I don’t feel blameless

I don’t feel blameless or innocent;

I grumble and dispute, so much dirt

on my glass that I should be called

Saul of Tarnish. Little light passes

through to penetrate or pierce;

I can’t see enough even to cry

tears, the gloom so thick that

I’m unable to cry at all. It

grasps with a strangling embrace;

grumble, grumble, toil

and trouble, I complain

while others crumble.

I hear a shout:

a kingdom for a nail,

a nail for a kingdom,

a nail, and my thumb is swollen,

a nail for theses on a door,

a nail, and a man died.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVersePoets. To see more poems, please visitthe site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time.

Photograph by nuzrath nuzree via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

I opened a book

I opened a book, selecting

a place at random, and began

to read from mid-sentence,

to see that it is only a fragment

of time, text without context.

I look to the sky.

I look to the sky to explain

but it remains a bright blue,

silent except for a few clouds.

Even the wind has stopped,

hiding in the mountains,

hovering above the sea.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVersePoets. To see other poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central today.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

View from the train

A child, face pressed, watches

blurs of greens and white and blue

flow in uncoordinated motion,

sees them for an instant and then

watches them disappear into vapors

left behind by the train, Small towns

rush by, only recognizable

by an individual sameness,

the hardware and feed store facing

the track, defiantly, but quickly

left behind. We hurtle along

steel lines to a destination growing

less clear and more realized.

The child laughs.

This poem is submitted to dVerse Poets for Open Link Night. To see other poems, please visit dVerse Poets.

Photograph taken on the Amtrak train from Kirkwood, Mo., to Hermann, Mo., June 15, 2013.

Nautilus, broken

Partially embedded in the sand,

a nautilus, chambered, broken

perhaps by driftwood or a foot,

carelessly trod until the crunch

was heard. Pieces glisten

in their sheen; the sound of the sea

fractured yet still identifiable.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems, please visit dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photography by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

A pain that leads

It is a pain that leads,

leads to acceptance,

leads to resignation,

to exhaustion. It cannot

be soothed, not now,

perhaps forever. From

a moment of breath,

everything changes,

nothing endures, it is

all different, alien and

cold until we find

the source of light

again, until we touch

the source of light

again, until we become

light again.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

I Walk with William Wordsworth

I walk with William Wordsworth

as he walks his field, his field

of daffodils, a yellow sea

moving in the wind invisible.

I walk with William Wordsworth,

and I ask him who planted

this yellow sea waving

in the wind, these ten thousand

thrusting beauty upwards. He

didn’t speak, he answered

with a smile, his last.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more posts, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

He turns his face to the city

He turns his face to the city,

fusing its past and future

in one weeping moment,

an immediate joy,

an undeniable sadness.

He enters with acceptance,

not resignation or foreboding.

He walks the streets, canyons

of darkness and fear.

He walks the streets, forested

by voices  rising not in hope

but desire, seeking what

he will not offer, refusing what

he freely gives.

This poem is submitted to Open Mike Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The white stone

Walk on a rocky beach

seek a single stone

a white stone worn

smooth and buffed

by large hands using

the sea to sand and

grind, and shape and

contour, flatten.

The stone bears a name,

my name, the name

I do not know.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems submitted, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph by Sue Rawlings via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

My father was a young man once

My father was a young man once:

high school football, dreams

of college and medicine but it all

changed one day, one fine

October day in 1929,

it all fell apart, shattering, shadows

splintering across the pathways,

disappearing into the reality

of no food on the table. Instead

of tending patients he tended

oil fields, the work was dirty

and smelly but it paid and it

fed four people,

even if he hated it, hated

the dirt and grease and grime

and coarseness and each payday

punctuating dream's end. I wonder

if he ever cried Abba.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. Please visit the site to see more poems.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Fury

No warning, or portent,

only a slight movement of air

at first, birthing wind

strengthening

forcing small droplets of vapor

together, into clouds

darkening, edged in gray

then blue-black, a herald

of destructive desire

clouds baptizing softly

then hard, tiny stilettos stinging

skin, tearing at pores

as the fury wraps around me,

offering not destruction

not violence or death

but love, ultimately.

I’ve been reading The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning, and his chapter entitled “Fury” put me in mind of the images above. More on that tomorrow.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVersePoets.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Words walk humbly

Words walk humbly,

offering themselves in place

of their letters, protected

from erasure or white-out.

I pick up a word, carelessly

dropped and disregarded;

in my hand it feels smooth

and cool, live a river stone.

Words spill from my hands,

cascading into streams and flows

of other words, others’ words,

joining wet stones on the sand,

slowly eroded by waves, and rain.

I pick up words on the sand and

send them skipping across waves,

edging into ocean’s surface sheen,

reflecting glimpses of sun’s light

slicing the day.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVersePoets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph by Fran Hogan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Smoking area

My office used to overlook

the smoking area, the window

framing a view of inhaling

and puffing and low murmurs

of conversation, smoke rising

while it stained the space

around it, until the celebrants

were banished, chased away

to the property line. Now all

I see is an empty bench, with

no incense rising to heaven.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more posts, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

And the poem is based upon a true story.

