Icebox Disaster
Only living son
Home from steamy jungles of New Guinea
Wearing strips of a Master Sergeant
Tales recounted from Australia – Sydney R & R –
In spear points and javelins;
Malaria still traced upon
A war tanned face;
No more holding breath -
Four years of halting steps -
Reaching for the mail –
Cringing at the doorbell’s
Unexpected
Shrill screams,
No blue star hangs upon a window,
Relief sighs
So grateful for hugs held
Extra seconds
In reunion
Though shocked eyes hide
To see a frame so thin -
Hoping darkness covers memories
Reappearing uninvited;
House filled with booming debates
And scents of apple pie,
An icebox crammed with every good thing,
Not seen for years,
From harvest and from garden,
Visited so often
One morning screams of pain resound
As the icebox door crashes to the floor
Breaking a mother’s foot -
With no regrets
Only gratitude for family
Together again.
When my mother's oldest brother returned from war, he went to the refrigerator so often he weakened the door. One morning the door fell off right onto his mother's foot!
Stand and flight, or fly and flee,
The two choices we face.
Stand unmoving,
Or fly above.
Trampled by the world,
Torn to pieces by your “friends,”
Your family.
Facing it in solitude,
Going through it alone.
Take to the sky,
Avoiding the stones and javelins.
Finding the strength to continue,
To survive.
But a stone clips your wing,
The exhaustion takes over,
And you’re left free falling
Falling back to Earth,
To hit rock bottom.
The end of the world,
Cold and alone.
The top so far away,
With no strength left to fly,
I lie in the dark and die.
I propose amending
the U.S. Second Amendment.
The right to own and transport and fire arms
shall be constrained
to include only those who demonstrate sufficient mental health
to have no desire to own and transport and fire ballistic arms,
because they are bad for Earth's environment,
and not so great for assured mutual health and safety.
Hunters
with sufficient mental health
prefer bows and arrows
and fishing poles,
and possibly javelins,
or maybe even boomerangs.
I move around campus
both hands twined on my back
I recall actions of notorious campus students
ripping apart useful pages
of book of the jungle with umbilical cord
Others, self-styled athletes
throw javelins as high as they can
tearing into rags
blankets that cover the blue thing
with their sharp tools, magic fumes they act
sorcery, foolishness; what is it truly?
I think of repairs and mending
glue, needles, threads I have
but the broken pieces are too many
scars on the jungle book are too much
Expert tailors are uncooperative
when I call for team work
red eyes and clenched fists
jump out from sockets, trunks
I wonder as I moved on;
“What else can I do but look on?
surely, sooner than later
with jungle ripped apart, blanket torn
jungle book will catch fire
and the roof will collapse!”
We met in rage, incarnadine fury,
meandered, then, became tenacious friends.
From wary circling hearts, we took the chance,
we joined our hands, we spun in place, we laid
a spiral architecture down, we formed
a spring, mosaic metal, powerful
enough to shoot us through life's remainder.
Our kids launched off, angelic, ravenous,
diaphanous, eloquent quintessence
of you and me, the luminous javelins
so deftly thrown, that hit the lustrous mark,
where they began their own soliloquies.
So placidly we now relax, with love,
For azure shards and lyric gleams we seek,
the moonlight in our glade, mellifluous
in all its soundings, serendipity
of sylvan lore, ephemeral saffron
at birth the lunar light, it shows your face,
it coalesces inception's recall,
I see you as that first explosive day.
December 6, 2016
For the 'SHOOTING BLANK VERSE - Poetry Contest' sponsored by John Lawless.
Aurora
Arctic prancing prism
Prize sky borne
Blue hunts red
Green seeks safety mountains deep
Ears yearn sound
Faithless Beloved
May javelins of light
Freeze your joy
Terrible splendor
Ice-pack this savage splintered heart
Crush my bones to match
Shout for me
Call down the avalanche
As you leave
Echo my name
Bury me in dazzle
If you dare
A concerted body of thought
Primes the guarded pump
Each driving rendition, a version
The sculpture of well attuned days
This time around
Jaundice backseat drivers
Underwhelmed by gangrene javelins
Karmic mercury tipped for change
Directions of satan rearranged fallen
New features fitting old scriptures
A hidden mythology of sound, before word
Frontier searching mapmakers to mystic rebound
Or gather old glory in mermaids of fury
Womb pressed to unleash worthy solutions
Silky thrones of forgotten passion
A fine castle estate of make waves
hitting the breakers, sand shark lakes mutant
With escapades curtained in bone
Color javelins
Flowing passionately
Capturing moisture
These words
Are like javelins
We hurl them through
The eyes of the naked sun
Landing in the heart of
Grief and despair, in men
These words have great power in them
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