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

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

 

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

Touch

 

Auction Photo from 1stdibs

 

burled walnut
handsome to the hand
tactile poetry

 

 

From my books Bohemian Scents and Riverthink

Devil’s Den

“Vulture in Flight” by Wingsdomain

 

riding thermals
circling summer-hot stones
all the pretty vultures

 

 

From my books Bullets from Bones and Riverthink

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

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)

Crepusculum

 

“Corsica Sunset” by Leonid Afremov

 

sienna dusk folds itself
crumpling clouds along vast
orange seams briefly blazing
beneath the precipitous night

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Writing Midnight

 

Book Illustration of Medieval Scriptorium

 

tallow tapers flicker weakly
midnight manuscripts laid down
on parchments and scrolls
libraries of dim inspiration

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents