Daniel Wilcox- Two Poems

Ricochet

In the fallen leavings
after passing Nam’s
black cliff of loss,
towering low shadowed a cross the green,

Painful images ricochet
within, warring again, this time Afghan-
(another cussin’ last stan’)
lost,
but safe in our green zone of the patriot act,
many a student
shoots,
maims in a virtual kill-fun

of blood-letting the high tech screen,

the black stealth plane of will
cruising above his roomy suburban cocoon.

Many a neighbor shouts, idolizes,

bludgeoning the teeming world-scene,
bashing undocumented workers
(crowded in the city scape– goats),

the vulgar weapon of choice,
his ‘splitting’ mouth
blasting out;

These new Americans clamor up—
Dwarfing ethics,
no twins
of light,

again
so
down

heart
less
les
es.

First pub. in Yes Poetry, 12/2010



End of a Rope

Last week in stark finality,
A reality TV star of us all,
Wanted by the American cops,
Hanged himself
In despair or regret
At the end of a rope,
So unreal in the darkened motel
In Hope B.C.

What an oxymoron of factual news,
A final exit show in
This small fairytale town
Below snow-capped peaks
And evergreen, cliff-ledged majesty
By the River Fraser rolling past time;

Strangely last Fall,
Bordering on the edge,
I, too, clung at the end of a lifeline in
A brightly lit motel down that same road,
But now I thrive in this troubled life
Far from the ledge of loss
Because last year when peering
Into the bottomless abyss,
I roped across
Despair
To the ageless Rock,
There in Hope, A.D.

First pub. in different form in  The New Verse News, 8/26/2009

Brief Bio: Daniel's wondering lines have wandered around the sphere into many magazines in the United States, Canada, and overseas including Contemporary American Voices, Write Room, vox poetica, Fish Food, Poetry Pacific, Word Riot, Mad Swirl, Counterexample Poetics, and Unlikely Stories IV.

Before that Daniel voyaged through the University of Nebraska, Cal State University, Long Beach (Creative Writing), Montana, Pennsylvania, Europe, Arizona, and Palestine/Israel. He now lives on the central coast of California with his quilting wife.