POETRY FORUM

She doesn’t save a single sheet
“These are all the things I love most”
She says.

Showing me her walls
She tells me the names of each one
In no particular order
“This is my home. And these are my friends”
She says.

“Aren’t you worried it’s too much”
I ask

She takes a glance at me
Hiding behind welling eyes
She says, her voice cracking

“Why would it be too much?”
“These are my friends”
“Do you think they think so too?”

– Cortlyn Blankenbaker

By day, we’re mere dust
but, come darkness,
the past grows in us.

We relearn what we have done,
why we’re strangers in heaven
but our names are known in hell.

In light, we pause.
At night, we arise,
become our life stories.

We are not avengers.
Nor are we a warning.

We float across the room.
We stretch our bodies
and our mouths open wide.

Our words are nothing more
than what you can’t help thinking.

I am ‘Gifting’ you with (Two) Words
… ‘Volatile’ and ‘Tenderness’…
to Balance the Scales within your
‘So fucking far from Equilibrium
that Screaming exhausts itself’ Mind.
Shatter-Pattern… no-one Cares
except the Losers… and the Gainers
… watching you GROw smaller…
Blaming ‘Epilepsy’ only works once.
Careful what you’re coughing-up
… until you’ve turned-that-corner…
If you hold my (Playing With Fire)
hand, squint and then refocus…
I’ll point out ‘Emotional-Burn-Marks’
upon tonight’s Audience…
just as clearly as a Forensic UV Light
picks up cum-stains at a Crime Scene.
Each ‘Small Step’ that you take
… ‘Following Me’… is, in fact,
a Gigantic Leap away from yourself…
Remember that, when I Abandon you.

I bought some new bedsheets.
I smoothed the bedsheets.
I photographed the bedsheets and edited the image in sepia.
I dreamt I had eaten the bedsheets.
I wrote a new poem on the bedsheets using a marker pen.
I ripped the bedsheets and stitched them back together.
I wafted the bedsheets to rid an unpleasant smell.
I pulled the bedsheets over my head to avoid the day.
I inspected the bedsheets for dog hairs.
I wore the bedsheets like an overcoat.
I did yoga poses under the bedsheets.
I mopped up spilt tea with the bedsheets.
I formed the bedsheets into a makeshift rope to facilitate my escape.

Future bleeds like dawn
over the horizon of my pasts.
Morning invests, evening infests.
Equinoxes and solstices shine
behind my back, but that dark
solstice of the soul waits ahead.
I who sought mountain ranges
dwell now in prairie sameness.
The young impudent nature
of my Senator of old surrenders
to the scholar’s prudent virtues,
called contrition and consolation.
Praise changes to distaste
and extortion to admission,
as ambition transitions to extinction
and initiation evolves to tradition.
How hexed the previous,
but oh! how tedious the next.

– Duane Vorhees

Unless you aren’t
you’re one of those
who lives a stove burner life
your stove as big
and wide as you make it
the number of burners your choice
more or less
yes, life ignites some
unusual ones you don’t want
but have to tend
frantic running
from knob to knob
adjusting, adjusting
don’t let that one boil over
make sure that one is on simmer
shut that one off!
when turn it back on?
low, medium, high flame
oh, the phone rang
your grandson crying
running and running
back and forth
turning knobs
that one boiled over
that one burned
that one perfect
until your stove tamps
goes cold and they
turn all the burners off
you’re done cookin’

talked his way
out of the womb
with a false I.D.

lectured nightly
on the value
of sleep, held press

conferences
when things didn’t
go his way

promised
democracy
soon,

very soon.

– Rita Moe