Every night a well-dressed puppet keeps score.
Of the deaths and casualties of the freshest war.
Some nights the tally is low like a soccer match
Tonight, it's triple digits for the tin soldier man.
On the scorecard are soldiers, civilians and children.
Never the makers of munitions, or wealthy politicians.
What of the wild beasts and dear family pets
Lying twisted and bloodied in virgin bomb pits.
Forgotten in the backwaters of useless battles.
For them a last meal of shrapnel and ear-piercing rattle.
Their names never honored on the marquee.
But they should be-they all should be.
Rolling clouds over rolling hills.
Kentucky is winding it roads out in endless curves.
No hurry,
this journey drives me
through its curling landscape
as a self-reading picture book of racial memories.
Born in a far way place, I feel rooted now
to these unfolding boonies and hollers,
backwoods and backroad, places
that speak to my very bones.
A small town ahead, a clapperboard store
a gas station and a 7-11. Despite being modern
they have that tumbledown structure
that is native to these rural backwaters.
The shanty tilt of well-worn porches,
dusty front yards flagged with
the fading banners of old glory.
The sun will be going down soon,
I'm driving slow, meandering into a history
I recognize as my own.
The fields are threaded with deer
as evening paints the gleaming creeks gold.
I'm told
that perfection is a pocketsize piece of scenery
no one has discovered yet,
a place just right, one just now
appearing as my memorable soul.
As I hold its numb weight
it grows younger,
more delicately knit
to blue somnolent veins.
I am left high and dry
while nerve endings circle
the dilated roots
of severed memories.
A pinched anesthesia;
while arterial threads track back
to things once sensed
on a map of ghost towns.
A slow thaw, and now a delta
seeks a salt water flow
in shallow cold streams.
Blood washes glacial backwaters,
kindles capillaries that carry
a surfacing alluvia.
The arm tugs at my mind like a child.
I flow downstream on a raft
of fine green bones
toward fingertips dipped
in pink shells of fiery snow.
Light and white
The clouds go in line guided by the Wind,
At their pasture.
They will come back tomorrow heavy And gray loaded with rain,
And will fill the backwaters
Will grow the tender grass
For the kid, for the lamb.
If the serpent from above i.e. the Rainbow
Didn't drink all the water
Whose clouds are sated.
The year was 2021 and Christmas was fast approaching,
Fear and uncertainty were seeping into every corner of daily life,
Good will was at an all time low throughout the land,
With Covid spreading faster than the gossip surrounding it,
The people cried out in vain, many going insane,
Few safe in their own company for than a week.
With those in power throwing in the towel,
The situation was grim indeed,
Is this the end becoming the catch phrase?
Who would have thought that once again poets?,
Would be called upon to save the day,
With style and wit, the pens began scratching,
And keypads started overheating,
As out of the mist that hung over the many backwaters and lonely bye-ways,
Poems filled with the spirit of Christmas past began to appear.
As one after the other poets on the soup took up the call,
With other forums soon taking up the challenge,
To light another candle of positive thought,
And push back the darkness,
Saving Christmas for another year,
Giving those who threw in their towels,
Or failed to take sound advice,
Another chance to put things right in 2022.
I offered up my wings several times
to lift you over the raging ego-licked fires.
But you chose to be a tumbleweed
in a dusty ghost town called your life...
Everything I've loved, you swept away
You frolicked in the shadows of my mind
,, and for years that's where you played.
I've placed the wings back where they belong.
Sewed silky notes to a new love song.
The opaque lifting from my battered heart.
The moment you were gleaned, then gone.
Gentler things have taken your place.
A deeper dialogue without barbs of judgment.
Lacy hearts rippling with sweet percussion.
I've spat out the last of your rancid chains.
I can finally breathe without constraint.
From the backwaters of my mind.
I still dream of you from time to time.
They are creatures that come from heaven
sprinkling lights on trails,
they are not simple people, they are stars
who come here to install harmony,
come to assist and welcome,
caring, driving and loving ...
They are sources of tenderness,
backwaters of goodness,
fulcrum of pure love ...!
They are that for life,
to fulfill heavenly mission ...
They are designated by the creator,
so they are:
Specials,
divine,
Mothers ...!
Some parts have regenerated
not backwards, local history
cannot be expunged with a backhoe and eraser.
There are facilities, collection plants,
distributions centers, storage units.
Where once summer sky’s grazed
there are mechanical cows
and the rusting bull horns of the defunct.
Creeks and backwaters
limp through new tracts where above ground pools
snort weekend waves.
The hunting of discarded artifacts
keeps idle hands busy.
