Gen X

Maybe we weren’t resourceful. Maybe we were just confused.
Maybe we lost our way. Maybe we lost our shoes
in a pond with a surface like a screen without words or songs
from the future disconnected walking barefoot down the long
screen to the future which doesn’t have a phone
or a bookstore or a workplace and is leaking like snow cone
purple across the tile. We follow cracks from lock to key
through the back screen door. To be safe you touch the tree
growing upwards towards the moon and on up towards the light
pollution that blurs what’s happened. Together with what might.

Flying

I remember flying

Learned it early

Somewhere between

Peter Pan and Superman

Sitting out on a windowsill

Overlooking Adsit Court

Legs dangling and then

I was off flying

The whole world in front

Of me, waiting for me

Up with the geese

And the gulls, as if there

Were no limits

No expiration date

On my flight

Soaring, zooming

Hovering, floating

I could be there or anywhere

I had the mind to be

Now I just remember flying.

It got away from me.



                Free Fall

Sometimes running feels like falling.

perhaps like free falling

your feet barely touching down

as distance appears and disappears

under you

 

They told you that life was a marathon

and not a sprint

but they sprinted away while you sat

there tying your shoes

 

And now you are running alone

almost weightless

 

This is running, falling, free falling

without a parachute to snap open

to catch you when the ground leaps up

to show you – you’ve reached the end.



     Getting Away


Time to walk away

Turn your back

A full 180 this time.

Pick up your pace.

 

There’s no rear-view

Mirror this time.

 

There are memories

That will go bump

Go thump in the night

 

But right now you’re

Moving away

 

Physically at first

Mentally sometime later.

 

But now you’re moving

Putting distance and time

Between you

 

And all those things –

the list seems too long

to go over ever again.

 

Those things you knew

You had to leave behind.

 

And now you’re

Alone out here

Without them.

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Literary Yard, Sparks of Calliope, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.

+



Soothes
             the 
                 LOVE of Experience 

                    Lifts from the start 

Continuity is Always Beginning 

              I See Something Good 
         & there was good 
 Nothing Wasted  My LOVE 

      ♡  Well along I see  ♡

Continuity always Beginning 

 Soothed my presence LOVE 
       Gifts await the Star
             in the sky
                    ☆
 
                                                                  ...

 
by  John Edward Culp 
       April 24, 2023

MY SISTER'S NAME IS FORBIDDEN ON MY TONGUE OR IN MY HEART

I do not know why,
but my sister's name is forbidden on my tongue or in my heart.
The last time I saw her, the lines from her mouth were
"if I don't marry him in your presence, I would in your absence"
Those words were seeds of death to my father
& To me, they were displaced wanderers seeking recognition.
Now, we are like borders apart
Isn't it right to say we're living in a different world?
But for us it's the third; a world of strange & unfamiliar things.

IN A THOUSAND YEARS

In a thousand years
I want to be remembered
in a volume like 300 Tang Poems.

100 thousand college students will see my name
and read four lines I wrote
about an egret dismissing a marsh

or an ingenue losing her locust hairpin
under a moon that is a kicking rabbit
or an old man finding solace in his memories.

I would rather be remembered
for four lines written in haste
after hefting seven or eight bottles of Sam Adams

than not be remembered at all.
To be honest, it would be nice if the students liked the poem –
but it’s not a dealbreaker.
 
A SCURRY OF SQUIRRELS

Every day I walk past a tree in front of a house
And under this tree is usually a collection of squirrels –
Many gray squirrels and up to four fox squirrels.

The person who lives in the house behind the tree
Puts nuts out under the tree every day
And there are so many the squirrels can never eat them all.

I walk by and the squirrels scurry away –
Which is a good reason a group of squirrels is called a scurry, I guess.
Only one squirrel doesn’t retreat at my approach.

As I said, there are four fox squirrels among the grays –
One of them is melanistic and one of them is very big and pudgy.
The first time I saw the big one I thought he was a raccoon.

That first time I saw him he was alone under the tree
And when he saw me he stood up on two legs and stared me down.
I turned around after I passed and I found he was still watching me.

There was one time he decided to retreat at my approach
And it was like watching an old fat man as he climbed the tree.
I imagined hearing him huff and puff, cursing me under his breath as he clambered. 

There are many gray squirrels and four fox squirrels –
One is melanistic and one is pudgy and larger than the rest.
I wonder if the fat one would be picked first or last for dodgeball

If the squirrels were human children. Powerful but slow, I imagine.
These are the kinds of things that go through my mind
When I forget to bring my headphones on my walk

And why I almost never do forget.

 
SOME POEMS

Some poems are meant to be inhaled,
then exhaled through the nose.
Some poems are meant to escape through the teeth.
Some poems enter through a hole
that it drills into the back of your head.
Some pulls pull you by the ear
all the way to the principal’s office.

Some poems are ghosts,
howling between your ears.
Some posts are nettles
beneath bare feet.
Some poems stutter as they ascend.
Some poems need a paleontologist’s pickax.
Some poems pummel your roof
like hailstones.

Some poems are cryptological; zoological;
illogical; scatological.
Some poems are dead hair
beneath a barber’s chair,
waiting to be swept away.
Some poems are not poems
because they are limp and useless without the music.

Some poems are living things
and some poems are dead things
and some poems are living dead things
and some poems are dead living things.

Some poems take flight
and some walk the earth.
Some wallow like happy pigs in dirt.

And poems about poems, like this poem,
are meant to be balled up
and tossed into the nearest wastebasket
so,
after you read this,
I better hear you crumpling.

 
SPINNING


There’s this little divot in the ceiling
I am studying here in bed
While lying on my back
With the room spinning

As well as the moon outside
Spinning, I imagine, like a pinwheel
Even though there’s not even the hint
Of a breeze.

I’d get up to look and make sure
But somehow the door and the windows
Are gone
And the floor is 
Gone

And all that is left in this room now
Is me and this bed
And this little divot in the ceiling
That I have convinced myself
Is of great importance.

I finally close my eyes
With the moon out there
Spinning like a pinwheel
In a night so hot and still
Without even the hint
Of a breeze
And 

The divot in the ceiling has
Disappeared 

 
THE WRONG TIME

I meet the mountain
and the mountain
is the wrong mountain

& 
I fall in love
and it’s the wrong woman

&
I send out my poems
but they come back

having gone to the wrong places.

I am here –
in the wrong home,
living at the wrong time

&
Li Po looked up
saw the moon
offered it a drink

a thousand years ago

& 
smiled in deep sleep
even though he knew
it was the wrong time.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. His first poetry collection is forthcoming from Cajun Mutt Press. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.