Confused
A picture of her spoke a thousand words
but when I held her hands and walk away
I feel that the whole world is peaceful and
incredible until we are reached the boneyard
She kissed me and told me “don't be confused”.
I remember the twilight of infinite satisfaction
She would exhale and let me exhale to end my
fatigue, difficulty, and still help me to dream of
strolling back to Baghdad without any barriers,
or even hold a weapon from the era of the war.
She is the motivation, she is the justification
If you ever meet with her, let her know that my
heart is weeping with her scent, and my eyes
are bleeding from the times we touched the broken
star to collect your elegance to the moonlight.
The sun is the same sun without her silky hair
The winter is the exact winter without her soft lips
Today is a delusion day because people are
everywhere and everyone is wondering if her
death is the terror that provoked me to live miserable.
There, still waiting. This may be the winter of our
Discontent, pandemic deep into ourselves, dead
Piling up, cases more than ankle deep and drifting
Away from us. My day, the snow, my driveway,
My sense of self become trivial, now not even
A footnote or a smudged comment written in
The margins of today, but here I am again filling
The page, since it too is one of the tasks I have left.
Sunday
It’s Sunday, I can tell, I get up the same time as always
but on Sundays, like this, the neighbors’ cars are in their
driveways, where I left them last night, some must still be
sleeping, the scene out front is quiet enough to imagine
it as a portrait of quiet, a portrait I’m painting in my head
with words and colors, peaceful, almost motionless, calm.
On the seventh day god rested, right, and so the demi-gods
amongst us take their turn at it. Now there is no flooring to
sell, no patients to attend to, no restless class of children to
teach, no more universes to create, so they rest, sleep in,
while I stand here looking out trying to catch what I can of
the tranquility of Sunday, the day of rest that time lends us,
leaves us here to make the best of it, like this.
Blind
What? A walk, of course
It fits the day, snowless cold
And the dog is along
He’s blind now
So we follow his nose
Or his memory
He knows the way
Better than we do
We’ve put the holidays
Where they belong
Behind us
Memories now, almost sightless
We know our way away
From now – into what?
A walk, covid slow, still a walk
Into a future we guess at
You say summer, maybe spring
Our walk goes on and on
Years end like this
Not with a bang but a whimper
The blind walking into
Whatever futures hold
For them.
J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard,Black Coffee Review, New Feathers Anthology, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, andHighland Park Poetry.
The war among the extra-terrestrials at the Peak of Eternal Abode over the ownership and rulership of its domain saw the defeat of Illumination and his cohorts. He wanted to be on the same level as his Maker, The Source.
Illumination was able to gain support from some of the multi-dimensional members, including some of The Elements: Wind, Water, and Fire, and persuade them to rebel against their Maker.
However, what Illumination thought was the only way to strip The Source of his kingly authority turned out to be futility. His Maker, through the instrumentality of the rest of his created subjects as led by his guard, together with his Profound League of Justice Keepers, orchestrated an eventual Mark of Defeat. This led to a wide Gap of Banishment and a consequential Seal of Demotion into the Neutrality for Illumination, his followers, and the elements that followed them, far below the threshold of his habitation.
THE DAY DEMOCRACY DIEDWe will never give up!”
#45 fires up the mob at his Save America Rally.
The election was stolen from us…We will never concede.”
He stokes fear. “If you don’t fight like hell,you’re not going to have a country any more.”
This coup was planned and advertised on social media.
#45 tweeted, “Big protest in D.C. Be there, will be wild!”
They came from all directions, ready to hit the streets.
Armed Proud Boys. Q-Anon T-shirts. MAGA diehards.
Gullible pawns and street thugs, shoulder to shoulder,
eager for trial by combat. Eager for revolution.
“Stop the steal!” thunders #45. “Keep up the fight!”“Take back the country.” The mob eats up the lies,
and the lies feed their appetite for vengeance,
accelerate their frenzy to smash, crush, extinguish,
vanquish those evildoers gathered inside,
gathered to count the votes of state Electors:
to declare Biden president-elect, 306 to 232.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marchingto the Capitol building,” says #45, egging them on.
“I will be with you.” (He got in his limo and left.)
As rioters near the Capitol, the dam breaks.
An American flag is ripped off its pole
and replaced with a TRUMP flag.
Someone erects a gallows. White fists pump the air
Protestors pepper-spray police, bash them with poles.
Vandals batter down the doors of the Capitol Building,
leaving a trail of wreckage: glass everywhere,
cracked plaster, overturned desks, trashed offices.
Security is overwhelmed. Emergency lockdown!
Congressmen and women flee, hide under furniture.
The looting begins. Out go lamps, chairs, laptops.
A rioter in body paint and horns carries off a podium.
Clouds of tear gas fill the Rotunda.
In the melee, one woman is shot, dead.
A young cop is bludgeoned to death.
So—on January 6, 2021, over 150 years after the Civil War,
Confederate flags wave in Senate chambers for the first time.
This brand marks a new brother-against-brother conflict:
a war of law vs. power,
a war of service vs. greed,
a war of democracy vs. dictatorship.
From the White House, #45 Twitters: “We love you. You’re very special… Remember this day forever.”
World leaders watch the farewell riot, appalled.
#45 watches, too. Watches his TV screen, smiling.
He has groomed his militia carefully with lies and false hope.
He lit the fuse and watched it explode.
Sent a message to henchmen, like Pence, about loyalty-- or else.
When the dust settles, 6 Senators and 121 Representatives
still vote to accept his conspiracy line, call the election “rigged.”
