Shirley Whiting Allard
When A Child Cries
The moon will hide its face behind its glow,
ashamed to light the way, or just stand by.
Humanity will suffer, justly so,
for every time a child is made to cry.
A just and fair reward we shall impart,
for one who preys on innocence and trust.
For every child who knows a broken heart,
a penalty of death, is barely just.
Our world’s become complacent to abuse
and all good deeds are carried out in vain.
There is no good defense, no just excuse
for any time a child is left in pain.
Stand up and shout; insist that someone pay
for every time a child is led astray.
Autumn
The blinding sun arrives to paint the dawn
With red and yellow strokes against the sky
The frost has melted on the dormant lawn
While crickets chirp a lonesome lullaby
All birds retreat as worms have disappeared
Their daily song a now nostalgic tune
Escaping to a fruitful atmosphere
Where days are long and daffodils still bloom
The song of spring must now be sung within
Until the ice and snow begin to melt
The song birds will return and once again
The birthing of a season shall be felt.
There’s but one thing that’s left to circumstance
Can hearts endure the song without the dance?
Moonlit Flight
I cannot give you inner strength that’s gone
I am, at best, a shoulder to lean on
I wish that I could will your fence to mend
And see you standing tall and proud, my friend
Cold shadows block your view and make you blind
To all the beauty captured by your rhyme
But all the rays of sunshine, when combined
Can’t penetrate that shadow in your mind
The darkness has its way with you, the light
Is locked away and banished from your sight
You pine away in dark, eternal night
A bat’s existence – lost in moonlit flight
And still, I hold the hope that once again
You’ll crack and let the sunlight trickle in.
Crystal Faldalen
Mirror
A soul as old as hers could not be kept
alive without the hope of something more
How deep into the night she must have wept,
awoke with broken dreams upon the floor
As though she’d felt the waves against her feet
crashing upon black sand she’d never seen
and in this place the truth she’d chance to meet
and saw it far more vivid than a dream.
Each day she feels like she is locked inside
a world that doesn’t want to understand
It seems they find all ways to run and hide
from thoughts that are outside the realm of man
I watch her sit without a word and cry
and feel her ancient soul begin to die.
Lee Evans
Light Sells
The agent told us to leave on a lamp
And open all the blinds. “Light sells,” she said.
“Stuffed animals that cluster on the bed,
Those pictures of the family: they stamp
The house with you and yours. When people tramp
The premises, they fail to see themselves,
Distracted by your knick-knacks on the shelves.
But light and empty space correct that slant.”
The Light is what I follow; so it seems
A quite appealing tactic to employ–
Though I have on occasion been deceived
By such displays as pledge domestic joy
That can be sold and bought and then possessed.
As time goes by, they fool me less and less.
Polyphemus
Throughout this fabled country of the free,
And dominating every living room,
There squats a Cyclops sentry guard to whom
All dwellers in each cavern must concede
A backward posture, so that his eyebeam
May cast upon the darkened wall shadows,
Which take the shapes of things they cannot know–
And this is how they realize their dreams.
But woe unto the man who sues for grace
In meditation, or who longs to hold
Communion with a living human face!
He winces, when upon the cave’s damp mold
They worship an electrical device,
And in that trance envision Paradise .
Alison Powell
Catcher
She’s stalking starlings in our grey back yard:
tail shivers, swishing. Dust swirls to my sill.
No squeaks to greet those speckled feathers, tarred
and sticking to the ground. A rolled eye spills
lonely cries for mercy. I cannot help.
Her chin rests low on curled and sharpened claws,
where blood will catch, clouds curdle with the yelps.
A black beak beats a broken rhythm, forced
to stop and wait for jaws to sink around
and snap. Three shakes and she is done. The bird
becomes a mangled mess of sinew, bones
and entrails spread like string. She sniffs. Her fur
is feisty with the kill. She brings it in:
her bloodied gift of heart and half a wing.
David M. Pitchford
Losing Within
Man’s greatest conflict lies within him, deep—
deep as thought, as memory, as passion
and loathing and else . . . But this world’s fashion
clothes hideous scars in silk saris; keep
these demons at bay! What Devas will weep
for sorrows long past? No. Sin’s remission
mimics cancer: latent till progression
burns it to organ walls—like eye-sand in sleep.
Only love. Love is all we need. Between
birth and death, our only true sustenance
is this milk of kindness, honeyed, unseen
but in deeds, which prove its sacred essence . . .
All that comes between us is this obscene
illusion that between here and there—is distance.
Siobhan
Without Losing
Sensations tickle a memory’s edge
closed eyes can see the outline of the place
we find ourselves, lost to everyone else.
Have I been here before—have you ever?
Uncharted waters run beneath our feet.
We’re ankle deep in life’s passionate kiss
oblivious—but not entirely.
