Best Historylight Poems


Chiaroscuro Choreography

A light mist of ethereous rain falls 
silent on his thin, sharp-angled
face. He lengthens his stride and 
leans toward the wind. He walks 
through plundered poverty; crumbled
by the weight of exodus. Abandoned
to the blood-rough nails scratching
on the concrete diasporas of multiethnic
history.

Past the playground echoes of PS #59, 
as they drift along the faded asphalt 
haze of time. Echoes still ring true with 
elemental bones of hope: the children
break out and through gunmetal gray, 
graffiti covered doors, outside to the 
saturated heat of inner-city rage. 

Past gothic orthodox cathedral 
mausoleums which sit like ancient 
stoics and stare through burnt-amber, 
azure, crystalline-blue stained glass 
eyes; focused out with a kernel of 
eternal mustard seed hope: souls will 
come again and warm the sacred pews. 

Past the Puerto Rican market 
where the pig's head led the 
carnivore parade of mastication 
promise every day. A meat-market 
window of letted-blood and death 
reminiscent of Amsterdam whores 
with their wares on display for the 
dead-eyed stares of the men outside. 

He comes to the dust and 
grime of an empty lot covered 
by old and broken concrete slabs. 
He stops and lets his mind drift 
back to watch a woman who wears 
a ratted fox-tail wrap around her
neck. She holds a long, un-filtered 
cigarette, loose, between her two 
bright, fuchsia painted lips. She 
wears a black velvet hat with veil 
to her nose and a straight black 
dress that flows below her knees, 
mid-calf, above her shiny black, 
high-heel, patent leather shoes. 

He can almost see through the blur 
of a chiaroscuro choreography his 
mother,  visiting with the Kazakhstan 
neighbors, in this dreamlike memory. 
The multi-plexed, subsidized project, 
where he was born, once stood just 
beyond his vision of a mother's visit in 
high-heel, indigo, tangerine, sibilant 
sounds; lit with electric light smiles 
of denial. 

She would hold her cigarette between 
fuchsia lips and wear that ratted fox-tail 
wrap until the cancer cough began to spew 
Chesterfield blood on the molted fox-tail 
head of her beloved fur. 

Then she went to bed. Went to sleep. And died. 

Pigeons cooed quietly on that New York City night.

Telephony

Telephony about connecting pairs of
Twisted lines here on land and air.
Tell tales 'bout time and dare, we care.

Telephony expressed as male the
Telegraphic message sending trails
Of dots and dashes in the static air.
Tales 'bout time and dare, we hear.

Tell a take 'bout connecting stares
Twisted minds do hear and there be.link.
Said a pulse of light could see and think.

Tell a mark 'bout sunny sparks carrying
Song that sang of parks so long ago.
Said a pulse of light would let us know
...

So the Cell was created.

Telepathy of a distance stated that
Telling tales of things knot shown is
not a fake in the Path of Poem.
© Izzy Gumbo  Create an image from this poem.

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