Rainforest
Awakening
For Thom
Woodruff and Neil Creighton
Kookaburra
laughter shatters
nocturnal
silence startling
sleepy
night skies unfazed
by
sunlight slivers piercing
ferns, orchids, and vines, warming
dew
laden leaves while bushman
alarm
clocks fill bills, tilt necks,
allow
droplets to roll down throats
adding
a gurgling vibrato to their
incessant
cackling and chuckling.
Steam
rises from a billabong, melds
water
dripping off sweating trees
creates
misty rainforest apparitions,
hypnotically
drones like a digeridoo.
Far
below the tropical canopy
clay-covered
crocodiles stir
bony
scales, open jaws, yawn,
snap
chops, close menacing mouths
revealing
peg-shaped teeth
each
conical top and bottom fang
fiendishly
locked in faux smiles,
grinning
at rats and redclaw crayfish
scurrying
over driftwood—ritually wallowing
in
muddy trenches, staying cool.
Mosquitos
swarm like locust hordes
at
dusk, attack flesh—buzz into the night
as green tree frogs crawk, flying foxes
squeal,
and diminished guuguubara mirth ceases.
Carrie’s Theatre
Carrie knocked on tavern windows
late into the night, her knuckles
nonchalantly glanced off glass
like dragonfly wings grazing
humid August wind currents. Soft.
Sheer. Impulsive. Sylphlike imprints
left textured barfly calling cards denoting
modest impatience & compound desire—
longing to share nocturnal mysteries found
between lines of misery & despair.
Oh, Carrie shuffled down cobblestone
walkways always alone, aware sleeping
bodies seldom rose at the sound of her
gypsy fingers poking through laced gloves
tickling doorjambs during midnight hours
enrapturing evening’s watchful creatures
as awestruck by her antics as a movie
heroine brought to life in an empty cinema
where solitary contentment tongue-tied
vocal sots with her desolate, unabashed beauty.
Universal
Arcs
Billions, billions, & billions
of ugly golden arches stretch out
like plastic saffron rainbows glowing,
beckoning & encircling the globe;
assimilated eyesores, they provide
customers
easy access, promote fast food culture,
fuel shameless appetites with robust
service,
pander to vegans & meat eaters alike.
Somewhere in New Mexico, inside
a flying saucer, Roswell cashiers
take orders, sling double-cooked fries,
feel superior to Swedish counterparts
labouring at the worldwide franchise
who work in Lindvallen‘s “ski-through”
unaware Nordic patrons slide home
long before their McNuggets grow cold.
Disparaging the Mickey D’s next to
Prague’s Museum of Communism,
& Kristiansand, Norway’s former
bank,
the Cactus State’s UFO kitchen crew
talk trash about New Zealand’s food prep
team aboard a converted prop plane,
yet dream of flipping burgers & mixing
milkshakes in basement of the Louvre.
The arches, the arches, those damn golden
arches, challenge good taste & throttle
culture like weaving ivy, greedy, invasive—
cause an art deco hotel to foreclose
in Melbourne, Australia, refurbishing the
interior,
retaining sleek lines & kitschy shapes
as McD chains
sprout up in the heart of Israel's Negev
Desert
& thrive across street from Egypt’s
Luxor Temple.
Hep
I’m
hip. I’m no square. I’m alert. I’m awake. I’m aware.
….
When it was hip to be hep, I was hep. —Dave Frishberg
No applause, snapping fingers
filled a void where beat poets
ignited thoughtful minds; their
verse & prose rooted in Eastern
philosophy, enhanced via call
& response, in a roomful of stoners:
mellow clouds reigned, silence held court.
Cigarette orbs lit candleless tables
people shuffled to restrooms, kept
time & step to rhythmic bongos
while bar tenders listened, practiced
tavern-style Zen meditation, mixed
drinks, sang scat & flirted with glassy
eyes
hidden behind heroin shades.
Social spiritus’s Ginsberg & Waldman,
Ferlinghetti
& di Prima, Weiss & McClure
stepped onto stage avoiding bright lights
ranting, raving, revelling in chaotic imagery
& cadence, smoke curling around heads
like coal black halos bringing smiles or
furrowing
brows in jazzy rooms where fingers popped.
Pins
& Needles Wonderland
Placing childhood fingers
in dimpled metal thimbles,
we’d dig through grandma’s wicker
sewing basket, armed against
threatening pikes and lances
where silk and cotton threads
hung from elongated tear ducts
like enchanted medieval sigils
below slender, singular eyes.
Grandma read us passages
from Through the Looking Glass
allowed our shielded digits, Spartan
spirits, and creative minds to move
from thoughts of cabbages and kings
to youthful conquests of sandbox
Jabberwockies or crystal cave
challenges, defying falling rocks
and hypothermia seeking cracks of light.
Sterling Warner - An award-winning author, poet, and former Evergreen Valley College English Professor, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared many international literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Danse Macabre, Trouvaille Review, Lothlórien Poetry Journal, Ekphrastic Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps, and Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poems 2019-2022, and Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci (2023)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Currently, Warner writes, hosts/participates in “virtual” poetry readings, turns wood, and enjoys retirement in Washington.
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