One Poem by Greg Patrick

 

Derry Nights

I Dream of Fire

by Greg Patrick

 

“Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?'
A man may do both,' said Aragorn. 'For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

 

Immersed in the old songs and the depths of memory, I envision her smile, red lips like old

wounds reopening as fresh and red as the day I bled. In the cold where old wounds pulse and

sighs steam. In the dark where warriors are allowed to shed tears. Firelight and old songs cast

their spell in duet, distant haunted eyes cast over the red dreamscapes of memory...

I dream in the red of fire and pallor of snow and I speak to it in the elusive words of songs and

unsung. A dreamscape of snow hailing her like frozen tears melting midair amid the burning

debris. I reunite with her in that dreamscape, an intruder in the past….I stand in an uncoloured

silhouette, the outline on a Pre-Raphaelite canvas while she graces the scene in a vision of red of

hair and eyes of depth of Celtic Sea.

I stand aloof among the raucous merriment of the caravan fires. Immersing myself in the

sonorous embrace of old song. In recurring dreams and in moments when distant haunted eyes look

into the depths of caravan flames I revisit the moment as if I were the ghost and not her....I walk

among the flames of the bomb’s aftermath, unburnt and numb. Walking towards it

even as others stagger and reel bloodied and burnt away from it, choking through the

smoke or screaming, mouths soundless to my deafened ringing ears.

My last sight of her like, frail as a moth in an aerial dance with the light as I raced explosions to

get to her to be by her side.

I am thrown to the ground.

I see her then. She lies among smoking and burning debris. I kneel by her side...palm feeling her

heartbeat and pressing down again and again....tasting her shallow breath as I breathe into

her mouth....”Wake up! Wake up!”

It can't end...not like this...

“And why can't it?” the Dark Goddess mocks...”You are all mortals. It is not your place

to deny or defy the gods when we call for sacrifice.”

Her voice is like venomed honey spread by a sharp blade. I won't listen… I can't.

I look back to my muse...

I had thought her smile silence set to music and as soundlessly my lips formed a trinity of words.

Words I was forbidden to speak as we both drew breath steam in the air.

I still bore the burns as my dreams were haunted by the radiant ghost of her like a ghost’s waltz

in a castle’s ruins, her hair beggaring the red of the fire.

I hold her in the eye of the storm…

Standing like an island with poetry at its soul and an empty throne at its heart.

What was fire anyway?

I had touched her hair in the midst of the fire.

Only the dead and the damned can touch flame…

I remember when we first met…

She is unsure of me…

“I heard you people steal…” she says.

“You have me beat there. You stole my heart at a glance. How did you do it?”

She laughs...and I laugh...

“Come you shouldn't be seen with his kind...” her elders scold.

She lingers and I as well. Fingers entwined.

Pressed her palm to my heart in parting before we are pulled apart.

Then that night...

I pressed down again and again...

No...not like that...Breathe...

“Go away!” I demand as the Dark Goddess hovers....

“I am your shadow...your shadow....”

The darkness closes in...the wings enfold her....a pale face framed by raven hair leans in for her

lips...

I am pulled away...

“Come on Paddy. The soldiers are coming....Come on....She's gone....you have to let her

go...she's gone....”

The rains fell then cold, though I was oblivious to it, extinguishing the flames and banishing

them to haunt my soul and recurring dreams like red ghosts amid castle ruins.

I am disoriented for a moment....I recoil from the flames...why? Just the campfires amid the

caravans.

The reassuring presence of my cob ponies nuzzling me. I snuggle them fondly.

It is a remote site we have encamped on…far away enough from the city that the stars in their

myriads haunt the skies and eyes.

Far from the long walk back then behind the walls and wires...Who am I?

I was young when emaciated rebels drew their last breath in a Belfast gaol.

I am ancient now, older than the hills, when swords are relic and men slay with fire.

It is a haunted place we encamp in…There are so many ghosts here.

I feel their hunger…

It is a hunger that emaciates the soul...that drains in succession every oasis of the nomad's

passage...night of restless shadows that the musician conjures and weaves into songs...I know the

isolation of the gods...

I think of her then, a vision of beauty behind green eyes like tidepools of Celtic Sea and a

smile that was silence set to music or incantation casting its spell, silencing all the background

music. Outshining a succession of smiles like nomad fires in a painted desert, kindled over the

heart and extinguished with the dawn, all for the betrayal of a mirage.

