Five Poems by Wayne F. Burke

 

from OUT OF MY MIND

 

Friends

 

A Kentucky license plate

beneath a bumper sticker

FRIEND OF GOD

got some gall I think

as god cannot say

"no friend of mine,"

or maybe god can

but who would hear?

Kind of like a sticker

FRIEND OF COPS

or

NO REAL FRIENDS, JUST GOD

JUST COPS.

 

 

Black Shoe

(apologies to Sylvia Plath)

 

Black shoe!

You do not do--

achoo!

Like a foot

thirty years

barely beating

black shoe

(shew)

a really big

a broad

in Paris,

elsewhere--

Peru.

 

 

Cold Snow World

 

gray 6 AM

my car an igloo

in the lot--

Eskimo-dreams woke me

5:30 AM

not even a mouse

stirring and

rooftops of white dawn

which was my Indian name

when I lived with the

Facowee tribe and

tee-peed the landscape

at five foot five

in my tadpole outfit

in the era

of the Giant Sloth

and Smilodon

stuck in tar pits 

of

my mind.

 

 

A nice Winter day of

warm sun and

sparkling snow crust;

a half-moon like a thumb print

in blue sky, and

crows drifting by, wings

flapping--

I sit on a park bench

that holds me upright

or prone

as the world whirls

through

time &

space.

 

 

Dream

 

the Woman's Major League Baseball

Homerun Champion--

she hit 55 during the

season, and

has big tits 

I lie my head

beside

as the train, clickity-clack

down the tract, takes us to the

Grand Canyon.

 

Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published in print and online (including in LOTHLORIEN POETRY JOURNAL). He is author of 8 published poetry collections, a collection of short stories, and the non-fiction work, HENRY MILLER, Spirit & Flesh, recently (9-22) published by Cyberwit. net. He lives in Vermont.