2022, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, the no-scape, waterfront

no. 54

We march, animatronic yetis waiting
for our moment
that dream of love and melting:
the world moves different in the cold –

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2022, Autumn, Louisville Stories, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, poetry, Prose Poem, river life, the no-scape, waterfront

from Driftwood – a piece (song of songs)

Pain. Sometimes the way in is pain.

When I was young I lived under a blessed illusion painted by my parents that pain is temporary. This too, though, is culture prop-up job. One of those old cowboy movie set props dust downs that only looks real through a tight camera angle.

Sometimes in the morning after a night on the wharf my hip sings, some harmonizing echo like last night when the cooler weather rolled in bringing tree whipping wind and whitecaps. The lines wrapped from the capstan to the timberhead are stretched like an erhu. The cold fingers in the wind play. The fleet dances on the whitecaps like middle-aged hipsters when their favorite song plays over the supermarket speaker. This song is a refrain of pain, kicked up in a current and echoing up into the city with it’s apathetic ears and high falutin’ notions of upward mobility. The song sings to the clouds, to whatever heaven waits. This pain sings forever. These bones are just one more instrument being tuned.

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2022, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, summer

not quite meek and probably nothing learned

Vindication also falls when it rains.
These bone aches they aren’t
for nothing then. Yes still
there’s that notion that lingers —
pain should mean something. Sometimes
even accompanied by frustration.
Shaking my umbrage at heaven
all one or none or a 100 billion
one more ache one more angry itch
in the universe’s taint I fall silent
when the sky finally breaks.

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