poem by scot young

Poem by John Dorsey

HALF A CENTURY OF LOVE, THE LAST LOVE POEM by LYNNE SAVITT

 

i still have words & warmth
physical reactions to memories
now when we speak it’s brief
terse sentences ending with
yr need to urinate or take a another
yellow pill it’s hard to swallow
this end of passion so strong
it burned decades through
families & partners & consequences
it wasn’t prison that separated us
or miles or husbands or wives
yr stroke diminished energy to love
me though you speak it every day
on the phone & now my arthritic
body can’t respond i send cards
candy socks love tepid as marriage
i look at the sad saggy cheeked husband
who shares my life here & my own face
time has been kind to me the juice
of our fluid desire kept me young
today my one true love i will wither
like the other old crones where i rent
in a complex on the island my identity
stays wet like the ever-eroding shores
& you locked near the woods attached
to tv like an iv & aides to help you
daily live out yr days dry as sand
i send in an envelope to remind you
of hours at the beach when we smelled
each other’s skin & floated on ocean
of longing to carry us to eternity
i’m not too tired to remember

The Idiot Birds by Sam Dixon

 

 

The Taipei boulevard’s long grassy median,
my prework sanctuary walk with egg sandwich,
benches and shade serving as a park
even between two-way traffic,

its trees have species tags
ficus religiosa sacred fig—
that some city official would identify trees
could be a positive sign
for industrial Taiwan’s
future environmental protection,

each morning I watch
elderly men in undershirts
hang bamboo bird cages
from the fig tree limbs
as their morning hobby

they bring in the cages
balanced on narrow floorboards
of puttering motor scooters,
bouncing over the median curbs,
shoulders hunched forward
legs splayed out,

black hoods cover the cages
until owners yank them off
each revealing a solitary myna
which begins squawking,
so many hooked onto branches
like a forest of tiny prisons,
dullard eyes of avian captives
peering through heart-shaped leaves,

birds that live confined inside
knowing just one raucous song,
never learning
as expats would,
stunted personalities unable
to commingle with acquaintance birds
for new songs
on winds of the world.

RAZORS & WRITING by John D Robinson

 

The brave dare to
live honestly,
to openly accept a
twisting fate,
the unexpected
storms,
the brave dare to
admit defeat,
to hold darkness
like a sharpened
sabre,
to look into a
mirror and see
the horror,
the brave dare to
stare down love,
to cheat diablo
and hold the hands
of every tragedy,
to roll the dice
and gamble
everything,
the brave dare to
dance across
the smiles of
rusting razor blades
and to write it
all down.

Four Poems by Kevin Ridgeway

The Kindness of Strangers

we emptied the old house of everything
it collected over sixty years in our family
and everyone gathered to say goodbye
in the front entrance. None of them
noticed I was gone. A tall, leggy beauty
who flipped houses on the real estate market
was oooo-ing and ahhhh-ing
as I used my once useless
and extensive knowledge
of our family’s history
on the tour I charmed her on.
My vivid stories impressed her
before she handed over her business card.
I said goodbye to the old house by reciting
all of my crooked nicotine stained wallpaper memories to a stranger before
we locked its doors a final time
and I didn’t look back when
I followed her shapely ass through
the front door and out of the past.

____________

 

Prison Wives

They are all scattered
about the seaside waiting area,
applying last minute touches
of makeup and straightening
their pantyhose. One by one,
we enter the security checkpoint.
We stare at the guard in disbelief
when he commands our mother
to remove her brassiere after
its underwire sets off
the metal detector. They hold
it up for all to see like a prize
or a Ripley’s Believe it or Not
oddity before they grant us access
to the next security checkpoint
across a concrete bridge
closer and closer to
a bittersweet family reunion
beyond the chicken wire,
my father in tears
while I bounce around in his lap
and in the blink of an eye
they take him back
passed the iron doors
after he makes out
with my mother
in a frenzy
of desperate passion
while the inmate
next to us sticks his hand
under his wife’s dress
in front of their children,
and her eyes roll into
the back of her head.

____________

What Were Those Idiots Thinking?

a couple died
of carbon monoxide poisoning,
my aunt says as we pass
by a motel where the couple
in question tampered
with the heater in their room
and my aunt seems detached
in her description of their grim
and harrowing end
after our family’s most
recent little parade of death
left us all here in a numb void.
I listen to her cold question
of what those idiots were thinking
before I climb out of the backseat
of my uncle’s car into
a world of indifference.

____________

Be Careful What You Wish For

My father had finally come home
after twelve years in a federal penitentiary.
It was the first birthday I spent with both
of my parents. The day I became
a teenager. My brother had moved
out of the house three months before,
so I had them both all to myself.
We decided to visit Forest Lawn
in the hills overlooking
the movie studios, where
we paid our respects to
the dead movie stars
who I worshiped with
the hope that I would escape
from my lonely childhood
at a time when
black and white ghosts
kept me company, and
I discovered who my parents
pretended to be before
they both became ghosts who
watched me grow up in the dark
in search of them in a place
where dreams go to die.

CROOKED WINDOWS By Brian Morrisey

 

A Sandburg poem
Scotch-taped
cast through a crooked window
house on a hill
sunlight shone in
halos trembling hands
clutching a can of cheap beer
there’s a sway of contention
in the stillness of dawn.

Symptoms of purpose
beg a forgiving poem
to snapshot still life
past when wild was
concrete affection
triggering city lights
cast through a crooked window.
past when wild was
an empty bottle of cheap wine
rolled across a coffee-house floor
hollow echoes reverberated a poem
cast through a crooked window

past when wild was
wet ink smeared on the face
naked balanced
one foot on the soapbox
other tripping
self-portrait reflections
cast through a crooked window.

Day-dream nostalgia
sweating on the pillowcase
in these quiet hours
escape insomnia
driven wild
down the old dirt road
back to the rush of traffic
humming a familiar song.