Feted with ghosts
haints that haunt me.
Wormhole borers everywhere.
I approach them tremulously,
this faux spiritual family resting uneasily on my desk.
Cardboard cutouts in black and white,
remnant of those who once had names
I do not know.
They sit stiffly for the picture.
The matriarch on my mother's side, in the center,
her name unspoken in our little house of secrets.
She has a skeletal look in the midst of the others
sitting next to the white-bearded patriarch.
Hollow cheeks could not hide
the missing teeth in her unsmiling face.
Her tiny nose disappears in the folds of her cheeks
tucked between the hillocks
hidden in the shadows of her face.
Cavernous hollows rest beneath her brows like black olives.
Tightly knitted rug of dark hair rests like a kippah on her
head.
More diminutive than the others
she and the family of ghosts
appear lost in a voiceless abyss.
Invisible arms speak volumes
Their ghostly appendages never embraced me.
Their wry lips never whispered liebchen to me,
nor kissed away a hurt.
They do not speak to me on my desk
They bury thoughts
in the spectral picture
wordless yearning in their ghostly silence
and the question why
from the row of cousins who never were.
Troglodyte Picnic
Deepest cave,
Dwelling place
for mindless troglodytes.
Eyes shifting aimlessly
to
the bones of
men
and their
splayed ideas.
Dissected dreams
Nature parsed
on the etched walls
Where imagined
stick figures
Shrouded in
the recesses of their catacomb
Playfully butcher
horned beasts,
Cavort with
like-minded spirits
In the craggy
niches
Burning the
books of men.
Speck of light
tries to gain
Purchase in
the darkness,
But darkness is
preferred
in this condo for immobile feet,
granite block of ice for desiccated memories.
The ray uninteresting diversion
Knees-to-chin in the icy cold,
Troglodytes wait for humanity
Somewhere in the hidden niches.
He comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes,
the head is bowed by reality; other times, he is proud to have said something
noteworthy. cRetired after forty-two
years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount
Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find
words for solace. He spends his time
writing and playing his guitar. He has published in many online publications
such as The Circle Review, Toucan, Wilderness Interface Zone, Red Ochre, Bong is Bard, Danse Macabre, Mel BraKe Press,
Larks Fiction Magazine, Exercise Bowler, Otoliths, BlogNostics, Every Day
Poets, brief, One of his poems, Forsaken
Man, was selected for Best of 2012 poems in Storm Cycle. Twice selected
Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway.
His work was also read at Palimpsest Poetry Festival in December 2012.
He was named Poet of the Month for the month of February in BlogNostics.
Included in Poised in Flight
anthology published by Kind of Hurricane Press, March 2013. A
Murder of Crows named Poem of the Week in Toucan.
Great poetry. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Benny.
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