Category: Poetry

Jesse’s Homeless Face

By Michael Lee Johnson

Posted on

(version 3)

Someday Jesse wants to go home.

I see his world,

all it’s hidden concepts

embedded in Jesse’s aging facelife

has whispered by leaving

memory trails

wrinkled forehead,

deep as river bed ruts

dried with years, weather-beaten,

just above his bushy eyebrows

that are gray and twisted

much like life drawing memories

across his empty face.

Jesse has a long oblique

Jewish nose with dark

blue opal eyes,

that would pierce

even the pain

of his own crucifixion.

Life tears flow though

a whole new ghoulish

apparition, a vision

of homelessness plastered

east of Dearborn Bridge,

near Lower Wacker Drive,

downtown Chicago

where affluent citizens

seldom go unless inebriated;

puke-stained, or in a taxicab.

————————————–

Jesse’s hair sprouts skyward,

groomed like an abandoned

dove nest in wild Chicago

meandering winds.…

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The Hollow Creatures

By Michelle Gaddes

Posted on

Elegant autumn silhouettes hang around like little men
in bars, unsteady, anticipating the season’s departure.
They fall at any opportunity and the sun, always there,
secures the dapple-drunk-dancers into cool afternoon festival.
The harvests sleep; leaves have curled. The bruised past
flickers now through scratched, monochrome re-run.
Earth, still in motion; weary and ripped, shivers.
Dead spirits form low blankets of clouds –
they keep watch over the hollow creatures.
Spellbound, they, marveling new skin.
Eyes freshly gouged from wars stitched with ego-thread,
see the wandering babies collect fallen, colourless irises.
Miniature weapons of hate and fiction – undesirable gewgaws.
Then small distractions shatter tall visions like sudden,
burnt toffee and shadows ascend once more.
They fade fast into yesterday without hope.
And the hollow creatures, bloated with clichéd
placebo, expire like the little men’s smoke,
billowing skyward at the bar.

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