Ralph Monday- Three Poems

All the Doubles Never Known

Doubles are never thought about much.

A primary mode of existence, they shape

Minds like water inflated balloons.

They float about, particles in space, exist

As three dimensional twins, patterns

Projecting outward shaping myth.

Doublemint twins so wholesome,

Encapsulating an America still possessed

Of a moral and ethical center not out of

Plumb.

Double down in poker, marriage, lovers.

Staring down a double barreled shotgun.

Loitering over twin bra cups loosened by

The wrong person. Sliding into the second

Relationship off a long double—out.

Biblical doublets that are not just

Binary bedfellows boasting reality.

Double servings of just about anything—

Double martinis, double rum and coke—after

2 a.m. double trouble. Double jeopardy lying

Like perfume on both shoulders.

50s televised twin beds, Puritan single

Twining introduced by the Mayflower and

The Arabella. Double meanings for double

Lives. Binary stars pulsating with double drum

beats doubling over in double time. Tennis doubles

playing a different game off the court.

Double lanes leading to nowhere. At the end the

Doppelganger dancing in double time.

Be Careful of Stuff

When the wheels wobble and come off,

shadows cast clouds, the sky becomes bronze.

The caged bird looks at it all and doesn’t sing.

That is the spell that the tilt-a-whirl rejects

circus clowns. Time for house cleaning.

You know that you have to wear the cleanest,

dirty shirt, sweep away the cobwebs, listen

not to lowing animals on the radio. Keep focused.

This too will pass. Break out ancient texts for help.

The Bible, Iliad, and Aeneid are ok, but beware

Odysseus. Smoke that book in your pipe and end

up being drowned by sirens, the police looking for

you because the wheel flew off and decimated poor

Ms. Clary’s poodle. Just as well. She didn’t want it

anyway because it could never be housetrained, just

like your last girlfriend, the hoarder, who nearly

drowned you with 24 pitchers of zero water.

Two zodiacs there, 12 and 12; you damn sure know

to avoid Scorpio. Get a wheelbarrow and keep emptying

out. If nothing works, stop and pray, send in money

to a needy televangelist. Get on the prayer list.

Maybe you’ll get a spanking new wheel sent down

from heaven.

Blackbird Testament

At dusk the blackbirds sprang up

From the stubble of a van Gogh

wheat field

in unison, primitive force explosion.

A storm cloud of matted ink periods

moving simultaneously in harmony

like a barbershop quartet.

The flock was not broken, knew what

to do without knowing. An ancient

unity possessed them, but it was

the two of us standing in the cold,

watching, that needed exorcism

where we were mute

in the silence spanning years

of slammed doors, broken dishes,

flicker of TVs in separate rooms.

The blackbirds wheeling now like

an angry storm funneled up as an

organic whole,

some dark opal collection,  not

the broken thing we were seeking respite.

We peered at them

where they vanished like some medieval

specter at the thin edge of the field.

We knew they understood earth's

magnetic cello sounding out through

the stream of their thoughts, flapping

wings, a text carved against the twilight, a

bitter bible we did not wish to read,

for we tongued the testament. 

Ralph Monday is an Associate Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN., where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing courses. In fall 2013 he had poems published in The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Fiction Week Literary Review, and was represented as the featured poet with 12 poems in the December issue of Poetry Repairs. In winter 2014 he had poems published in Dead Snakes. Summer 2014 had a poem in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology of Best Present Day Poems. His work has appeared in publications such as The Phoenix, Bitter Creek Review, Full of Crow, Impressions, Kookamonga Square, Deep Waters, Jacket Magazine, The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Crack the Spine, The Camel Saloon, Dead Snakes, Jellyfish Whispers, Pyrokinection, Red River Review, Burningword  and Poetry Repairs. Featured Poet of the week May, 2014 Poetry Super Highway. Forthcoming: Poems in Blood Moon Rising. Crack the Spine best of anthology and Down in the Dirt Magazine. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Houghton Mifflin’s “Best of” Anthologies, as well as other awards. A book, Empty Houses and American Renditions will be published by Hen House Press in Fall 2014.