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Tag: Poems

  • A New Poem: “Street Car, Sweet Heart, Sweat Hard”

    I love your Spanish talk.
    The soft ground around you
    Hovers as you walk.
    Chinese flowers grow out of me
    like dreams lifted under a bed
    of yellow Lantana and grapewood rosevine.
    Midnight and a sleep walking Sun
    dip its claws into the milky Moon.

    She blows a serenade and makes a note in her diary: March 14th;
    Or was it the other day when we played through the woods in the synagogue’s court?
    I kept my diary clear
    with liquor? hidden there.

    All those cars have resisted, and those children inside us have died,
    but the moist oil still grasps at the roots of the darkened cells.
    (It’s old, and the unmarried couple inside still snuggle closely to the foot of her screaming limb.)

    Once a bold, minted Moon?struck the head like a bell and turned us red,
    And the merry men of the next town whistled “Dixie” all the way down
    to the smoothed River’s bed.

    A maestro, that dark little secret, always dancing and standing still.
    (She, seh, was the dear. May we call you dear? Take our collective blue beard hand.)

    Governor rubs the chocolate chip lips of white faces that read: “never washed hair.”
    Steers calling sisters for dates and the narrow alley was our field with its
    one chilling little blade.

    All the sorcerers were baked
    Inside a street lit with humiliating desire.
    That moment never turned or backed up when the future,
    blinded, uncaring, unknowingly,
    decided to run us over.

    Someday they will tell me she still lives there,
    every soaked board still crying, trying to pull out the rusty nails
    of the last conversation made,
    and yet, still, even with all the talk,
    That she is never at home.

  • A New Poem: The Cross

    The river flows uphill.
    It isn’t magic.
    Magic is when it flows downhill.

    The arrow of time is pierced
    by eternity

    The man hanging is
    the soul
    awakened.

    The milk girl is dancing
    The “Cotten-Eyed Joe”
    on the gym floor of the mind
    underneath which the oceans of the Cosmos
    Splash applause and awake our Suns.
    On the head of a pin, spinning,
    she offers distance
    heaven’s wooden bowl.

    Living is easy.

    And the Lady of our feet
    washes the expression
    of how things shalt be
    from the Skull’s dead head
    with the Water of Life.

    Below the willowed valley’s flowery eyes
    see without looking
    reach without moving
    teach without speaking,
    and love without thinking.

    Every time one of its olive branches whispers
    the secret of secrets into the Mediterranean breeze,
    a new life is born of virgin birth,
    transcendently, through the middle of the true cross,
    the heart.

    ©2009 Stephen Pickering

  • Little Night Poem

    I don’t care what the foam sea squalls say:
    The mountains are made of mint.
    Green I spend gliding upon the emotion-
    Less ramp besieged by the creepy Count de Bourgie
    Of my psyche. The orphaned Queen of my heart will jump
    Straight down into her moat and drown
    If the adventurer of my soul forgets
    To stay on his horse.
    A jacketed smoke walk down to the Bourbon wall.
    It stretches a few quarters, but the one
    Inside, it tunnels inward Universe upon Universe.
    A bleek streak.Beaker Street. Jazz blue smokes Bitches Brew
    To whites of eyes carved out of stone
    Demi-Gods staring back double fisted.
    They can take it even pinned to a mountain for centuries.
    We (the children still inside me) roll in the dough, little sprinkled whites,
    As pigeons of possibility sip cappucino on the departing square.
    Someone shuffles down a back alley
    Of my heart. A glance, and two dark, soft eyes
    Surrender the Yucatan night as the beach waves
    Dive in from the hole the Dinosaur asteroid made.
    We shriek down to drink the Greek god’s salty blood.
    I buy trinkets for her and two dresses embroidered with firebirds,
    One for Mum. They will fly us to the shore. The rest, well…we must save some words.
    The phone call goes through but I don’t hear her voice.
    (Who could in this situation?)
    Someone else (the sloucher) whispers a void
    That sucks away the beach sunrise sunset dream.
    The cats blur in the fiber
    Glass behind locked chained links for winter, but the matted Tabby
    Of my bewilderment is stuck in the roof of my ego
    And moans for food, for a way out.
    Oh, how I reach!
    Sound gets through, light gets through, all the forces of nature get through
    But there is still something else we are waiting for. What is it?
    I never forget the freaky blizzard where even the flowing
    Fountain turned into block. Don’t tell me life isn’t quantum.
    (Even after wave after wave almost drowns me)
    Someone, no, not just anyone,
    She turns to me laughing gingerly in the cold,
    Dark back alley of the warehouse district,
    But I let the flashy city’s neon outlines carry me away,
    Building upon building seeking the sacred pyramidal top.
    Soon enough, though, I’ll be alone in the Pontiac,
    Bristling at the bones,
    Nestling into the concrete, filling another Weller
    With spring water, looking at the gate still not crumble,
    Even as the giant hundred year oaks howl at the city’s brick tablets.
    My one hand left snakes, and an eye opens the Sun curtain.
    One tree and a bounding suspicion race
    God knows where but the car’s breath
    Roars in the hope that at least it’s somewhere,
    Home to someone,
    Who might finally have that expression on her face
    We’ve been waiting for
    Our whole life.