Jeffrey Park- Three Poems

AFTER THE STORM

 

Oily shimmers spread slowly across

the face of the reservoir like

a toxic rainbow fallen from the heavens

 

and on the sand at the bottom of the pool

a twisted confusion

wreckage of metallic carapaces and

alloy-armored appendages

 

man-sized mechanized crustaceans

poached to a coppery hue and abandoned

to the fierce affections of oxidation.

 

Long after the waters have leached away

their burnished sheaths and corroded their

gauntleted clamps, their optical lenses

still flicker with dream images

 

of glorious battles fought between bloodless

pitiless soulless adversaries

beneath an endless sea of ink

scored by a thousand burning satellites.

 

 

CONTACT

 

To them it was odorless,

colorless, flavorless, detectable

only through application

of the most sensitive instruments

and why give a name to something

whose very omnipresence

belies the fact of its existence?

 

And as my gleaming chitinous

integument begins to melt

before their luminescent

eyes, they all twist their shapely

limbs in sympathy, thinking

perhaps what a shame it is

that we should meet

 

by sad coincidence just at

the moment of my spontaneous

but, for my kind, quite inevitable

dissolution.

 

 

DONOR

 

I saw the boy with my eyes again

this morning, and a middle-aged woman,

her faced marred by my too-large pores,

felt my heart beating painfully hard

as a jogger slogged past me in the street,

heard my stomach growling from inside

a half-open door. And again, and for

the thousandth time, I asked myself why

I must be plagued by this peculiarity,

this wretched ability to give and give and

give some more until I can’t even look at

an attractive woman without feeling

a stab of incestuous guilt. Ever the

unwilling benefactor, I try locking myself

in again, closing my eyes and ears

to the endless pleading – knowing that in

the end I’ll give in once more, lay

myself down and allow them to help

themselves to my constantly regenerating

bounty. It’s tissue they’ll be wanting

this time, I’ve seen the smoke rising on

the horizon. And they’ll leave me flayed

and writhing on the table, dreading

the horrible itch of the new skin to come –

altruist, angel, philanthropist,

great sobbing bundle of shattered nerves

and freshly grown replacement parts.

 

 

 

Bio: Jeffrey Park's poems have appeared in journals such as Subliminal Interiors, Danse Macabre, Crack the Spine, and Right Hand Pointing, and his digital chapbook, Inorganic, is available online from White Knuckle Press. His poem "Hard To Reach" has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Baltimore, Jeffrey now lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com.

Linda M. Crate- A Poem

star child 

 

there is something cold and blank behind her smile 

a falsity sincere, as if she's trying to drink in the

opposite of her apparent tears; a star that one day

fell from the inky indigo black of night to fall upon

the earth, and start a new life it must have been

a start to break upon the glass of a new reality while

hers had been smashed — river stones mark her

entry way into the field, crooked and disoriented as

the teeth in the mouth of the man that tried to smile

at her she could not bring herself to do anything more

than the pained grimace meant to be a smile; hearts are

delicate and fragile things breaking easier than the

sinew of formerly broken bones, and all she could think

of were her father stars and their heavenly thrones —

knowing not the reason why she was thrust upon the earth

she resents everything from the birds to the bees,

but most of all she resents her very birth into human kind

for she remembers the tears of stars not the tears of men.

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

Pilots of the Dawn

We were pilots of the dawn, launched

from our mother's womb screaming,

flying higher than we ever dreamt.

We sought to navigate the sky 

and make the sun our prisoner.

It was just a sinkhole in the path

of everything we had to do. 

Now, many decades later,  

we've done everything we can

and glide like gulls, aimlessly.

One by one, our planes plummet

back to Earth without a warning  

while the rest of us are slowly

running out of fuel.

There's nothing we can do.

We flew for years to get things done  

and now it's time to tally up our score

but that's not part of our assignment.

Mark Fleury- Three Poems

Ready To Fly To The Beam of Sun Ship 

Ready to fly to the beam of Sun Ship.

Maybe it's because space is so common,

That it's hard to see forms are only

Its shadows. It's the same beam that if a poem

Leads to the edge of a mental cliff,

The next poem is a way to the other side.

Ready to fly to the beam of Sun Ship,

Revealed with each exhale;

Openness Light vibrations.

Light and Sound when added to breathing, heart

Beat of time, opening the Ship's fifth dimension.

Tears of joy because you're returning. 

Breath

Breath wants to touch the heart of the beat,

Rhythm, internal space, Heaven, Sun-pouring from the shore of 

Complete openness; Holy Ghosting, forming, vibrating

Against the human body. 5D beam of 

Breath within lamp, desk, chair, touched

By the heart of Heaven's beat;

Breath's vibration, ground for Muse

To open the fourth dimension: to take flight

From a ground floor window. Its opposite, speech,

Impresses the page with

The only place left to turn: Spirit,

Colliding with hearing to form

The syllable. And sentence's beam

Fills up the beat of breath,

The ground of self-sacrifice, the intestines

Of a sunset. The interchangeable heart. Diamond 

In a ring. 

Form is mathematical, a beat for Muse

To fill up. She'll offer it to you as she rises 

To this surface: breath, in and out, flutter 

Of her wings. The tendency to look back 

At her reflection in the window 

Before taking flight is Sun Ship ready to leave. 

My Furthest Outside 

My furthest outside 

Is the skin of a sunbeam. Not giving off 

Enough light to warm the moon.

The darkness

Around the angles 

Of a street lamp

Is the marrow

In my glass jaw. My smile is shining

From the dawn's horizon on the other side

Of a bus stop.

The silhouetted skyline is in between

The cold of dark 

And cold of light

In the icy blue skeleton driver

At the top of the steps.

I pay my fare with the skin

From the shedding sunrise. It falls

As a feather into his bony hands,

Cupped then clasped until the shaft 

Is snapped in half and the time I've spent

Waiting for the bus to take me home bleeds

From the broken quill. 

From the back of the bus I can see 

The building's window on the ground floor,

Where Muse is on the sill, looking 

Into her reflection one last time.

She says "The past is pain.

I can fit all of it in my spine,

Where all of my out-of-body experiences are.

Space Shore is in there, too, the Ship 

I'll fly to when I'm done looking

At myself. It's up there, east,

Over my shoulder.

The Sun Ship of space fits in 

My pain, where the quill is bleeding

And the bus is leaving. An open space

For the ink to bleed in, as the bus

Takes my pain west to its grave."