Two Poems by Stephen A. Rozwenc

 

Poem #1 Untitled

 

early morning rain

which is another word for grace

accumulates the sultry blue dreamscape

where the living and the dead

rehearse their dialogue

 

broken like ritual bread

the ladder in tribute settles

on an indifferent windowsill

selected to be worn by the dead mother

for her climb through cream white temptation

 

I press my cheek

against the stone wall that houses some

of her previous lives

and in that peculiar voice that has no sound

but sense and image

I request a private audience

a private audience

with the concert pianist

the Buddhist Hermit thrush

and the red headed chanteuse

from the Moulin Rouge

to select

her next pair of rebirth parents

 

their purling vapours rise

wild poppy bright

like bliss trailing emptiness

through a recombinant pair of double doors

then whisk to a dark chapel house

 

my head wrapped in a babushka

like an old woman

I follow

with my broom

sweeping illusions of the present

off the patio altar behind me 

 

 

Poem #2 Untitled

 

they tell me

beneath the second dawn

of wild canaries

your platinum beach dances

the face you had

before your mother and father were born

 

(another beguiling karma

to sip

savour

and perpetually exceed)

 

o that faraway

speckled everywoman look

of laconic fondness

and Rapunzel meaninglessness

gazed

from your unrequited pearls of the sea

lovingly summons

distant mountain peaks

fuming snow

and filigree valley arabesques

mouthing sonic vowels

until

the half-spent trunk of the ages

spirals dark fires between your legs

where the nonexistence

of evil feeds

 

Stephen A. Rozwenc -  is a widely published expat poet, who currently resides in Thailand. He has published six collections of poetry. His published book collections are: The Fourth Turning, Grass Hill, Ekphrastic Nightingales, New England Fortune Cookies, Death Is Birth, and Thai Diary.

More than two hundred of his poems have appeared individually in numerous poetry publications including: The Mailer Review, Buddhist Poetry Review, Blue Lake Review, Dm Du Jour, Equinox, Eunoia Review, Glass Poetry, Naugatuck River Review, New Pattaya Review, Philadelphia Poets, Poets Against War, Plum Tree Tavern, Russia (translations of famous Russian Poets),and Wordpeace. He has been a past recipient of two Williamsburg Massachusetts Arts Council Grants for poetry.