I stand aloof among the raucous merriment of the caravan fires. Immersing myself in the

sonorous embrace of old song.

I am a brooding presence in their midst, a living shadow beyond their raucous merriment.

I tear the no pikeys and gypsies sign that confronts me on a rusted post and cast it to the flames.

It ignites and flares lighting my face and eyes in crimson.

I see their silhouettes weaving around throwing punches in bare knuckle fights, others shouting

encouragement. I stray from the shadows at last. I feel the sensations of the fire's warmth

as I appear to their eyes.

I raise my fists mechanically and answer a challenge. I am jeered.

“You can't win. You can't win.”

It becomes a chant that echoes in my soul.

Those are the only jabs I feel.

I clench my fists. Blood fills my eyes. I am blinded, bruised, and bloodied…everything is

surreal and abstract.

I am not myself anymore.

Who am I?

I am Cuchulainn wounded from their swords slumped against the rock…

I recognise voices around me.

I reel and sway....

“Come on....You can't win,” they urge...

Then another voice echoing them....the Dark Goddess....

I feel a flutter of dark wings.

Sharp talons clutch my shoulder.

“You can't win”, the dark goddess whispers.

The rock alone keeps me standing…

there is no rock…not really... what is it then?

“If your dead girl could see ye now”, one mocks.

The words stab as cold as blades.

The shadows closed in as if coiling around me constricting and hissing....

I clench my fist.

But she does...

I see her as well in the fire's radiance...

The strength isn't mine that I am wielding…that I am rallying on...

Men died here...so many...

They slew and were slain in turn.

I feel the thrill of young warriors eager for battle, the coldness of blades and of bodies strewn on

the red grass...Shadows are granted form and face men in golden armour with shining swords wrought

and forged with pride.

Their battle cries sweep my soul with the rush of wind, urging me to rise...I feel her

shadow...hear her mocking voice claw at my soul....

I clench my fists....

Eyes of the wounded warrior slumped against the standing stone open as he sees his enemies daring

each other forward to finish him...just one more blow and he falls....

One steps forward with fist raised. There is no reason for him not to think I will fall to that fist.

My eyes open suddenly. The crows harrying me digging in with claws and words fly in a dark

torrent from me hailing me with black feathers like tears of midnight...the shadow of my fist striking first...

The words of my battle cry...how are they mine? I do not know the tongue...words of a song lost

to bards…long passed with the legends they sang of.

The fist flies with the closing wave of darkness....

as if the poetry that haunted my soul was a force of nature kindled by dormant fire smoldering in my

soul at my touch...

“It is not for you to wield...no mortal can...”

I just did crone...behold...

The fist takes him...bones crack...

He falls as I stagger back, surprised at what I was able to strike with.

There is silence around the fires.... They see me but they don't...

There is no recognition anymore.

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

I don't know...

“Where did you learn to sing those words?”

Who says there has to be an answer?

The crone melts into formless darkness, into my shadow cast by the fire...

The soloist song becomes a chorus as they join in slowly then steadily...

At last I open my eyes and the fires have burnt low. They have fallen asleep at last.

I cannot...

She is there...a tender hand on my wounds...on my bruises...on my regrets...

Who am I? The first or the last among exiles? The eternal nomad or the pilgrim?

I am shadow...I am darkness...I am memory....I dream of her....I dream of fire....

Greg Patrick - A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man. He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.

Two Poems by Dr. Anissa Sboui

 

Her Own Portrait Is Painted



Her own portrait is painted,

Painted like a turning profile

Of a deflated pigeon

Caught last day by a tipsy hunting man

She has her own portrait painted,

Seizing an ink-free pen

In the middle of the night

A smile held in place

Reflected in a broken mirror

By the bedside

And a departed tear,

They told her she'll never mewl

Laugh like the Jeconde

As the avid reader is sure to get her words back

She'll get words back

Catch some of them from that aching head,

Reshuffle them like a mason

Laying stones, above, so below

Or a hairdresser adjusting messy bun style

Or a partially sighted strolling the streets of Budapest with a flashlight

Flight,

Flight,

Sight,

the pigeon is released

The wings read lines of wisdom

And that frustrated lady never fails

To have her portrait done

To be merry the way a toddler is

You have to have a crush on

A man who is in sincere love

With words and tears

Never be infatuated with someone

Who is taken with swords and spears.

