Emily
Dickinson
knew
she was headed for
immortality
but was not so
sure
of eternity, and
never
did sign-on to the
Jesus-Program,
remaining
"un-saved" among the
"saved"
herd, including the members of her family.
Her
love for Sue
as
strong as that
for
other of her "angels"
she
sent missives to
from
the "Homestead," her father's house;
the
father she obeyed, Who Art at Home
her
"heaven," central command from
where
she sent dispatches from
a
puzzling dimension to many of those on the
receiving
end, among the ones she loved
with
a sticky love hard to
match
or evade; she sought reciprocity and
grew
lonely when only frost
arrived
instead.
Clouds
white
as bed sheets, white
as
the Nordic race,
colossally
unfurling in Montana
butte
formations, dark
underbellies,
new clusters lolling...
A
snaggle-puss face, a great grey
lost
continent, a bear, a shark, the
bust
of Augustus Caesar in the
fake
sea of
a phantom
world.
N.C.
(1926-68)
The
"secret hero" and
muse
of the
Beats'
found
on railroad tracks
and
close to death--
the
smell of tar bleeding through the
ties,
and
a
slow moving river trickling
beneath
a rusty trestle
nearby:
his
bone-y face planted
in
gravel that
smelled
of ash and dust...
As
the sun began
to
set
the
Shrouded Stranger, sitting
close
by, stared
with
vulture-eyes as
death
came floundering
down
the line
riding
the Whap-by Extry Special
ole
169.
Broke-Back
downstairs
below decks, apartment 2a, ack-hack
in
the nicotine mourning, his first butt of the day; and
a
foine day it is, the greenery so gleamily with a rarebit
of
sun schoine--they don't call this place Vert-Mont for
nothing,
fook, no they don't; take a look for crisp sakes,
Kelly-green,
lime-green, camouflage-green, pine-tree green--
how
green my grass yo ho or my valley too
if
youse got one.
BANG
crash,
woke me 3 a.m.
I
thought someone in my room, or
maybe
an evil genie? Spirit? But only the
drunks
downstairs in a fight:
"Get
out of my house! I am asking you
to
leave!" Mole-Man, apartment 2b, and
his
ex-wife, who visits weekends, and
lives,
otherwise, in a hotel-motel
for
the indigent.
Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published in print and online (including in LOTHLORIEN POETRY JOURNAL). He is author of 8 published full-length collections of poetry, one short story collection, and two nonfiction works (most recently BUKOWSKI the Ubermensch, Cyberwit.net., 2023). He lives in Vermont (USA).
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