Three thousand chairs are crammed across the field,
A sea of cheap black gowns and melting ice.
We’re sitting trapped without a sunlit shield,
While sweat drips down my neck to mock me twice.
The principal yells names at breakneck pace,
A steady roar from "Aaron" down to "Zane."
I’m stuck somewhere around the middle space,
My rear is numb, my brain feels like pure pain.
By letter M, the afternoon turns harsh,
Lost in a sea of gowns forevermore.
Are we graduating or trapped in a marsh?
The kid beside me starts to nod and snore.
Three thousand names read off without a pause—
I only stayed because my mom said I had to!
The world of street children got liberty
Lost their shyness behind the drapes of dark
Their moms busy for the next day's planning
A second innings of their play resumed
Hide and seek raising dust clouds from the ground
Hitting peers, falling down but no worries
When the drifting cloud curtains masked the moon
A deathly hush crammed the entire alley
Whistles and shouts of joy when it crawled out
Somehow, this view left me untainted joy
Place : 1 st
There were some mysterious maps
I found lying down unfolded on the deck
of an ancient secluded mailboat
in the middle of the shallow water banks
As I took a glance at these maps
I was unable to find my way home
I saw no traces of any islands, cays,
blueholes, pristine seashores,
pineyards, coppice forests
banana holes nor mangroves insight
to plot on these unusual slice of poster papers
as they were all distant memories
which faded from the surface of the Earth
all I saw was nothing but blank maps
crammed with endless layers
of oceans, banks, bights and sounds
without any given names charted on every end
as if my homeland was evaporated away
into the depths of the Bermuda Triangle
And so I pitch here
under black of stars
stuck in writhing noise,
to release , to let go
crams feet to walk one step.
O ye songbirds crammed in a captive cage.
Whilst ye flutter to free from confined space,
Man’s spirit hails home and hearth all his age
Opting for cells’ safety but freedom less.
O captive birds ye sing but wails of rage
Whilst staring at blue skies, freedom’s lost face,
Free birds swing whilst perched on a branch--their stage,
And sing songs of freedom with avian grace.
And alight to homing trees just to rest
Or rear their young in the safety of nest--
Enduring home, not once a prison’s rage,
Whilst man’s freewill seems fleeting at its best,
A prison cell besides, if nigh modest--
A rainbow summoned in a sunny cage.
______________________________
Sonnet | 09.02.2026 | birds, cage, freedom, home, prison
My eyes have keys.
My eyes have locks.
My keys don’t fit my locks.
Eyes are made to look out
So, only out I gazed, I sought.
Others’ eyes held their own locks,
A gallery, magnificent and varied.
In those foreign yet familiar clasps, my keys tarried,
Then with a bit of work, they married—
To treasure chests filled with grand memories
To chains tight and binding
To foggy rooms with dim outlines
To hope chests crammed with keepsake findings
To storage cabinets and their appliances
To showcases bright with earnings
To boxes of hats, masks, and glasses
To cages cold with yearnings
Countless lock types I’ve encountered and
Countless locks have crumbled.
But, behind my doors are mysteries
My locks still waiting to tumble.
Watched a first-run movie
From the comfort of my couch,
An experience to which
So many folks could likely vouch.
You can’t beat the convenience
And the snacks my kitchen holds,
Plus the fact that I can pause things,
Even as the plot unfolds.
There’s no outerwear to deal with
And no bus or cab or train
And it doesn’t matter if, outside,
There’s cold or snow or rain.
Yet I kind of miss the theaters
Crammed with fellow movie buffs,
Though, at times, your seatmates seemed like
Slobs or boors or lowlife scruffs.
Yes, I know I can return to
Those few theaters that exist,
But when Netflix has a current film,
It’s too hard to resist.
Standdown Day
USS Coral Sea—Spring 1979
standdown day
no flights
alone I stand upon flight deck
three football fields long
thousands of tons of solid steel
an insignificant gray speck
upon the bounding main
below decks five thousand sailors
and marines on a mission
some scramble, others grind on
some sleep
fourteen-hour days
seven days straight
now standdown day
dusk
gulf water mirror still
a vivid rainbow spans in
a high, full, majestic arc
horizon to horizon
night
below decks I pass berthing
areas crowded with
bed racks stacked three high
eerily quiet for a crammed
metal city
I must work through the
Night and into the morning
Looking forward always to
The next port
by Robert Gorelick
November 11, 2025
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A vagrant squirrel navigates his kingdom of cracked asphalt~
Sudden rain slicked the park bench's peeling green paint
as he rattled past, king of his grocery cart chariot ~
overflowing hull crammed with glossy brown treasure,
each nut a testament to frantic, twitching hoarding.
