AFTER SNOW MELT
Their burden shed, trees now svelte -
Hidden beauties in luxuriant fir mantles
Stripped, sunning in balm light.
Grass, spruce, stream,
Once blank and touchless,
Crowd together, tactile, seamless.
Tall knolls the Leveller had smoothed
Shallow hollows had smothered ;
Landscape has fresh verticality.
Waking birds fill the sleepy silence.
Skyful white replaced by blue vault.
God has lost his achromacy.
Categories:
skyful, snow,
Form: Free verse
Small silver explosions
mob the expectant air like paparazzi’s flashes.
Soon, giant hydrangeas bloom fluorescent,
spread like a bouquet of slow-motion Big Bangs,
and are blotted by night.
But the dark can’t keep up,
as burst after burst of strange flowers,
mourning the hydrangeas,
wreathes the sky in an outpouring of dyed fires
to a requiem of crackles and booms.
Then, out of the black mystery above
tumbles a weather of headlong prisms.
Some, recognizing the same brevity
yet coveting the bright,
hurl themselves into the spraying neon sparks,
and are gone in a hiss unheard.
Others, beckoned by a destiny of gravity,
continue on,
slipping through the crossfire of fiery tentacles,
and are lit up momentarily.
Above us, then,
a skyful of rising light and falling white.
Categories:
skyful, beautiful, firework, flower, light,
Form: Free verse
"Houdini Sleeps"
Somewhere in the dark night
all her words flew in scattered fright
like a skyful of black ink in white cloud covered plight
all murdered crows,
in sleepless vast flight.
Confederate ghost always close, but never seen,
she walks toward him
through her walled up dreams.
Writing was like music to her.
High notes. Low notes. Hidden keys.
She thought about tattoos.
Hers were silent. Her words and images
were on the tip of her tongue.
Hidden Key.
Houdini. Sleeps.
(Lovejoy-Burton/August 2012)
Categories:
skyful, dream, imagery, love, magic,
Form: Romanticism
Africa is my home
I have no other home
For Africa I live for
Give me Africa to live
I will make her my soul.
Asia is not my home
For my blood is not theirs
I have no root there
Their roses are sick
Africa is my first love.
Give me not Europe
I have none of their eyes
My legs are not like theirs
Their water will leave dirt in me
Africa I pledge for night and day.
America is not good for me
Their weather is scary to me
Their food can't quench my
Hunger and thirst for home
Peace of Africa I crave for.
Australia is not good for my skin
I may not dance and sing there
Moonlight have no branch there
There are faults in their skyful stars
Return my Africa for us sons
Antarctica is not my home
I have no business with them
Africa is my business to care
Don't blame me for my want
If I don't build her who will?
Give me Africa treasure at heart
Give me her borders to oversee
Across the oceans would I tender
Not even ants will go hurting again
We will have enough to eat and laugh.
©John Chizoba Vincent
Categories:
skyful, africa, art, august,
Form: Ballad
WINTER IS COMING
Dried leaf scratches its noisy way
Across my path.
Cat retreats deeper into the doorway
Out of the blistering wind.
Skyful of clouds, smell of snow.
Winter is coming.
Categories:
skyful, winter,
Form: Prose Poetry