Oedipus

Study the green sting of fireflies
Those alert and fulgent flares
Prods in pulse against the witless night
Till quashed by the whiteout of day

Take note the glow of the Halloween frock
Wraithlike white – a hue of milk disbodied
Worn by the revelers who coquet death
Yet boxed, forsaken – once the moon is through

Then watch the welder and his snaky torch
His furtive peek becomes a lock noose stare
The pupil learns when he closes his eyes
Of the retina’s dreadful stigmata

Cesar Love is an editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. He has recently been featured on the San Francisco Poetry Open Mic Poetry Podcast TV Show: click here!

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Mother

To experience the Dark
It helps none to hold

When She arrives
Your bed becomes a tossed raft
Its posts, impotent oars
The sheets, useless tarp
Your lover, straw in rain

Surrender in Her monsoon

Your county floods
Its farms and orchards made swamp
The courthouse topples
All parchment washed to sea.

Peninsulas crumble
You’re an island overwhelmed

Beg for rope
The lifeline
The noose

When the storm ends
Miss not what She wrested.

Bathe in Her chocolate water
Know Her heart
And yours

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Last Manuscript

As sparrows chant their verse from tepid trees
His iron pen furrows against our tundral page

While finches whittle the standard tales
His sinews burn for legends not born

A song to ascend the civil roundabout
As his plumes and talons break free

Music to escape the ages
When the sand of his hourglass bursts