24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Paradise lost they rumble through murky past
Ancient curse rains on troubled souls amassed
Creatures of magic mighty yet so weak
By day they hide under dusty robes meek
By night their stormy speech thunder-speak
Onward march dragon-kin into the mist
To defend sea and sky with crackling fist
Their tired Queen leads them to final glory
To rest in cloud kingdom of legendary story
It hurts to be… alive
The threat of dying gives life to living.
It hurts to feel happiness…
Your throat tightens.
You can’t breathe.
You can’t release…
The tension hightens.
Thoughts of the past rush in, building like a fever breaking.
Shortness of breath persists.
“Help!” I think I’m dying, but inactuality I’m living.
(Sometimes sadness feels like the cloak of death. In times like this we must battle to push beyond the cloud of meloncholy. It is a cloud in disguise as doubt, almost as dangerous as death itself.)
All rights reserved copyright(c)2017 Natasha Vanover
She enthralls like a lighthouse
Draws me
Keeps me away
A caution for my own good
but that light
that exquisite fresnell
I am caught in its prism
I lie mute
across the expanse
I wait
prow banking in fog
turning
I surrender
I’m a sailor
who needs more than salt
dreams I share of hiking
in the woods,
surrounded by oak trees
arcs of sunlight
paths of fallen leaves,
pebbles to amuse me.
isolated, protected by
human generosity.
they donate their vowels,
contribute imagination,
build mandalas of grape vines,
find hidden clues that I believe
are you explaining why we are
separate, not green, not well.
just mazes of eternity, shaded,
circles of the abandoned life.
The first thing she asks
after inquiring about me, while
gripping me in enveloping hug:
how my wife is, the kids are
we talk amiably, deeply
about our lives, families. Stuff.
I see in her eyes what I have
since junior high; this she knows
Her impossible-to-dislike
husband greets me warmly, joins
us in conversation, laughter
their body language, comfortable
any awkwardness that did exist
no longer does, though he knows
that I understand, better than most
what has always been in her eyes
it takes more self-control than I
think I have, to not say aloud, in
reckless triumph, “But I loved her
twenty years before you showed up.”
knowing nothing is to be gained
playing ‘nan-nah-nan-nah, boo-boo’
with the beautiful muse who never
loved me then, but oddly, does now.
– Mark L. Lucker
© 2017
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd
Half the class, the better half, take the unpaved path that leads to the top of the lake. Now shoeless, they flop out satchel stuff for inspection. Pencils, a putty pony, a tarp, a box of matches, an adult comic and six apples. Withheld gifts meant for a bad teacher.
The game commences: Four girls stand hold the comic delicately between their teeth. Then, at the sound of the first wood pigeon, the girls bite down and (more…)
Fog
Dense, lifeless
I wandered
Pushing through endless
Pointless
Love affairs
Loveless affairs
Fucking without purpose
Loving without bond
Longing, lusting, lacking
Drifting
A beacon flashing
Light called to me,
Enticed me
Led me to you
Your light dissipated the fog
Winds of change and chance
Blew the shadows away
Your heart melded with mine
The darkness disintegrated
Our bodies together
Perfect symmetry of souls
The longing is still there sometimes
In the dead of night
The fog drifts in
Hovers
Reminds me
Whispers to me
But then your eyes dance
Your arms surround me
Clouds part
Stormy seas calm
Fog burns away
The path is revealed
Because you are at my side
Drifting
I listened to Leonard Cohen and Buffy St. Marie.
They spoke to me in unity.
Philadelphia. 1971.
I was adrift like
the Alaska Ferry
I now see in
what would be
blue sea and sky
now gray as if
hope is paralyzed.
Smoke from fires
far away, has drifted here.
I was soon to drift away.
Dave said, “Why haven’t you
shared these albums with us?”
As if I was hiding them.
As if I knew more than a calling.
As if I knew where I would go.
All that I own is such naivety
that I look for answers in songs
and boats and eagles.
All I could do was shrug my
shoulders to Dave because
it would be presumptuous
to think I am more than a
spec that listens to the mysterious
yearnings that sometimes
pull on me.
The wind in my face
Cool dew in the air
Nothing more fair
Nothing more fair
The sound of a gull
So intense and so true
Brings me back to you
Brings my heart back to you
A wonderful glow
Time immemorial knows
But every new time
Joy only grows
This ability for beauty
Everyone knows
Not the station
which doesn’t exist anymore, but the rails,
a twinned bow draw across s violin
strung with bone, the earth’s fingered sorrow
felt as longing. A longing for what?
You don’t know, but you’re sure someone is coming
and something in the world is about to change.
You can smell it, that dry dust odor earth gives off
just before a rain. Lightening to the west,
a riff of dark clouds overhead and a hawk flies by,
soundless, its wings, serrated edges
drawn across the sun’s bright eye. A disembodied voice
announces the next arrival.