This is how her portrait will be well painted...




I was safer



I was safer in my mom’s womb

Like the roundness of the crazy world

I was turning in circles in her womb

the umbilical cord gave meaning to my tie

I couldn’t flee that sane world

and now I’m thrown in this insane zone

knowing not how to manage it all

as I’m without the cord, I realize not

the direction of my indefatigable mind,

I left it with arid bones,

cobwebs of spider caves,

Without maternal cord,

I figured out how exhausted my body has been

frustration mumbles higher than the whispers of fury



I was safer in that balloon-like creation

My dad’s fault or bliss

to turn that little frail girl into a woman

with great expectation of a nine-month paradise

of bearing a doomed boy,

swinging right and left, up and down

with huge imagination

of stepping down into the New Haven

ignorance feeds me like a carrot fuels a rabbit,

A dovish gazelle, an ecstatic plate for a famished tiger,

in the heart of Johannesburg,

A big-headed dictator with rocky palms,

A stone-like heart sipping beer to vomit poison

watch Bentham’s panopticon

I was safer for there was no fear of people

no race for promotion

no ascendency to chaos

no descent towards an abyss, full of worms

I was contained in mom’s womb

no room for enemies

treachery

bribes or evil,



in a nine inch placenta, I was a prince,

food, reaching me from the endometrium

I grew with no cries,

no shootings or hit

I grew in dreamy silence,

nine months on cloud nine I was,

worrying less about the crazy world

holding an umbilical sword

to conquer my secure stay at mom’s motel

before the windows of waste stretch its elbows and before

my Queen releases me to Terra



I was almost safer there, though

I’d be safer in my plush tomb

Dr. Anissa Sboui -A University teacher and poet from Sousse, Tunisia. The writer of 6 volumes: Transcend (2018), Rebirth (2019), Number One (2020), The Co-Avid Breath (2021) Hurricane (2022) and Halcyon and Screaming Earth (2023) and 3 books of poetry in Arabic.

Her poems featured in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, The Writers’ Club, Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, Dumpster Fire Press, Medusa’s Kitchen, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Annual by the Elizabeth River Writers, Valiant Scribe, Potato Soup Journal, Literary Heist, Four Feathers Press, Our Poetry Archive, The California Poppy Times News.

 

Two Poems by Henry Wolstat

 

A Beam of Light

 

Bright sun outside

my window,

leaving tomorrow

to visit my ailing

brother in my hometown.

 

Reading a novel

set In the Holocaust

where Jewish musicians

attempt to escape

deportation and

certain death.

All they have is

their music that

brings light into

their dark world.

 

I hope to shine

a small beam of

light into his life.

 

Returning Home

 

Every time I return

to the city of my birth

all is familiar,

the same streets,

despite new construction,

the same conversations

with family and friends,

the same emotional

highs and lows,

the same psychological

traps I fall into,

and each time

I’m aware of

why I left home;

a lesson relearned

as I approach

my ninetieth year

Henry Wolstat is a retired psychiatrist in his late 80’s living in the greater Boston area with his wife.  He is the author of a poetry book, “Driftwood”.  He has also been published in both printed anthologies and online.  He is passionate about running, the arts, and poetry.

Five Poems by Margot Block

 

Untitled

 this is crisp despair

a familiar rhythm knocking at your tender skin

where each fall begins to stay the same

a pain I feel grabs hold of the heart

bringing it down to the ground

I have no graceful passion left in me

all I have is the wound of the scream

I have cut myself on hard edges

lies you think you mean

while desire touches me like a ruthless storm

leaving us broken or bruised

hoping for magic uninvited

 

Untitled

 speaking to her through paragraphs of melted poetry

the want of it said

she says escape to me in that moment

lure me

dare me to strip to this folly, pathologically naked

build me up on a promise

and set a place for us to weaken

you play my harp as seduction shapes us but never her metaphor

or the truth of her very soul as she lies to you about forever

you say you feel the heat like a fever in a dark place

and when you wake in the morn

she asks you about political insight

 

Untitled

 use your imagination to bleed it dry

for everything you never had in a single touch

a defense you never said yet bored into me

to find me caught on the land that burns

its red surfaces, its memory

the dreamstroke at midnight that recalls the epiphany of that year

where it is the diary of the poem

flat like her ginger ale

while I want to remind you of the rise

it is a dry barren land

where I am everything but nothing

speak like the goddess of Cain

lip read sorrow like you were love

when cool as beautiful

 