Reality circles and we’re captured
torn between this embrace and the other
side of where we were before it began.
Is there such a place inside fantasy
that will allow us the freedom to dream
and live alongside the rest of the world
without losing—to memory—passion?
John Byrne
Do You Remember When?
Do you remember when our hours had
No purpose higher than the two of us
Enlaced, entranced, ignoring all the bad
And good that swirls around a day because
There were the two of us, a universe
Enough to hasten all the minutes on
Their uninspired way until, perverse,
They drew the dismal night down tight upon
Our pleasuring and we then said “Goodbye”
And lied and lied again to claim this time
We meant “Goodbye”, “It cannot be that I
Won’t go.”, “Goodbye”, until we were resigned
To stay. Do you recall that wondrous day?
T’was yesterday and now we have today.
To Do Without
Renunciation’s such a noble thought
They taught me in my school for heaven-bound
And on the screen as well – when Ingrid sought
To stay, brave Humphrey B. was stern and sound
In getting her aboard the plane. To do
Without. To writhe in love so secretly
The other never knows ‘til after you
Are dust. There were served up incessantly
And swallowed willingly ‘til instantly
They disappeared the first time I saw you.
I writhed, all right, but not platonically
And silence, stern and secret wouldn’t do
To curb desire. So gripped by this romance
Renunciation didn’t have a chance.
It’s Probably Best
I know it’s time, the clock says rise and go
And so I will, but all my thoughts will stay
For thinking thoughts that don’t encompass you
Is but a shameful waste of energy.
There’s work, I know, and I will up and do
But when I leave I will not take my heart –
It’s powered solely by desire for you
And surely will stop beating if we part.
And though I am determined now to go,
I cannot make these arms that hold you near
Relinquish all the beauty that they know
So I, of course, will have to leave them here.
But then, what is there left to serve the day?
It’s probably best the rest give up and stay.
Kim Rickenbaker
Forecast
Grant the lips one final kiss,
upon the knock of Splendor’s door,
where clouds do hide from summer’s bliss,
and heaven tastes of sweet liqueur.
Ah Love, She lays hearts out to dry,
as Mother Earth lets down her hair,
beneath a cotton candy sky,
while hints of lilac tempt the air.
And Joy, She drifts among the wind,
her voice transcends a song of age,
careful not, the god’s offend,
two birds emerged from winter’s cage.
Now, for Rain absolves Love’s fears,
and floods the eyes with unshed tears.
Stephen P. Smith
Who With Empassion’d Breath
It’s only Spring who sings to me this morn,
With hair like honey gold and cool blue eyes.
The Winter ravaged fields she’ll soon adorn
With buds that wait for rain drops from the skies.
Seeds that lie beneath the ground in death,
Before Spring’s fertile sister will rejoice:
Hot-eyed Summer, who with empassion’d breath
Dances naked to rhythms of her choice.
I hear nymph-like Summer softly singing,
A carnal alto, her footfall’s soft descent.
Her perfume the soft caressing breeze is bringing.
Her sultry spell upon me won’t relent.
I close my eyes and dream about the day
When in the flowered fields entwined we lay.
De Profundis
Are all religions nothing but a fraud?
Was every single prophecy a lie?
And is it wrong to think a lonely god
Saw fit to create men who live and die?
In all this empty space, stars pale and dim
Glimmer in an empty, sable sphere.
Are there none to hear us when we cry to him?
Are there none but stars and nebulae anywhere?
In all the universe’s deep infinity
Are we the only sentient ones who can
Contemplate the notion of divinity,
And in the spiraling galaxies discern a plan?
How melancholy if it were for certain known
That through the black of space we drift alone.
Fate, Approximately
A new born babe I cradle in my arms.
Is his future planned ahead of him?
I’ll do my best to keep this boy from harm
And guide his steps in life. Bit if the whim
Of fate can do to him whate’er it will,
How can I change the path he walks in life?
This babe may be a murderer doomed to kill,
He may grow up a drunk who beats his wife.
Little boy, whom fate has sent to me,
How can I protect you from the world?
I cannot keep you ever on my knee,
Safe and happy in a blanket furled.
Tiny child I do not know your fate,
If you were born to love or born to hate.
Robert Thornton Connal
At A Sale of Scandinavian Drawings
Those ladies in their long coats, brushing snow
along their picture’s edge some Arctic dawn;
that church-bound boat with waves held to its bow;
that scudding sky, cloud-padded, neatly drawn;
stay still as rocks. And yet the grey wolf howls
beyond the forest, and the penciled lake
booms like a drowning bell — craving souls –
while on the still shore, frosted bushes quake.
And once upon a day lost under dreams
as darkness thundered in an empty bay
and rain scoured moor and path and lashed the beams
of torches, so we shuddered on our way
where rivers cracked with noise of stiff sea-swells
and streams sang silver in a cloud of bells.