Thursday, March 28, 2013

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 InteriorsDanse MacabreCrack 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.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

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.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

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.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

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."