Poetry


• In Reverence for Silent Stones - R.G. Cantalupo
• repeatedly - Paul Tanck
• Nothing is easy in America - Hillary Kaye
• Toast to Fortune - J. Allen Worthey
• At Peace - Vessy Mink
• THE WIND - Stuart Z. Perkoff

In Reverence for Silent Stones

By R.G. Cantalupo

There are places I hike to I want to hold as mine
secret respites where the red sage blooms
and the tan faces of ancient stones are weathered
by the seasons and little more. Some times
that’s all I want. Just for this sandstone boulder
nestled high in the Malibu mountains to be as it was
a week or so ago. Not to find, on an afternoon like this,
these irreverent cravings from the city of angels
grinning from the stone: a heart with a wrong-way
arrow and a name, a child’s thickly-scrawled E.T.,
a knife-edged 19th Street Gang. There must be
a crime in it somewhere, though I can’t find it,
unless absence is a crime. To leave without ever leaving
a trace, to have consumed and endured so much
in the daily grind of human existence and then
to be gone, no more than a puff of ashes blown to
a forgetful sea, or roots of grass on the manicured lawn
of Rose Hills, is well, too much to ask. In Canyon De
Chelley, the Anasazi left petrogliphs a thousand feet up
the sheer cliffs of granite, and twelve-hundred years later
the Navajo came and painted red pictographs beside
them. When I touched their stick figures I felt the ache
of their labor. My palm turned warm, and so I let them be.
I wish these images a few miles from my home were so.
But they are not. They are cold against my skin, and so
I rub them away. I rub as if I were the tides’ good hands,
the salt breath of the Earth, I rub till the stone is quiet,
unburdened, and own its silence once again-

***********

repeatedly

By Paul Tanck

there’s that
rat-a-tat-tat
helicopter flatulence
that hoovers nearby, then
recedes, then
attacking again repeatedly
like an angry loud insect
repeatedly
automatically repeating repeatedly
beyond human endurance
repeating repeatedly beyond all reason and
control, then suddenly
nothing

*************

--Nothing is easy in America---

By Hillary Kaye

Nothing is easy in America.
Twentieth century holding tank
for the karmically derailed
Moon monsters
on their way
to different forms
of Hell.

No,
I am sorry
the sky can not be seen
over NICK'S,
WE EAT MEAT BAR AND GRILL.

Everyone
who has ever walked in
knows that one thing for sure.
It's written over the bar
in dayglow letters
I can't rememberexactlywhatitsaid
but you know
what I mean
itsalifetime
proposition
it's a day in the life
it's like every other day
in the life
it's a monster

***********

Toast to Fortune

By J. Allen Worthey

With a liberation drawn from the breast of Texas
For the god Well-Meaning
We, Diligent Circumstances, embark occurring century
On apathetic footing
For Mount Annuity

That Elysian FIelds pristine lie always, alas,
Unless first pored over by
We, Civic Heretics, who strew alms-house appurtenances
On a market fecund
With fidelity.

And, verily, cavalcades pace paper trails hewn by ennobled crusaders
For coalescing with the masses that
We, Ticker-Tape Artisans, earmarked one insurgent spring-
Spilling tea,
Moving tepees.

So, certainly, our assessments reciprocate the life we lend them-
They pay us; we do the thinking.
We, Sanctimonious Absit Invidia, are most adroit.
Consecrated.
Constitutionally protected.

*************

At Peace 

by Vessy Mink

When you let love in
It sweeps you up
Onto it's wealth of possibilities.
Where are you?
I am winged and perching near you
"What would you like to learn?"
Mother asks me
I answer five or six different scopes
Unable to choose
Eventually choosing one more than the most.
Languages now lure me
Ancient lands discerning
Record sweeps of ancient prose
Or The Rose
The brand new rose is so closed
It's opening is much like the birthing of you.
Historians coined "the collectors"
A housekeeper taking notes
Offering small but striking occurrences
Rises to the surface
The church bells ring a new hour
I love to take photographs of Natures form
Emancipating heroes of the wood
And when the breeze comes in
With smooth gates opening
Letting in the imagination
Of your eyes on Nature, being of Nature
Realized.

*************

THE WIND

By Stuart Z. Perkoff

Last night it came, late, and swept
along between the houses, chilled in
the open windows.
Outside
a tin can and a bottle rolled up and down
the rough street. They made a noise
like a horse-drawn wagon,
filled with junk and broken windows.
I thought
“it was part of the music,” she said.
There was only one star in the sky.
and a moon slice.
The world hung suspended from them
in the blackness,
suspended by strings
of bells and Chinese glass, swaying
and ringing
in the wild wind.

Posted: Fri - August 1, 2003 at 08:12 PM          

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