Untitled

 recalling deepened conversation

when you say

understanding and compassion makes us cold like winter

but do you remember mine

truth scraped over the green blackboard

while you had me displayed in poetry

I remembered the soul of us

sweet in place of a memory

where you walk out

slamming a borrowed kitchen door

when I touch our yellow

my hunger disappears

 

Untitled

 you were ripping out your heart on a fifteen minute break

it was I who remembered you there

while fixing my poetic mean streak

or a perfect you to understand

you said my love was a fickle blue heart

and grey skies tumble

then the blue sky becomes the dream

a memory of light like the God above

one you do not remember

connected to red and fire

you the newsbreaker speak

dreaming a lonely shape that will move through me

you were hearts and diamonds and clubs

like clever Alice in Wonderland

Margot Block -is a poet and student from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She has been writing since the age of fourteen and has been published in Zygote Magazine, Juice, Voices, Contemporary Verse 2, the Collective Consciousness, Grub Street Literary Magazine, Bakwa Magazine, Cholla Needles, Black Scat Review, Blanks Spaces and in the online journal BlazeVox, Kaleidoscope Online, the Bombay Review, Brief Wilderness, Oddball Magazine, the Blotter Literary Magazine, Kritikos: A Postmodern Journal of Cultural-Text-Sound & Image, Scissor and Spackle: A Journal of the Written Word, American Diversity Report & the Big Windows Review. She participated in the high school mentorship program with the Manitoba Writers Guild, working with Canadian poet, Carol Rose. She won first prize in a poetry contest sponsored by the Writers Collective and an honourable mention in a poetry contest sponsored by the Lake Winnipeg Writers Group.

Three Poems by John Yamrus

he was in



a nursing home

memory unit.



the

last time

i was there he was in

wrinkled blue pajamas and a robe.



we sat

in the community room



and

the tv was on

and the place had that

smell of medicine, sweat and old age.



sitting there,

across from him,

trying to cheer him up,



i said:

my father-in-law

always used to say: don’t get old...



i guess

he liked that,

because he smiled,

looked down at the floor

and said (almost to himself):



i’m not old,

i’m just a young guy

something really bad happened to.




i worked



as a

bill collector once...



for

a week.



that’s

as long

as it lasted.



maybe

not even that long.



maybe

just a couple of days.



i just

couldn’t take

the sad, transparent

excuses made by people

who had even less than me...



and i

had nothing.



i already

knew their excuses



and

their lies.



i knew

that all they wanted

was for me to turn around



and get

off their porch

and leave them alone.



maybe

that’s why it

hardly even hurt

when i got pushed down a flight of stairs



by

some guy

in a red shirt

who couldn’t take

getting pushed around anymore



and

finally decided



to

just

push back.




he said



he

drove

eight hours

to hear me read.



i didn’t

know if that meant

4 hours each way, or 8 straight thru.



it

didn’t

matter much,

because he left

before it was over,



and

he never

bought a book, anyway.

John Yamrus - In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, John Yamrus has published 35 books (29 volumes of poetry, 2 novels, 3 volumes of non-fiction and a children’s book). He has also had more than 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. A number of his books and poems are taught in college and university courses. He is widely considered to be a master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry. His latest books are TWENTY FOUR POEMS and SELECTED POEMS: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT. A second volume of his poetry was just released in Europe, translated by Fadil Bajraj..

 

Five Poems by Wendy Webb

 

REFLECTIONS INTO FALL (Palindromedary Sonnet)

PUBLD/2017-09 Crystal (101)

This beauty in a season I could touch,

it begs another glance, another taste

and I just want to say it looks so much

like yesterday when Autumn was all waste.

 

Reflecting, as Kay does, with vibrant colour,

that cake is here to cut and breathe and eat.

No candles on the wind snuffed-out as thorough

as this scene's memory. My place's seat

 

is here with you; and him; and them. You know

it is the place we see beyond the moon.

If I could pebble-throw this pond, and how!

Its reflection's imperfection, gone too soon.

 

Can you see too? The birds have flown to fall?

Their colours leave my dreamscape in their thrall.

 

Their colours leave my dreamscape in their thrall.

Can you see too, the birds have flown to fall?

 

It’s reflections, imperfection, gone too soon,

if I could pebble-throw this pond, and how

it is the place we see beyond the moon.