Tomorrow, some outrage and finger pointing. So what?
No one can touch him.
He won.
GOING VIRAL
A virus isn’t interested
in storming the perimeter;
a virus attacks the control tower,
the nucleus of DNA patterns,
seat of future growth.
A virus seizes the reins,
takes command,
changes direction,
riding roughshod over objections.
We’ve seen it happen.
In nursing homes.
In families.
In the nation's control tower:
the White House.
How did a failed realtor and TV star
breeze through the winnowing process
and land smack-dab in the oval office?
Why do the Come-to-Jesus people
think he’s the new Messiah?
Is it possible that his racism
is an attraction?
His misogyny? His lying?
Or are these new directions
enabled by frightened Republicans
suffering through an abusive relationship?
Masks can’t ward off this virus.
Too many supporters have masks over their eyes,
refusing to see.
Hand-washing is irrelevant.
After the insurrection at the Capitol,
too many Congressmen
are doing the Pontius Pilate hand-washing in public
while backing presidential conspiracies
when it comes to a vote.
This virus, like all viruses,
can be blunted by stronger
immune systems.
Perhaps this brush with demagoguery
will make us stronger.
But, like all viruses, it can mutate.
When all Hell breaks loose,
and it won’t be long--
we shouldn’t be surprised.
A Buttered Scone
I had never seen so much snow in my entire life.
I stepped out of the taxi to sink in knee-high.
The driver ferried my luggage to the front door.
I wondered what I was doing again in Glasgow.
I went up three flights of stairs,
dragging suitcases with gloveless hands.
My landlady was very elated to have me back.
I went to the showerless bathroom to regain some warmth.
He was more eager to meet me despite the treacherous frost.
There was a lockdown and all roads were blocked.
We walked to an inn for some tea and a buttered scone.
A man in love was what I had to confront
in a moment of passion that seemed to defy gods
and prepared was he for all battles ahead.
I simply wanted friendship, the peace I felt in that inn,
a harmless chat over endless affinities that bonded us,
the drives to the countryside and feeding Knightswood’s swans.
I still wonder whether selfishness is genetic or nurtured in households.
The valor and chivalry had melted with Scottish snows.
Within a year, I lost the friend I valued most.
Cracks
I see the cracks of a well-painted wall,
the cracks of words whose insincerity is heavily cloaked,
and those of a psyche whose childhood was fissured with gall.
I hear the cracks of a disintegrating soul,
the cracks of a conscience that had been frozen by the lure of gold,
and those of a backbone whose owner prefers to crawl.
I feel the cracks that corrugate our globe,
the cracks of a nation that has been overburdened with wars,
and those of a mind that totters beneath its load.
Roundness
The substance of my life has been abounding with stocks,
a disconcerting surplus of flatness
that has left me without a single companion.
Myriads of characters are reminiscent of medieval types.
The gullible are set against scoundrels
whose goodness has been bled to death.
Black and white have forbidden any other colors to trespass.
On the streets, the crowd is a mass of callousness,
whose multitudes are wearing the very same mask,
a cloak of nonchalance.
The roundness I yearn for is only to be had in films and books.
No wonder I fall for the heroes I view and peruse,
for Hardy’s Gabriel Oak whose love endures,
for Dickens’s Sydney Carton who readily quits the world,
for Edward Scissorhands chiseling ice to grace Kim’s Christmas with snow,
for Clive Owen as the Last Knight in chivalrous throes,
for every personage who possesses a full-fledged soul.
Winter
When trees are denuded,
we put on layers and layers of clothing,
for winter spells out its might,
not in furs,
but in strata of old and new underwear.
I walk the streets like a bloated bear.
My feet absorb the dampness of the earth.
Like pine needles, my stiff, frost-bitten hair
protrudes from beneath my flimsy hat
to receive snowflakes.
Our fireplace is logless and bare.
We do not believe in cutting friends.
And since fuel is embargoed and hard to obtain,
we heap blankets upon our frames.
The essence of warmth I cannot ascertain
by word or image,
by hand or face.
The only memory I have of a flame
is a candle that burns on his grave.
A Requiem
I entrusted him with my mouth,
its knots of nerves.
He anaesthetized with an errant needle
that swerved,
hitting a nerve that sent shudders
through lips and nose.
He drilled a hole
as deep as an abyss,
perforated with a hand
that went amiss,
then embalmed the whole with a Pharaonic substance.
But pain soon shrieked with renewed force.
The unsealing of the tooth began to unfold
the remnants of a nerve that had been left to rot.
Like chimney sweepers in Victorian times,
he thrust his fingers through my gaping mouth
to unplug the sewage of a tooth’ canals.
Months of endurance saved not its life.
A nerve now twitches beneath my eye,
resonating to the requiem of an early demise.
Joan Beebe, left, with fellow contributor Michael Robinson
A Time of Stillness
Neat nice homes standing side by side.
Where there used to be neighbors mowing the lawn,
Resting quietly in the shade of an old maple tree,
Waving to neighbors who are also in their yard and
some taking walks through the neighborhood.
The area now seems like a ghost town. A few cars
sit idle in driveways and no one visible through
windows of the homes. Arising in the middle of the
night and looking through your window is sad and
disturbing. The quiet of the night seems like you
are alone in a field of grass with the light from
a shadowy moon enveloping you in a time of yesteryear.
It is taking you back to a time of youth, laughter and
living a family life of love.
The present is now when we hope and pray that the
dangerous and fearful virus of COVID19 will be erased
from every part of this world.
