Mystical

July 13, 2019

EROTHANATOS Vol. 3, No. 3

Just yesterday Erothanatos (from India) released its issue number 3 of volume 3, a collection of poets from several countries.  I was honored to have seven poems appear in this issue and you can find them here:

https://www.erothanatos.com/v3i3n10

But if you don’t have the time, one of the included poems was:

In a Prior Life I Was

Reznikoff, casting words to paper
after the last brief was filed,

Aleichem, finding peace
amidst the hordes,

Red Deer Running, watching
as the horse soldiers drew aim,

a child, never understanding
why the old ones only brought death,

a poor Jew, hung on a hill
from the crossed beams, for believing,

a ram, led from the thicket
to the altar, as the boy was freed,

alone in a hotel room
fearing sleep.

March 31, 2019

A PEELING

She says if you could only
peel back the photograph, you could
read the entire story that lies beneath.
Is deeper than the image below which
it lies trapped, and the wider, imbued with a meeting
the image could not capture, just as,
she says frowning, there are no words
for parts of the picture, a symbiosis
that we of unitary senses cannot unite.
This one, pointing to a crucifix, shows him
where he ought to be, the pain, his pain
apparent, but so much deeper than
any image or sculptors hand can fashion.
Undeserved pain, not by sacrileges, by rebellion
but he would understand it, he would
revel in it, for he was the greatest rebel
and he would easily peel back the picture
in step wholly into the story beneath.

January 24, 2019

WORD

archetypes
symbols arrayed
arranged
precise
meanings elusive
multiplicative
hearer dependent
no Carrollean wishes
fortresses erected
below the tide line
await waves
minor etchings
Durer or trivial
seen or ignored
Lot cast
either diamond
or salt pillar
eroded by rain
adrift torn
by tongues
cast to ash.

First appeared in Eureka Literary Magazine Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997)
December 4, 2018

MIRACLES

If you ask, she says,
you take away the chance
of ever getting a miracle.
If you ask and it happens
you reduce it to a simple
prayer answered, no matter
how surprising the outcome.
You don’t see, he said
it’s not the final act
that is the miracle,
it’s that it actually happens
to someone presumptuous enough
to believe themselves deserving.

September 26, 2018

ANCESTORS

He clearly remembers standing on the edge
peering down into the almost bottomless canyon,
listening to the narrow river slide across the rocks
thrown down by its walls over millennia.
He was a visitor here, knew he would stay
only briefly, then leave, his spirit hiding
among the rocks in the nearby mountains,
staring down on the mesa for eternity.
He remembers listening for coyote, begging
the wily one to tell him the tales of its ancestors
with whom he will soon share this canyon.
All he hears is the wail of the jackrabbit,
coyote’s message in a foreign voice,
as night engulfs the mesa and he
stares up at the galaxies and stars
which barely notice the small orb
hanging in the distant sky.