Is here with you, and him, and them you know,

 

As this scene's memory, my place's seat?

No candles on the wind snuffed-out as thorough:

that cake is here to cut and breathe and eat.

Reflecting, as Kay does, with vibrant colour

 

like yesterday, when Autumn was all waste.

And I just want to say it looks so much:

it begs another glance, another taste,

this beauty in a season I could touch.

Valley of the Tiger’s Shadow (Glosa)


[Inspired by ‘The Rock’ T S Eliot] Crystal Magazine, 2008-11/PUBLD

The tiger in the night pads with soft claws,

his breath as Aslan melts the icing air

and turns in quest of prey, but then a pause,

and wraps his dawn-fur close and richly-fair,

too bright for mortal vision

 

which comes by slow degrees too light to touch

and chills the shivers of last night, grown cold

with labours, bloody, futile and not much

except obscurity of good’s cool gold.

O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less.

 

We warmly bathe in salt of buoyant morning,

raised high upon the waters of our day,

flick through damp newsprint of the world’s red dawning

and sting as aspirations flush that may

the eastern light our spires touch at morning.

 

And soon inscape slumps shadows’ lengthened hound

that slinks into the shade that howls at noon,

where stress is twitching instress corner’s pound

of wraiths that seize the black dog’s tail too soon.

The light that slants upon our western doors at evening

 

slits pools of hiss and slish on sonic waves,

of moths and mice and moles and hedgehog snuffles,

slants golden eyes around long-brambled graves

and snakes the shadows, breath’s expiring ruffles,

the twilight over stagnant pools at batflight.

 

The earth is shrouded in a misted lawn

where Eden rises in the damp of dreams,

or where the night-frost clutches pad’s pricked thorn

to wrench and unplant tares where life unseams

moon light and star light, owl and moth light.

 

Where darkness rises, firefly power trebles,

yet seeming strongest with an hour till dawnlight.

How bright the luminosity of pebbles

and how the porch of home will cheer, like sighting

glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.

 

The Tyger, Tyger’s burning bright; digress

where lambs are safely penned within a Ram,

to bond the golden eyes of paper tigress

and snake Euphrates to a mane’s blocked dam.

But be ye satisfied that you have light

 

to crook the shingles’ ninety-nine of doubt

and find a pebble pummelled in the stream

of living waters marbled to a clout,

where David looks away, as in a dream;

enough to take your step and find your foothold.

 

If I Had… A Daughter

 

If I had a daughter:

she would dress stunningly

with nails and perfect hair,

matching styles that blend or clash;

to make a statement.

 

If I had a daughter,

she would organise her boudoir

with sparkly lights and drapes and designs,

her treasures categorised and stashed.

Dreams and hopes and future.

 

If I had a daughter,

she would spend our money on fashions, make-up,

killer heels, designer bags,

regular hairstyles, gel nails, or spas.

Something to make us proud.

 

If I had a daughter,

she would tidy her room weekly.

Deal with laundry/ironing, splash out on cooking

a family meal (smiles and compliments, no matter burnt).

Maybe – sometimes – wash up.

 

If I had a daughter,

we would drive her anywhere, collect her late.

Smile over the girly piles of clothes (from one night out).

Compete with Dad for attention; cat fight;

giggle over movies/Chick Lit/tat.

 

If I had a daughter,

she would worry us until safely homed – always.

Drink as much/comment on the food/

have conversations I couldn’t join in; with Dad.

And, you lose your sons. Keep your daughters…

                        Brave New World: I have…

 

Where’s It Going?

Tidying, decluttering, sorting.

Will they take dust-ridden Charity?

Unsorted? Missing parts?

I need a bin sack – now.

Why are they sat around chatting?

Do they know what’s needed?

What goes where? What to keep?

They’re laughing; I’m stressing.

It’s like some TV show…

overwhelming.

No smiles here, I’m boxing up.

A pile of toys arrives, upstairs:

the man is sorting, downstairs.

Useful, how? Where to put what.

Make the bed. Tape it up. Sellotape, please.

Sinking under clutter, no way out.

I want, I need…

all bathrooms, with no loo.

My son is gone. My daughter’s 25.

Daughter?

I wake up.

 

At Cross Purposes


[Inspired by Heidi Kaplan’s grave post/FB/2023-03]

I am so cross, so tall, I’m leaning in

to you sweet rosy blushing rock.

