SYNCHRONIZED CHAOS.

W. E. S. Owen: Sambre-Oise Canal, November 4, 1918                           Afterward—little spring become prattling rill                         grown rushing stream through the Shropshire meadows,                         flower-dappled, by damp shade trees                         and fragrant fields littered with picnic laughter,                         brotherly sniping, early loves, later loving, faith                         won, and lost, then won again, and then […]

  Reviewer Bernie Gourley recently described The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s collection of short stories about American military personnel serving in the Vietnam War, as ‘disjointed,’ yet he saw this not as a failing of the book but a reflection of the dislocation of war. While not always as psychologically intense and disordered as […]

Glossophobia The flapping tongue who stands at the front of the room before all the Emerson roving eyes trembles through articulation being careful not to salivate.

Dawn     Remember the flowers singing in the morning showers, While the yellow finches flew above the clouds, And the grass was our bed.   Those days were familiar to our souls, Something that kept our skin soft, Our hearts fresh.   Nothing compares to those moments, I now watch the cardinals and think: […]

Black is Rainbow She has a sense of shame That she is a black lady Nobody loves a black girl Not even herself, she thinks Always in mourning as she is Wearing her blackness She believes it may be A curse of her past deeds If it was her past deeds Then, what would have […]

Bipolar   It felt so real. The rain, the leaves, the lovemaking (but was there any passion, or was it just perfunctory. I did not feel any pleasure. It felt like I was twenty-two again. Living amongst xenophobic South Africans, and Johannesburg people, I sensed winter coming on acutely).   And then there was the […]

War President Jenkins – Ladies and gentlemen, we have bad news.  The government of the caliphate of Isis has just executed five Christians in what used to be Northern Iraq.  Name me possible responses. Chief Of Staff Brooks –Madame President, after Viet Nam and Iraq, war is a very hard sell. Chairman of the Joint […]

  It Takes You Through the asylum streets where the rain butters my hands and mowed weeds scatter in piles on the curbs, I look for your familiar figure rushing between rush-hour strangers.   My bed is stale with you wandering from donut shop to open stages silent and bewitched by the lunar mouth.   […]

SOMETIMES IGNORANCE IS BLISS   It unnerves me to know that every time I remember our first night together I am actually remembering my last remembrance of that night, and not the night itself – or so men more intelligent than I would have me believe; and I fear I believe.   How far from […]