Category: Poetry

river   city   sky
spectrum  of grey
ungiving surfaces

nothing immediate
available here

suspended
between cities
someone…

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Do you know that feeling you get
when giving up
when you don’t care for another day,
when you realize you are your childhood
no matter how much you try to smother it? 

As you wonder if anyone will care after you’ve departed
as you walk through the gate alone
in the same way you arrived. …

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I know the girl with the ashes in her hair,
the one with the dreams piled like logs, the one
who goes up in smoke because her daddy promised her the world
and who is gone, as fast as he came.

I know what it feels like to be those morphing feet,
those unseeding pumpkins, to return to a mouse from a stallion,

to pray and pray in someone’s locked room
that that someone, somewhere
will find you.

– Penney Knightly…

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the sun licks brittle leaves,
golden shiver of revelation.
the lies I told myself pierce
this vale, our decayed gulf
stark yellow now.

cold resolution quickens,
birdless horizon unveiled,
shadows on clouded eyes.

breath leaves in spirals, blooming
chill tendrils along obscure paths.
flickering cressets now naked and unhooded,
blurred tales raked aside, false and fallen.

look: here
the stories of trees and stones, moss and salt;
a book of signs, sigils written with rain–
these were never hidden.

bared truth beneath a smile’s distraction;
there, waiting beside remembered footprints,
calling across the clearing between us
in the dying sunlight.

– Fritz Eifrig…

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Sometimes when I close my eyes
The landscape dissolves
And I am two-thirds the wind
And one-third a boy in the city.
You will find me among
The high-rises hiding leaves
In dim-lit corners,
Pulling the fire-alarms
And filling the halls
With painted flames.
You’d be scared
If they weren’t the color
Of bad ideas,
The ill-planned blues
That are easily distinguishable
From real ceruleans.
But still, plastic or not,
I am incredibly happy.
Beneath these trees
I never accomplish anything,
And I haven’t moved
In thirty years.

– Seth Jani…

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My morning run GoFunds my soul.
A nighthawk calls from a roadside bush
quieting my muddled brain.
An owl hoots from a distant woods
drawing me into the present, in time to spot
a deer emerging from a cornfield,
a rabbit racing down the side of the road.
Fog settles in, providing inner calm.
Physically spent, spiritually rejuvenated,
I can now try to face the morning newspaper so that
the confluence of headlines becomes palatable.
            U.S. to spend 1.8 billion on nukes
            Experts offer tips on avoiding injuries
                        while conducting your fall clean-up
            9,000 Syrian civilians killed in the last year
            When is too early to decorate for autumn?
            National Guard called out to end Lakota ceremonies
                        surrounding pipeline protest
But disbelief, sadness, and anger build,
and then are assuaged by working with animals at the rehab center
and penning letters to Congress.…

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Emptiness eats at the heart, more surely than time itself,
yet some days we are blessed with company
enabling us to see just beyond the emaciated self.

Though the day ahead seems barren, a friend
will sometimes bring along all the light you lack to coast
above the dour grey slates and chimney pots.

So we make our soup of fresh tomatoes and basil
in the garret kitchen, and the knots in the stomach
loosen their grip as we make ready to eat and talk.

No time now for last year’s man, or any lost inventory
of sights not seen, things not done, time wasted
in procrastination, or dreams hardly begun.

And though we are still both dreamers of sorts,
we stand beside immense facades, telling the other
there is no need for touch, or sex, or love.…

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