We are a pair, I’ll guarantee the sin

if you will rest within this lock.

 

I have no use for words now, learning’s fine,

and we are much of muchness now.

Positions are so close, don’t draw the line

before you read my lasting vow.

 

My occupancy’s vacant (or quite silent),

let’s fall together into earth.

It’s moving for me now, so violent,

such subjugation of your worth.

Wendy Webb - Born in the Midlands, home and family life in Norfolk. She edited Star Tips poetry magazine 2001-2021. Published in Indigo Dreams, Quantum Leap, Crystal, Envoi, Seventh Quarry, The Journal, The Frogmore Papers) and online (Littoral Magazine, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Lothlorien, Meek Colin, Atlantean), she was placed First in Writing Magazine’s pantoum poetry competition. She devised new poetry forms (Davidian, Magi, Palindromedary); wrote her father’s biography, ‘Bevin Boy’, and her own autobiography, ‘Whose Name Was Wit in Waterr’ (title inspired by Keats’ grave in Rome).She has attempted many traditional forms and free verse. Favourite poets: Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Burnside, John Betjeman, the Romantic Poets (especially Wordsworth), George Herbert, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Mary Webb, Norman Bissett, William Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.Current poetry collection: LOVE’S FLORELOQUENCE, Wendy Ann Webb, Amazon.co.uk.Love's Floreloquence: Amazon.co.uk: Webb, Wendy Ann, Meek, CT, Meek, CT, Webb, Wendy Ann: 9798372967595: Books

Three Poems by John Harold Olson

 

Shore Patrol

 

I  gather Swee’pea was 

Olive Oyl’s  baby with Bluto.

This would explain Bluto’s rage

When he came around and found Popeye.

 

Could be a nice life, I thought.

Ships with swept down planks, 

Waterfront,

Navy beans

Popeye  shuffling over to see Olive, Swee’pea and Gramps whenever he felt like it.

 

The Bluto shows, like a drunk dad, and brings hell with him.

Popeye, turned into a human windmill,  

can’t quite

Reach the can of spinach in his pants.

 

Let’s all sit down.

Bluto, you’re under arrest.

Olive, you can’t have both 

Popeye and Bluto.

Decide.

Popeye, you’re coming too, because

You don’t have a pass.

Gramps, he’s terrified. Someone go 

Get the old man out of the sun.

 

Swee’pea, you’re going with 

The Shore Patrol lady.

 

Now, everyone just calm the fuck down.

 

 

El Cajon Boulevard

 

Evening at Campus Plaza

purple, aqua and pink neon,

ocean balminess

bean and cheese burrito,

what else?

Laundromat you could bowl in.

Made of wreck of my life.

Not drunk, nor a gambler or

a junkie.

Just me and my choices.

Shiny stuff 

and I follow

the pinwheel off the edge of

Queen Isabella’s map,

where the dragons are.

But, it’s alright.

Trust me on this.

God wears overalls

And motions for you to help

hoe the melon patch.

 

 

Cornelia and Portia

 

“Why was there 

such intense precognition in Ancient Rome?”

                                                       -a traveller

 

She looked at her man just down for the table. 

Seated, head in hands, elbows on table where there was only a pitcher and tumbler of cool water.

The howling dogs were not menacing him,

no, he was tired and worried. She knew at a glance. 

“You look,” Cornelia said, “like your own son.” He smiled like Sol in the old days.

“Don’t go in, Gaius. I saw it all in my dream.”

 

In the same neighbourhood, on the other side of the Palatine,

Brutus considered his own dream. And he didn’t make it out of that one either. The sky churned like molten lead.

“Didn’t we talk about your secrets in another poem?” Portia came near, but took care to be clear of, her husband.

Brutus spoke as if chatting over a garden wall.

“There was a time when your concern

was sweetness. But things run their course,

break down,

become a rotten fish on the shore. 

Full of stones and shunned by the gulls. (Suddenly)

“Portia, stay in,

Stay in today.”

“Of course,” Portia said, almost sickened 

by what she divined.  

“Don’t go,” she countered. “Stay in. Don’t tempt the Ides of March. 

Brutus.”

He raised his eyebrows. 

“It is too late,” Brutus said , leaving.

John Harold Olson - Is a retired Special Education teacher in Las Vegas. Transitioning to being a hospice volunteer.