Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Perry L. Powell- Three Poems


(dam)aged

(dam)aged

with (dam)aged eyes
sighing (dam)aged sighs
see the dam(aged) sight
in the dim (dam)aged light

a (dam)aged man
from a (dam)aged family
from a (dam)aged species
on a (dam)aged planet
in a (dam)aged universe

no fix in sight
damn age!



Skull in Hand

These thoughts of nothing
dominate my nights,
with my days being already
productively scheduled.

You were there one day.
The next you were not.
With a pain in my side and
a hollow gut,  I reflect.

The engineer blows
his whistle to frighten
the dark; we who try to sleep
can only listen and wait.

This is what we call
living in our neighborhood.



Shoveling the Air Out

Some days take you in:
when a sunset splashes iodine across the sky
or the grass writes sonnets on the wind
or you stand beside the truth
of the catalpa at the corner of the ball field.

Tell me why
you are giving that last presentation
without benefit of slides,
advertising some backdoor business in a Roman ruin
while all the ancient beasts
hiding behind the minutes are
so well-known in Cleveland.

Once touched always in contact.
So maturity comes along and knocks out the teeth of our youth.
But a continuum of dreams is the most important thing
when it is time to sing the refrain again.

Let's all ride in together.
Holding our happiness tight but at arm's length
with a ribbon of gold for a promise
and a map for what territory we claim.



Perry L. Powell is a systems analyst who lives near Atlanta, Georgia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dead Snakes, 50 Haikus, A Handful of Stones, A Hundred Gourds, Aphelion, Atavic Poetry, Black Mirror Magazine, Decades Review, Deep Water Literary Journal, Frogpond, Haiku Presence, Indigo Rising, Lucid Rhythms, Mobius The Journal of Social Change, Poetry Pacific, Poetry Quarterly, Prune Juice, Quantum Poetry Magazine, Ribbons, small stones, Stone Highway Review, The Bactrian Room, The Blue Hour, The Camel Saloon, The Credo, The Foliate Oak, The Heron's Nest, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Lyric, The Mind[less] Muse, The Rotary Dial, Turtle Island Quarterly, vox poetica, and Wolf Willow Journal. 

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