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Marsha Smith Poem
Smooth, mapped roads
intersected with red-eyed
nights, quivering
nerves, fists pounding air.
A nightmare
descended as a phantom
snaking black shadows into
ebullient corridors
of light.
A hulking foe crowded his way in
uninvited.
Sun rose with belly chuckles,
banners, and presents,
touched the earth dipping
below the horizon like a
balloon leaking helium.
Chortles rang like bells.
Hero’s cape waved on
the back of a boy
like a flag snapping in the wind.
Legs pumped air, feet
thumped linoleum.
Birthday wishes tied up in
dime-store bows.
Red, yellow, and blue paper with
comic book heroes
piled in a corner.
Balloons, streamers, confetti
flew.
Family, friends,
and bouncing children
flashed white
teeth and upturned
lips gushing
unbridled
mirth.
The birthday song belted as
clashing keys rippled
flames on five
wax-woven cords.
A cake—
vanilla with strawberry
slathered with buttercream.
Superman soared above
candied skyscrapers and
whipped clouds.
A brackish, biting drink
drenched lips and tongue,
gorged up from the inner dark throb—
of marrow and bone.
A river of vomit like scarlet ribbons
out of a swollen, six-year-old gut,
He gagged— spewed.
Wide-eyed gasps and screams
of guests filled the room.
A foamy stream christened
the cake dousing burning candles.
Plunged into a crepuscular abyss,
a blank page filled
with scans, chemo, needle
pricks, caps topping
a hairless head.
A devouring tumor
inside a child— hiding,
savagely growing, slowly killing.
Copyright © Marsha Smith | Year Posted 2017
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Marsha Smith Poem
The Awakening
Silence—nothing, blackness then suddenly there is a rush of a shrill sound that invades my dreamscape. It fills my ears and stirs the snowy maelstroms that, for many months now, has been a flurry in my head and other times numbing silence. Chaotic at first, frightening and then I hear it—
Is that music? No, it isn’t music that I hear, not exactly. It’s the sound of cicadas driven by the scrolls of an ancient script, and tree frogs that are lost in the throes of the same ancient code as the cicadas. The meandering creek is gurgling over rounded stones of quarries past on its way home and then I feel it—
Verdant fields stretch far and wide though I can’t see them I feel them looming in the moonless night; I feel the dewy cold grass under foot. At times solid yet cold and slick, my foot is met with a stone. Upon my calves, soft, wet kisses from folded blossoms sway and lick. I feel the crisp change of season cool upon my moist skin and as it creeps under my garment then I smell it—
My nose is suddenly aware and piqued with utter pleasure of the redolence of wet meadow grass, eucalyptus, star of jasmine and lavender wafting ever so gently on the nocturnal currents languidly drifting by me with nary a care and then I taste it—
Bitter, like bile, rises in my consciousness like a harbinger that appears out of the shadows bearing a reality and truth of which my heart and soul can’t bear the weight of; it all comes flooding back; why I’m here all alone, why there are cold slabs of marble stones in this meadow, the longing, the crushed dreams, the utter anguish of missing you and then I see it—
As the sun begins to rise over the predawn horizon, elongated shadows of a lifeless tree ruggedly haunting and beautiful standing lifeless, an old sacred marble mausoleum abandoned looms in the distance and there at my feet I find your name etched on stone where you lie beneath the sod, sleeping and I find me, sleepwalking.
I’m fully awake now and I’m beginning to live again.
Copyright © Marsha Smith | Year Posted 2017
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Marsha Smith Poem
Wrapped in the aromatic blossoms
of a modern-farmed orange
orchard, a four-room shack in Visalia,
California rises above the hard
pan and overgrown rose bushes.
The once palatial bell tower
of Taurusa School, peaks
over the sun painted,
fruit lavished branches.
It once christened
the ceiling-less, blue vault and
ochre-hued grass
cutting a swath
through a barren plain.
The winds whistle ghostly rounds of
"Brother John" through
cracks in the walls and
rattles brittle cackles of childhood
titters as it wafts
along the peeling tar paper
swirling the thick musk of decay.
