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.

+



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

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.

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.

UFO Museum: Roswell, NM


Breaking in was nothing,

For one of my talents,

Ditto for lifting the device I needed

From its glass case without tripping the alarm;

Installing and testing it was a matter of moments.

I was ready to go;

I'd miss Darlene, she'd been good to me:

A loving wife, willing participant

In what must have seemed, at times,

Bizarre activities, but she'd get over it,

And I couldn't give her the children

She so desperately needed,


I needed to get back to my other family,

My other wife

Raising a horde of sprouts on her own,

And I was so tired of the lies:

An only child of fictitious parents

Killed in a “car” crash,

Born and raised in “the Midwest,”

A retired airline pilot.

My only real fear,

That my wife had remarried,

And her husband had, of course, eaten our young,

So I'm on my way back to Aldebaran,

And I really hope that if I have to kill and eat

Her and her lover,

He's not one of my brothers.