Bluff at sunrise

The sunrise edges across

the bluff, a slow tear

emerging from the clouds,

clouds like smoke, smoke

rushing, failing to stop

the tear, cast aside

like yesterday’s war,

the beauty stark

in the desolation

of a thousand days,

a thousand years.

This poem is submitted to the Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Sunrise, Saturday, Nov. 10, viewed from the balcony of the main building at Laity Lodge in the Texas hill country.

Art Form, with Beer

Done nobody put on a tailgate party

like us LSU fans do a taligate party

and the beer do flow, ma cher, and

the shrimps do boil wit da crawfish

and we tro da potatoes in the pot

wit da crawfish and spill a little beer

for da seasoning but not too much

cuz da beer is brewed to be drunk,

with da ice in galvanized tubs and

if it spills just drink from the tub,

we got da straws, ma cher,

and it don’t matter what kind

of beer cuz it all ends up in da same place

washing down da muffalettas and  

da shrimps and da crawfish (you gotta

suck them crawfish heads, ma cher)

and we boogie to da music and

sometimes forget da football game

and usually don’t even have a ticket

but da real party’s out here, ma cher,

and we Cajuns have done created

ourselfs a tailgate party art form

wit da eternal question: how many

beers does it take to kiss

a baby alligator?

Over at TweetSpeak Poetry, Seth Haines has a poetry prompt – pairing beer or wine with an event. I couldn’t resist.

This poem is also submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

Rainy Days at School

On rainy days the classroom

smells like mud from the swamp

the school is built upon. We stand

in an alphabetical line for lunch,

the mud from our shoes gradually

shading the floor with a grayish

patina. We walk/march in lined

unison to the cafeteria four our feast

of mystery meat in gravy, boiled

spinach with a slice of boiled egg,

beets and other delicacies to affront

the childish palate. I wasn’t Catholic

but I loved Fridays because it was

always fish on Fridays. At recess

we have Polar Bars or Fudgcicles or

Dreamcicles, to wash away

the taste of beets, the smell of mud.

Lunch is a quarter, ice cream

a nickel and much the better

value for the money.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems, please visited the site. Links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time.

This is also one on a series of poems about growing up in the South, suggested by my friend Nancy Rosback. We didn’t have boiled spinach and beets every day in our school cafeteria, but those are the foods that have lingered in memory. (Our cafeteria workers also never looked as cheerful as those in the photograph.)

Photograph courtesy Grand Island Pictures from the Past.

How to Eat Cornbread

I never liked cornbread,

those sticks my mother baked

in the cast-iron molded pan,

a black pan with six

indentations like perfectly

shaped and aligned graves. Then

my grandmother showed me

how to truly eat cornbread,

baked in a cake pan, extra sugar

in the batter and finished (hot)

with butter and syrup,

pronounced sirp.

This is another in a series of poems about growing up in the South (yes, I know a lot of them are about food, but that’s better than shooting cats). The series was suggested by my friend Nancy Rosback at A Little Somethin’. She sort of grew up in the South – Southern Illinois.

This is poem is also being submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph courtesy of Anson Mills.

Symphony

Streams of notes

dance and cut

floating bright

molecules

of air and

light and fire

red swirls of

musical

sounds and songs

and motions

bonding in

unison:

symphony.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems, please visit the site.

Photograph: Music Notes Background by Vera Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Feeding koi

Flashes, splashes of gold

orange yellow white black

punctuated by plaintive

open mouths, jostling

and competing for bits

of compacted pellets

(25 cents per serving)

(what a deal) (even if of

unknown nutritional value)

delighting both a child

and the child within.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Grandfather and grandson feeding koi at St. Louis Union Station, April 8, 2012, by Stephanie Young.

The Signs of the End of the Age

They lay their snares, their questions masked

in seeming innocence, an intellectual curiosity

overflowing with a venomous taste for death.

By whose authority do you teach?

Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?

Which brother is the husband in heaven?

It was a dance of course, the masque of death,

blood-red with the impulse, the compulsion

to murder and destroy, for the sake of the nation.

As they dance the dance, as they sway and

pirouette, as they devour with their smiles,

the widow in poverty gives her two pennies.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVersePoets. The links for all poems submitted will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today at the dVerse Poets site.

This poem is also a meditation for Easter week. It was the Tuesday of that week that Jesus spoke in the temple for the last time as a free man.

Gabriel's Song

I sing my song

in a circle of radiance.

You stand among fanged lions.

You dream cloudless visions,

you young man full

of faith.

You are esteemed, highly.

You walk the temple stones.

You hope for a son, still,

you old man whose gnarled voice

I still.

Your prayer is heard.

You work the olives and the hearth.

You gaze shyly at your betrothed,

you young woman full of oak

and faith.

You are favored, highly.

I sing my song

in a circle of fire.

At TweetSpeak Poetry, we’ve been talking about angels this month. And since the month is almost over, I thought I better add something angelic. Well, sort of angelic.

This poem is also submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: 13^th century Georgian icon of the Archangel Gabriel.