Long Bookends Poems

                           I
On the hill betwixt Carlisle and Deep Creek
...

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Silence, 
We define it as the complete absence of sound but this definition fails to capture the profundity of the subject.
As humans, our earliest existence is shrouded in obscurity and silence. 
Sperm penetrates ovum and...

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I was an active and happy person, and had a great fondness for movies,
Like the enthusiastic nature lover, bears a fondness for outdoor beauties.

I indulged in both the old and new movies, those of almost...

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What a game ...
he was just a jester,
and this a ghastly prospect ...

The ground lay torn open before him,
a wound in the earth that called to his dark heart,
pulled on his better judgement like lead...

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Yukon just coon sitter me a copacetic, energetic, ironic language lover (English is ma lingua franca late mother tongue), who waxes poetic, but tall so one babbling, creaking, and dabbling dis arming marine naval (gazing)...

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The big, bad wolf wears a suit of gray with a snide smile.
Standing upright, he believes himself to be debonaire
as he takes his comb from his breast pocket and slicks back his hair.
Why does he...

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One day—
The sea will be my backyard
Every morning, standing upon the deck
Of the one called Going Numb
A “Greatest Dad” mug in one hand
My last vice burning orange in the other

I will watch the sun rise...

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(a love poem for my son)

Dreams spill out of sleep
sift across the hardwood floor
covers the window 
in colors of May

slamming me back towards childhood
or perhaps just to the ashtray.
One forged with labor
in elementary school ceramics;

patient...

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The Conference at Mantua

Ah, what a scene of tranquil learnedness! 
The scholars nurse their tomes like babes in arms: 
white locks: heads cocked to savor the address 
of Pius, in his charming Latin: balm 

floats...

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I seem to remember
a golden post-toddler childhood
in which each day was a journey
ecstatically timeless,
yet within bookends
of coral dawn
and bruised dusk,
between waking from true timeless sleep
and returning to my evoluting inside place
for adventurous pilgrimage,
courage in face...

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there is such beauty in the dark


     it wraps warm like mother's arms


           whispers sweet, the tympans of the soul


 ...

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Old people, like treasure, don’t come empty handed,
Their time here, their wisdom, like gold on display,
An empathic spirit who mines without stealing,
Will find that there’s much to be taken away.

Old people’s allegiance cannot be disbanded,	
No...

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On 59th Street, there's a bridge I know
where people, feeling groovy, go to walk.
The sounds of silence: troubled waters flow -
A homeless man cries out, "I am a rock!"
Late in the evening, me and Julio
down...

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AUDIO: Music for lyrics below...

He Abideth

He's not in a box -- never was,
Giver of Life, He's the First Cause;

He left a bit; it is His style,
He wants to make the world worthwhile,

Yet from the start,...

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Where were you so long ago?
All those eons before a tot.
In some distant god’s château? 
No. Not there. You were not.

Perhaps a soul in surplus stock,
A spirit not yet wrought.
Dressed in some heavenly frock,
No. Not...

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the parishioner sits on my lap.
his little legs dangle, his
beat up sandals slip.

i raise his hand with mine.
he pulls it back.
i clap.
his hands, like bookends
put a stop to that.

silently my hands in play
weave together.
my thumbs...

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On A Personal Note

by Edmund Siejka

They didn’t fit
Like bookends
Or what people might describe
As a nice looking couple.
Seeing them together made a jarring sound
Like chalk clawing on blackboard
But what was so bad about this new couple?

I...

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There once was a picture that wormed itself into my reverie
On a gray, cloudy morning, whilst it was raining and cold.
In this one picture were four slices of toast and five beverages.
Three glasses held tea...

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so far away…P.S.
and again…P.S.S.
the wanderer must, forlornly, leave it at
P.S.S.S. before she realizes he is crazy,
crazy in his love for her.
he misses her kisses and hugs,
having said so,
from a so and so bum,
from the one...

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a blank mind sets in &
though it may only be for a
flash of a second,
the words you are really trying
to muster,
dangle like a doughnut on the end of
a stick in front of a policeman
waiting next...

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              Only Today’s Poems We Read?

         
       ...

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Awake in the darkness, curtains are not drawn,
sky a deep Prussian blue, with no sign of the dawn.
Daybreak six fifty-five, two more hours to go
'till sunrise at the speed of thawing winter snow.
Window slightly ajar,...

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Smitty isn't Schulte.
He doesn't drive a Cadillac 
and doesn't hit his wife 
often any more.
Schulte, on the other hand,
drives a Cadillac
and hits his wife 
usually on weekends
for no good reason.
He's been doing that for 
more...

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Inner space, outer space, yin and yang together 
Sea is its own cosmos linked to the vast invisible ocean 
around us.  The hydrogen in its water molecules was made
in the Big Bang, oxygen in...

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Bookends prop to order and bring to attention a rampant,
bedraggled rabble of books, to parade upright and aligned.
Big and fat, tall and thin,
ditty, witty, flitty and ponderous tomes all squashed in, buttressed.

Books do well without...

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