Waking
Nocturnal phantoms
Tussle with the nascent morn
Consciousness prevails.
Poem #5
Melancholia
The dawn shines like a new penny on black asphalt,
She drops her paisley scarf over the day to protect her eyes,
Still, the light struggles to burn through,
But she’s unprepared to dismiss the quiet discontent flowing through her veins,
She disguises the malaise from others with dark shades and a tilted smile,
Silently enduring the tainted warmth conceals the pain produced,
The thorned crown belongs to her and it isn’t to be shared.
Poem #4
The Artist’s Hands
Hands of brawn stroke whispers on the canvas exposing the artist
His story skillfully written in masterful hues
Tones sing lyrics of the conductor revealing his symphony
Genius before us conjuring creation from his hands.
Poem #3
Mothers and Daughters
I wake to the ticking of the clock on mother’s face.
The unheard, yet perceived, ticking calls out to me –
Get up, get moving, don’t stop,
Listen to the clock.
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
Mother’s clock at half past eleven
Beckons me without speaking,
Go tend the children,
Go feed the flock,
Listen to the clock.
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
Once she tended children
And she fed the flock.
I wonder now, is this my duty?
Is this my destiny?
I listen to the clock.
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
The ceaseless ticking of the clock –
Is it ticking from her face or mine?
Where is her Jesus – her savior – who hides in the clock?
Can he slow the ticking?
Can he slow the clock?
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
I leave the questions in my bed
And move to mother’s room.
Wrinkled frailness rest amidst well-worn sheets.
For now, I’ll forget the children,
I’ll forget the flock.
I silently give my mother what comfort I can,
I toil to wind her clock, because –
This is my duty,
This is my destiny.
**********
Poem #2
Quick, dart for cover
Rotation, devastation
The bully moves on.
Poem #1
The Painting
The door of the museum opens on
the exhibit of the long gone artist.
The couple walk in and look at his work.
Momentarily, he and she observe.
He raises an eyebrow and her eyes roll.
They move to the next, not understanding
the intimacies they bear witness to
in the blacks and grays and blues and purples.
They do not see love and hate, life and death or
the secrets of a man’s life put on display,
illustrated in the mingled pigments.
But one day the front door opens again.
A woman stands before the artist’s work.
Her pulse quickens, her spirit awakens.
She perceives the passion the painting holds.
She feels the love and hate, the life and death.
For her, the colors tell the lost story
of the artist, who created to share
history, written in textures and hues
of paint tinted with his dripped sweat and blood.
As he labored, he hoped some would see
with eyes of the soul and not the socket.
The woman knows that long ago, he stood
in his studio and painted for her
the picture hanging in the museum,
and finally, she has come to see it.