Light filters through ripples of
dusted, liquid glass sagging in
splintered panes
to blaze across the pinewood floor and
spill between rotting slats.
Found in
postcards buried in
antique shops,
local revenants share tales of
sitting numb-legged in
straight-backed, wooden chairs
winking plans of escape
at the noontime ringing of the
school bell.
"We hike to the train tracks with
lunch sacks in hand.
Brother James bribes a soot
stained hobo
warming cold hands
over a fire pit.
He passes off his buttered bread sandwich
into clubbed, stumped, frostbit fingers for
the lecherous scoop of nearby towns.
Papa will only whisper such news
to mama upon his pillow
when the lamp flames fade to
a thin coil of smoke to
breeze on the night
air into our sleeping loft."
Copyright © Marsha Smith | Year Posted 2017
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Marsha Smith Poem
A kettle of vultures spiral
above the undulating waves of
hot air over Baghdad
like rotor blades thudding through
vaporless skies
dry as sand scoured bones
stripped pearl by razor beaks.
Cutting through the
lung scalding crest
in July, a Blackhawk helicopter engorged
with gun strapped men,
praying, chatting, reading letters
from home of weddings, picnics and
walks in the park— their last musings.
A flash from ground scrubs
heroes from the desert scape of
tangerine and plum-hued sunrise.
In the silent, slow-moving space
between children rising from the ground
shaking off the percussion — whooping and
dancing on dirt mottled feet and
pieces of smoking metal with
burning innards of
Blackhawk scudding the sand,
inkish feathers without birds flurry to the
earth, drifting in front of smudged
faces of locals like the grit
blasted names of soldiers
on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall
mirrored in my sodden eyes.
Copyright © Marsha Smith | Year Posted 2017
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Marsha Smith Poem
Lost in deep of winter woods,
swirls of fog drink me in;
strokes like shadows etched by pine,
snowflakes dust a gelid fringe.
Stoking flame of blushing cheeks
above the embers of ruby lips,
imprisoned behind charcoal streaks
wisps of smoke in steel-hued rings.
The wafting mist of Vicar’s Pond
mirrors aigrette of Northern Star
swaddles a drifting silent loon
like obsidian pupils drift in wet.
Clothed in shimmering pale of night,
tremolo of loon heaves my chest;
bathed by gleam in circular pools,
drowning in liquid ashen eyes.
Copyright © Marsha Smith | Year Posted 2017
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Marsha Smith Poem
Red and blue strobes bounce off walls
pulsing beats in arterial veins of the city.
Radio voices crackle like static in the night,
overshadows savage growls.
Police K-Nine, Ollie, fastens the wide-eyed
man in her prow.
Hackles rise from scruff of
muscled neck down her rippling spine.
Sharp fangs glisten white under the
flickering glow of a street lamp.
Lips snarl with foaming snaps of snout,
ears flatten to a muscled head,
brown shepherd-eyes simmer in
muggy sweat beneath the churning
clouds of July.
A taunt, bristling beast
seethes with electric rage
focused on the color-drained
face of the male anarchist
crumpled with bowel-soiled pants.
Copyright © Marsha Smith | Year Posted 2017
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Marsha Smith Poem
Wiggedy-waggedy
Mrs. Joe Braggedy
flit about gossiping
spreading her lies,
spoke with no elegance
extemporaneous
scratching their itching ears
truth they despise.
(a Higgledy-Piggledy poem form)
Copyright © Marsha Smith | Year Posted 2017
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Marsha Smith Poem
The Manzanita clacks in
gelid breezes
like the clap of clacking bones.
Reddish painted branches
reach their grey, bent shadows
on stone from
hulking, brewing
drifting welkins.
Peeling, crackled, weathered
bark
grasp, grind and intertwine
gnarled fingers as they rasp and clonk.
Silhouetted by the yawning flame
dipping low,
dances the macabre branches,
on a stage glacial white with
winter snow.
Copyright © Marsha Smith | Year Posted 2018
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