Four Poems by RC deWinter

 

meeting in the middle

 

what can i tell you 

that you don’t already know?

probably nothing that really matters

oh sure

i could fill your head with facts and figures

my opinions on any number of things

the highlights and low points of my life

and quantities of nonsense

unearthed from the disordered dictionary in my brain

but why would you care?

we might agree or argue 

smile or shout

but i have no good advice for anyone

no spectacular wisdom to impart

what’s sweet on my tongue

might be sour on yours 

and the inner maps we’re born with

determine so much of what we do

as we journey through the jungle we call life

so i’ll be me and you’ll be you’ll

and we’ll talk and laugh

and live without any expectations for anything

but perhaps friendship

 

the echo of silence

 

some nights the silence echoes
louder than any clap of thunder

my heart aches for a voice
as my hand involuntarily reaches for another

only to touch a ghost

engulfed in the ocean of loneliness
i flail in its frigid waters

as it leaks from my eyes in great salty drops
that caress my lips in the mockery
of ironic imitation

some voices are smooth whiskey
some the raucous screech of crows
some hands are roughened some smooth
none of that matters if love is there
i lie wide-eyed in the silence hoping

 

sitting in drydock

 

today i met a woman
dying
letting go of life
would that i could
have transfused
some of my time
into her veins
she has
more reason to live
than i

i've swallowed too many words
held back too many tears
there’s a dead dwarf star
where my heart should be
and my stomach is full of stones

i lounge in hamlet's living room
blowing smoke rings
into an empty world
how flat and stale and
aye unprofitable
this landscape lies
i need a good jolt of juice

 

lunch at the all-american café

sitting in this honky-tonk diner

just a quick stop on the way to nowhere

i can feel hostile eyes puffy and sullen

holding me in a spotlight of curiosity and contempt

 

as i standing out like a radioactive alien

at a high school football game glance at the menu

offering nothing i really want but i have to put something

in my stomach so i can keep going to wherever it is i’m going

i ordered the soup of the day from a taciturn waitress

then keeping myself to myself buried my face in a book

which now that i think on it wasn’t too bright because

these folks aren’t readers and books are generally suspect

 

now when they’re not staring at me

all eyes are on the television over the counter

blaring the latest news from the state designed

to keep us fractured frightened and misinformed

 

and when after what seems an eternity

the soup’s sloshed in front of me i famished

dig in but there’s no comfort in this meal

i taste violence in every spoonful

 

 

 

RC deWinter’s poetry is widely anthologized, notably in "New York City Haiku" (NY Times, 2/2017), "easing the edges:  a collection of everyday miracles" (Patrick Heath Public Library of Boerne, 11/2021) "The Connecticut Shakespeare Festival Anthology" (River Bend Bookshop Press, 12/2021) in print: 2River, Event, Gargoyle Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, the minnesota review, Night Picnic Journal, Plainsongs, Prairie Schooner, San Antonio Review, Southword, The Ogham Stone, Twelve Mile Review, York Literary Review among many others and appears in numerous online literary journals.