His beady eye judged a passing Labrador's indifference:
Fool! Winter's coming, and my cart's already paid for.
Strains of notes shuttle me back
to my grandfather’s makeshift -fort
crammed with songbooks, bows, and pipes.
Here, we would empty our shoulders
from a rough sail;
he scattering fiddle tunes on painted halls--
his eyes half-closed ,melting the noise
of an anxious world, of teary wrongs.
‘Bathe in night's luster ’ he mused,
smitten by some Gerhwin's refrains...
and my rubber spine would bend with
violin strings weeping till we drowned
in trusses of orchestral magic...
Sometime in fall, dirge of nightfall exhumed
his lust for old charm...
and my eyes fall on the moat of vagueness ,
lost in the maize of this space
utterly cold.damp. unsung,
plucking his strings so hastily uninvited.
Tasty, cold and wraps around my tongue.
I like to sleep.
Which is warm sometimes.
Or icy, sharp, delicate.
Melty restfulness.
I enjoy the wrath of sleep that tastes crazy.
Wild, colorful.
Sleep.
Ice cream crammed into my dreams.
Wake up to the window open and a tree limb curling.
Wraps around in the night.
Howling like peanut butter ice cream does.
Or doesn’t.
I looked in the freezer that night.
Gobbled up the remains.
Tasty and cold.
Not many things are these days.
Tasty and cold.
Wraps around my body like ice cream.
I like to sleep!
After a tasty treat.
Still feels cold the next morning.
FLOTILLA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
her heart, once a crammed attic,
overflowing with yesterday’s dusty relics,
became a barren room.
each secret—a silent, fragile confession,
she scrawled on paper thin as skin,
slipped into the throat of antique glass.
a cardboard ark, ferrying her bottled truths,
down to the shore she walked,
where the sea sighs secrets of its own.
a flotilla of confessions and longing,
a bobbing armada of regret,
pushed by the tide—away, away, away.
she raised her hands in farewell
releasing all her burdens,
their echoes fading on salty winds
I live trapped in a basket of predators,
their skulls crammed with futile idleness.
They celebrate misery like a morbid feast,
with the suicidal arrogance of heirs to nothingness.
The flames of humanity have burned away
in the abyss of their barren souls.
They worship the anarchy of weapons,
I see nothing but fields of ruins.
Their battles are the masquerades of capital,
poverty spreads across the Earth like a plague,
and the closeness of deprivation becomes a nightmare.
I spit upon their rotten idols,
those false sanctities with profaned orifices.
I have piled up sins to taste the ecstasy of raw freedom.
Born from the wounded entrails of the Third World,
I refuse to bow before the putrefaction of consumerism.
Free from the origin, yet prisoner of a banana republic
delivered to the savage plunder of predatory empires.
I fight my demons in the trenches of the mind
to adorn my reality with fleeting mirages of this convulsive world.
They consign me to the dungeons of their alienation,
but I rise, insurgent against their servitude.
I knew that the water I saw was a mirage.
Unfathomable depths seemed shallow when measured.
This is a world where facts and fancies camouflage
Within wombs of empty tombs, riches are treasured.
The sketch that looked like a wall was, in truth, a pole.
Beasts that dined on guavas at night weren't crows but bats.
My crammed glance makes the earth resemble a ball
I pause and cut short my tours, confronting black cats.
Peeping through the holes of Qutab Minar, I faint.
Shouldn't I reach the top? Should I simply go back?
With colours of likes and dislikes my walls I paint.
With burdens of pessimism, my corridors crack.
Are these angels I find herein mere illusions?
Are these candours that have been tested, delusions?
Depression.
Can be flung away.
Can stick to any surface.
And me.
Depression.
Could be crammed in.
Stammering and tightening.
Tearing feelings.
Depression.
Can sit on the porch for weeks.
So you don’t leave for weeks.
The groceries dwindle.
Depression.
The gold metal I carry.
Gets rusty.
I can hear it.
Depression.
Could be crammed in any surface.
Rusty on the porch.
Sticking feelings.
Depression.
There are many ways.
The groceries dwindle.
No matter what.
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