A Dark Poem, from "Politics, Poetry and Love in the Age of Obama"
Strewn on the ground
were the nouns;
the gerunds
and the active verbs,
along with the Criminal Looks
and Sly Slights.
There was a Wad of Silence
masquerading as 'Quiet Time.'
The Absences were white chalk outlines
and fittingly so-
there was nothing of substance left.
The yellow plastic cord-rope
denoted the murder scene-
'move on' the cop said
'nothing left here to see.'
You could glimpse the outline
of a person there
face-down in the street;
cut down from childhood
with Withering Stares
and Stab-Words;
Rejecting Gerunds
Shredded Feeling Tones,
Mocking Participles-
Little Murders all of them-
Psychic Evils
marauding Word Killers-
inflicting wounds that bleed-
inside the mind;
blood red emotions
running thick in the street.
Someone calls 911
but they come much too late.
What's really needed is 411
for those who need to know
Psychic Wounds
burrow deep
and eat out
from the inside.
A word is a dangerous thing
to swing
in a crowded room.
You can put someone's
heart out
in the bitter
cold;
where warm hearts
freeze-dry;
shrivel up
and sometimes cynicalize
from Bitter Hate
and then
Word-Murder
somebody else.
This is extraordinary ~
You lead us into a deeper and very serious place here, and it is a profoundly important journey. Awesome.
Best Wishes,
Christine
Questions, unquestioned discoveries, and answers in parable and rhyme…. This collection records a journey starting with a 1960s retrospective and the first man on the moon, moving to a new millennium welcomed in with a terrorist spin, family crises,
Selected poems from previous & forthcoming collections together with Q&R apps on each page to enable audio rendition simultaneously with the written text
A further collection of poems, many from years in the Middle East, but also the California San Francisco and Central Coast areas (Santa Cruz, Carmel, Big Sur, Berkeley, etc.).
You lead us into a deeper and very serious place here, and it is a profoundly important journey. Awesome.
Best Wishes,
Christine