Self-taught archivists plunder each other
for the re-purposeful or uselessly rare,
indeed the useless is now prized
as a future barter.
Pigs and chickens are hidden
under muddy blue or grey plastic sheets.
Farms lean away into makeshift facsimiles
of yesterday.
Of course there is the mail,
parcels arrive with a smile,
then contents are ferreted away
until more garage space can be reimagined.
It is a fair, windy, open place;
it is what a native people
tried once to explain to us In their legends.
of course they never spoke
of strip malls or industrial parks,
but in their own, less cluttered language,
they did point the way to our own
pointless purgatory.
Savage year-quiet God
in the backwaters
of a brackish riot pond...
9 minutes to trash a life
9 minutes to trash society.
We're walking toward the brink
but we don't have to be...
Black lives-white lives-thin blue line
a dirty cop-church on fire.
God stripped from our lives
Satan willingly filling the void
that creeper of our minds.
Whispers of the end times
but we haven't suffered nearly enough
there'll be more wars and plagues
race riots-disease percolating
and a fire to end all fires-
Red alert!
Anxiety level rises.
Dam shutters open.
Water wanders
among the concrete buildings,
seeking the buried backwaters, lakes, ponds, fields…
A member of the land mafia marks himself as safe
on Facebook.
Poor people are always unsafe.
They were poverty-stricken
during the steady rains.
Now they are panic-stricken.
Rocks fly down from the mountains.
River climbs up the bank.
Cries steep in the gush.
Bloated men, cattle, dogs and chickens float.
Horrible visitors take terrible pictures.
Fear fluctuates as blood pressure.
Poetry Nook Weekly Contest Winner
The lip of childhood was bloodied.
When the CSX ran over my puppy.
For years I fired rocks at the metal devil.
Trains were supposed to be a boy's second-best friend.
Not a killer of soft things that wag their tails.
Lick your face when you come in from hell.
Sweet things that never have an off mood.
Or care that you're a slow learner.
Tossed to the backwaters of grade school.
Childhood was cut in half by CSX railroad.
Why couldn't the train have swerved and struck
that pervert 5th grade teacher instead.
Then again, trains don't swerve or lick your face.
They just plow straight into the pillow of childhood.
Then blast the devil's conch in manic celebration.
The words of sea
although adventurous,
rapturous, salty ...
They are also aware how to be sweet
and homemade ...
They are fon of waves,
of huge vacancies
of adventure...
But they also perform
calm, lull,
at low tide ...
The words of sea,
they are ships, they are caravels ...
Sands, conches, shells ...
Abandoned tranquil islands,
standing water backwaters
immensity of oceans ...
The words of sea,
are towering,
sailors ... sail
and sail ...
Days, months, years,
don't vanish ...
Always come back
to the land ...
The sea takes them, the sea brings them ...
The sea leaves them at the edge of the pier ...!
For he had all the choices in the world
All the luxuries, the best and most sumptuous fare
All the wealth and splendor ... no bother nor care
Yet the backwaters and stable, not Jerusalem
He chose for my sake, my salvation
Generations since Adam and Seth, Noah and Abraham
Yearned to see His face; so my God with Skin On
Chose Mary's womb, an illiterate village maiden
In honoring a simple village girl
My President over Souls and Limitless Constellations
Welcomes every race, gender, color, and all nations
In His Bosom of Forgiveness, if we repent, change direction
What a Leader, what a King, O my very own President
Who created both Jerusalem and Bethlehem, all in the firmament
Walked with simple fishing men, all across the Promised Land
And rode that Last Passover, on a donkey, what a precedent
He healed any who wanted to be healed; yes, before their "time,"
Like the Gentiles, when He had come for the House of Israel then
Faith and desperation, for crumbs like a dog, Phoenician or Centurion
Reveals the currency of this President: Faith in God's Son=One Atonement
Sea breeze smell of fish
coconut and cashew groves
sand stretch and tourists
Dead Canines in Spain
The Aegean Sea, another rubber dinghy sank 30 people drowned
most of them Syrians and from the hateful a smile when they are
stupid risking their life and come here wanting to live like us.
A good Syrian is a dead one, and they did not have much of value
for a state to confiscate and none of them had a higher education just
some uneducated bodies bringing nothing but their humanity and
children now drowned.
To make matters worse, they were Muslims too, from rural backwaters of
an alien culture, so we do not have to worry about them anymore,
expendable people both in their country and the countries they hoped would
give them succour. There are so many other inequities around, look at the way
they treat dogs in Spain isn`t that a shame something for the face- book.
So send some money to the people who try to rescue the dogs.
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