Five Poems by Marc Darnell

 

The Distance We Inherit 

 

Inflicted with the shyness of my father,

I slipped into a life of still ennui,

staying unexposed, I didn't bother

to gather friends, that ilk was not for me.

 

I wonder how my father found a wife–

perhaps my mother trapped him like a spider.

To this day I've never seen her laugh

or excavate the ache that's deep inside her

 

that came the more with every child born.

She was the very best of moms, I know that–

bellies full, and clothes were never torn.

She'd sit upon the porch and watch the sunset,

 

waiting for my father to come home,

then turning down the bed to sleep alone. 

 

 

Ovarian 

 

My mother's voice– it rasps, crackles like

the leaves she burned in piles on the curb,

though that's illegal now, but getting sick

from cancer's not, each word a painful barb.

 

Our phone call isn't long, she will not last

the year, it's August, trees will soon turn brown.

She stopped the chemo, probably for the best,

since poison in the veins just tears one down

 

like flooding did her house some four years past

when waters broke the levy of her town

and gutted every room, her lawn was lost

to mud and fungus– all her zinnias drowned

 

as she does now.  The leaves will still fall down

when she is dead; I'll burn them on the ground. 

 

 

Orchid 

 

You've heard of it, that it has ponytails,

or jowls, depending on the angle viewed,

variety, or your particular mood.

If you've ever pinned one on a girl

 

or seen it in a painting in her curls

or covering breasts of supple Ruben nudes,

it doesn't strike the mind and never could--

its life too brief, so buy your love a pearl

 

or many in a loop around her neck

silken like the bloom, a husband would

pay highest price if skin would stay that way

 

without her growing freckles, powdered cracks

that wane his lust, he dares not say a word

and dreams of younger orchids far away. 

 

 

Gerber Daisies 

 

How dare you go and change your hues like that--

don't play that rainbow game with us and just

smile agape, fanged dolls that sit

in guise of pastel angels knowing you must

 

feed on bleached grubs, become more toxic

to our addictive eyes that burn and don't

accept your tints' intensities.  Your caustic

flesh orange and teal emits no scent--

 

beauty should require that, maybe a sniff

arousing kinder thoughts.  Your papa sun

will find your crib and burn you while you laugh

your last, smugness snuffed; then you will run

 

vampiric underground to build your power

and rise again to pose a different flower. 

 

 

Uncage 

 

He is scarred from sharpened things

that slowly occupied his life--

his wife who grabs a kitchen knife

and says that if he cheats, she stings.

 

First she'll cut his wandering wings

and then the fig beneath his leaf.

While his boss sleeps with his wife

ungrateful offspring pull his strings.

 

This man's defeated on all sides

but knows his heart is for another

bird beneath his crack of sky--

 

a sky he watches every night,

examining the stars for other

clipped wings that learned to fly.

 

 

Marc Darnell is an online tutor and lead custodian in Omaha NE.  He received his MFA from the University of Iowa, and has published poems in The Lyric, Rue Scribe, Verse, Skidrow Penthouse, Shot Glass Journal, The HyperTexts, Candelabrum, The Road Not Taken, Aries, Ship of Fools, Open Minds Quarterly, The Fib Review, Verse-Virtual, Blue Unicorn, Ragazine, The Literary Nest, The Pangolin Review, and elsewhere. His latest book is Forecast: Increasing Visibility from Kelsay Books.  He has 3 times been awarded the Academy of American Poets prize.