
that will someday
put all of these prized
secret treasures aside

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Troika

Russian Christmas Card Illustration

 

snowbanked lanes
rise and dip
winding winter
through woodlands
surrounding colonial
cottages glowing
with firelight warm
scent of woodsmoke
on air crackling crisp
nature’s breath
sweet as maple
sap ready to run
sound carries
remote country
distance soft echoes
find ears with a
gratified peace

as I peer through
my trees I imagine
three canter abreast
muted clops coming
toward me the whoosh
of a sleigh tinkling
bells growing closer
and waving to me
from their bundling
furs two beaming
cold-reddened faces
who hail me in Slavic
Zhivago and Lara
with Pasternak
tucked in behind
this day promises
grand conversation

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Vanishing Point

 

“Figures in Motion” by Assadour Bezdikian

 

 

time exists to effectuate motion
like a shark undeterred ever forward
it cannot survive at a standstill
life is living and living is time
changing aging advancing inexorably
life is carried on currents of moments
in movements of undulant progress
each moment each instant within it
abandoned by consequent waves
become part of the past swirled in
troughs left to travel behind and
beneath rolling crests of the present

time and motion behave in an inverse
relationship causing all life to comport
itself tuned to precarious clocks
youth racing with ass-over-teakettle
carelessness bumping and tripping
for uncertain unreachable futures
while time crawls along at a maddening
slow young impatience-filled pace

time and motion so highly subjective
possessed of no absolute essence
we long-in-the-tooth live our motions
unhurried our fire for speed long since
snuffed by our time the same time who
accompanies aging accelerates cruelly
flies faster and faster approaching
velocities terminal punishing deadly

time exists to effectuate motion
like a shark undeterred ever forward
it cannot survive at a standstill
life is living and living is time
changing aging advancing inexorably
pushing bones in the churn of its waves
bones we fleshed with our too many days
moving dead for the eye of perspective
the center of everything into its cone
till that endpoint acute sweet oblivion
nothingness lives there our motion our
time and ourselves finally cease to exist

 

 

From my books Ephemera and Legacies (vol. 2)

Growth

“Dramatic Lightning Skies” by Toni Grote

 

consider the mayhem
when seasons collide
cracking heads over
rights to the stage

one adamant in its
intent to arrive
another tenacious
unwilling to leave

quarterly clashes
fierce thunderheads
stricken by lightning
contest pride of place

inevitably new is
victor for better or
worse will not fail
regardless its wounds

people also experience
violence of change
collateral computus
joined to our growth

the measure of men
like the seasons is
told by which qualities
outlive the storms

 

 

From my book Ephemera

At Long Last

“Agony Doubled Over in Flames on Wood” by M. Zimmerman

 

look for me underneath rocks
heavy maladies crushing my bones

behind desiccate trees where I
carved my pain into the bark

listen for stiff labored breathing
amid soundless sobs of the night

when you find me
be gentle but kill me

I won’t love you
but I’d still be grateful

when a star burns its last
it curls into itself

becomes small in forever
black speck a cold cinder

unseen but at long last
now free of the fire

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Right Place, Wrong Time

“Mountain Haze” by Bill Davidson

 

this wilderness
teaches tranquility
joy found in freedom
that comes to the lost
without compass
or maps no agenda
no time but the time
to explore to imagine
directions toward
everything possible
everything needed

this wilderness
too late discovered
impassive impatient
it should have told
eager young bones
plangent tales of antiquity
given its wisdom
to years yet unlived
not stand wasting itself
upon calcified dreams
and abandoned ambition

False Memory

“Remembering Friends” by Karen Knutson

 

we were innocents
traveling life
common pathways
paved worn with
shared values
inherent diversities
channeled to loyalty
born free in spirit
of commonwealth
not a melting pot
but a mixing bowl
blending proud
colors and creeds

annealed dreams
yield exceptional
tensile strength
making possible
unified purpose
achieving great
civilized things
pushing men to
and through their
potential toward
prominent privilege
obtained of an
empire of intellect

so it once was
so it seems to the
eyes of my memory
visions so real
I can reach back
and touch them
feel every last aspect
of greatness the
pulsing pure essence
amassed with nobility

standing as witness
oath-sworn unto truth
I concede that I very
well could be mistaken
that none of it
ever did happen
my habit of painting
the past is perhaps
foolish labor
of mind over matter
distorted romantic and
stubborn with sentiment

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Zeitgeist

“Alter Zeitgeist” by Susett Heise

 

is the poet a man of his times
channeling culture
stroking his page with a populist pen
conventional wisdom affirmed

if so then I cannot in conscience
consider myself of the class
call me something other than poet
I brook no convention

a poem should surpass the mundane
if it has any art it should contravene
culture should shake it or break it
or take it to thoughts wildly new

it should fly on surprises of language
not mire in idioms
pull truth through metaphors
rich with provocative notions

the best poem is never self-evident
rather it leads to discovery
readers will find their own meanings
unaware they’ve become its coauthors

should a poet achieve such success
that his work becomes
part of the zeitgeist
it’s time that his readers move on

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

“A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” – Salman Rushdie

 

 

From my book Ephemera