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.