THE POEM

The poem is to define a word that does not exist. First, one must be compelled by emotion evoked by, say, an image (be it internal or external) where that emotion must needs to be articulated. Aesthetic will then choose convention or invention (uncreative or creative); Imagination will describe the new word---the word the poem. Thus, William Carlos Williams said, “Only in the poem! There is no other fit medium.” Yet, it must be compelled first.

THE CLOUDS

Rolling in,

bringing change---

the ever constant---

Your reaction? Turn

and face the wind.

Sitting on top of a hill in the poorest city in the Midwest

Looking conversely down

porch-perched along an

asphalt ribbon wrapping

down to windowless

bricked factories and particle-

boarded storefronts, where

I used to be.

A brown and grey and black

sparrow hops to and fro on

the spotted grass and cracked

sidewalk looking for his sustenance only then

his flight. Where

and how far?

Looking conversely up

Midwest-grounded and terra

-cotta obstructed, an impulse

manifests from the back

black and urges him

forward and up---

Why him, why now?

Nothing to do but

act upon it---lost

friends and family

unknown and new

faces.

SHE WAIT

I picked her up at the front of the high school Saturday night. A glass box of plastic gold, white and grey swirled granite---a bastion of school pride---stood behind her. She sat upon a folding table, waiting for me, kicking her feet in a walking airborne rhythm. Long, curled strands of mahogany clasped naivety. We were to go out and see, each by their own, if anything fond could strike. She was pretentiously captivated in me by sight, by cherry-picking me from a crowd the week before. She was all in.

She looked at me like I was a god. And to her perhaps I was---the one to deliver her from parental constraints to my constraints in a new domestic world. It was in her smile, that smile, a young happiness that shadowed judgement. Judgement that lived in moment and young aesthetic which existed in a world turned by hindsight/foresight and old, old logic. She was lost.

It was in her eyes: Glass and sparks like a bottle rocket fixed at target not knowing that it would eventually explode, finishing in spectacular burst of spark, fire, red paper and heaped disenchantment. To her nothing could end like this.

The limestone lane met the lawn. Dusk rose, infused its rusty sky into an evening black. Only the equinox could cast a harvest shadow to make the blackest silhouettes of corn tassels, like an army of dead, dry soldiers waiting to be cut down. I was eighteen. It was the last semester. She wait like the rest of the world, stopped dead and black with yellow and violet dots swarming like fireflies off in a void. She wanted a kiss but I was gone.