unearthing poems
We called men like him cowards,
Because he refused to fight
And murder civilians.
Because he shot his officer in the back.
Because he came home and shot himself
Instead.
We call men like him cowards.
Because the rest of us could never understand:
The pain in his heart;
The sinking gut;
The explosions in his head.
We didn’t get the joke:
That cryptic clarity
That needed to be
put to rest.
We call them cowards
We call them
We call
We.
Cowards.
May 1, 2011; Ground Zero …
The sweet scent of death.
Celebrate the end of fear
at public hangings!
Nursery Rhymes …
… Yet, what lessons learned?
Ten years of nightmares, and still
we hide behind flags.
Black Horizons …
Where did the sun go?
Black smoke rises from straw men
who preach in the flames.
Cold Mathematics:
Every time a child is bombed …
… terrorists are born.
Soft,
her eyes droop and stare,
watching my every move.
Pupils that speak a language
impossible to confuse.
I toil on my computer.
Ears
perk, jerking back
and forth,
waiting for the next move. My hands
clamor and clink!
in the kitchen sink.
Ex-
hale, her slender snout breathes in and
out with such force that I can
feel her boredom
on the back of my neck.
I sweep and mop the fetid floor.
Perched
on the rug, she observes
and wiggles her wet nose,
soft like baby toes, and
smells the trash
as it walks through the door.
Gray
Are those eyes that wonder
why I occupy my time
doing nothing, when
I could be outside
playing Frisbee.
Fine. Let them eat cake.
Dictators look so foolish
When Hell shakes the gates.
—
History teaches:
What goes around comes around.
Raise the guillotine!
—
When the masses rise
Power collides, proving that
Even Pharaohs fall.
A December sunrise over New Mexico brings an end
to the embryonic slumber of this strange girl’s earthen hovel.
Stepping outside to piss,
a stream splashes gorges through the frosted ground as
steam rises to the occasion.
On the eastern horizon,
the sun pokes his golden thorns over
the tattered edges of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. Shadows disappear
as the glowing aura sprinkles a dash of tangerine below,
soft like baby’s breath. Bashful stars mill about
in the violet currents to the west.
Tipsy-toed, they curtsy and laugh
and kiss their farewells
to midnight’s glistening dew.
The bitter cold encapsulates, breathing deep to
suck with scorched lungs just
for a taste of something so sweet,
so frigid,
that it breaks the skin on morning teeth.
A coyote caterwauls to the dimmed moon, crying for her capitulation
to the onslaught of day,
the beast’s cackles ring of freedom’s waking revelry.
But nothing else.
No words,
no catch phrases or wasted breath from those
who buzz or whiz or clamor or curse.
All are frozen dead in their beds
as the wind whirls and gusts scatter dust
from brittle sagebrush needles.
Breaking trance,
her subtle call from the squatty shelter shatters lonely silence,
as this desert maiden before me
paces barefoot on sandstone steps.
With eyes that sparkle like winter jasmine
her whisper nibbles on my ear,
“Coffee?”
The simplicity is overwhelming.
“Absolutely.”
“Occam’s Razor (The Road Most Taken)”
Two roads forked in a golden forest.
And of course, physics proving
One cannot at once be in two locations,
I stared up and down in my confusion,
Admitting to the wood’s whispering chorus
That I had no idea where I was going.
“You’re lost,” said she, looking rather coy.
“I am not,” I say with a smirk.
“North is that way,
If you check the moss upon that birch.”
So I ventured left with much courage,
Satisfied in my quick thinking and primordial knowledge.
But she, stubborn as a knotted root
Decided on the other.
For in her mind, the grass was springy
And would not muddy up the boot.
“And besides,” said she,
“On my path the weather is fairer.”
I shall be telling this with some dismay,
For an ancient instinct failed that day.
Whereas she traversed steadfast in her persistence
And made it home to a glass of warm liqueur
I stumbled under the stormy skies of October
Down the path of most resistance.
Last call sends me home.
Hazy eyes that see my life
reflected at night.
Stumbling back through a miserable February frost, steam rises from the interstate overpass and permeates into my stinging lungs. The bridge’s unforgiving concrete ceiling serves as a home to the dregs, the junkies, and the discarded human waste lost in the bowels of an insatiable society. Walking past like faded ghosts in the fog, their faces reflect the horrors of being left behind. Scars scream the pain of being jumped in the park for a pair of shoes. Teeth cocaine-cracked and jagged from one too many run-ins with the cops. Their earthen shells creak rickety and unstable as they hobble on blistered feet and social paranoia. Hungry, anything helps, his cardboard sign suggests.
“Spare some change?” He asks through mumbled gums.
Parents, principals, and politicians insist he’ll only use it to score a fix or drink himself into a coma. Yet my cold, numb hands finger their way into the deepest corners of barren pockets.
What’s a few quarters
if it helps you through the night?
Who am I to judge?
— Jeff Englehart