5 Poems

At this moment

"I realized that I did not know anything for certain"
Tadeusz Borowski
1922-1951

And at this moment I do not know anything for certain:
Hundreds of thousands of bodies wash to shore,
A volcanic eruption at sea submerges twenty islands,
forest fires leave piles of charred redwood trees,
a glacier sails away, carrying a family of polar bears.
Layers of stars get entangled in strings, shaking them off
into a network of milky ways.
The St. John River flows away from the Bay of Fundy.
Cars go back on Magnetic Hill.

The creek in my backyard is as huge as the Nile or the Amazon
and is still polishing pebbles.
Mallards fly over.
The birch tree splits, dies and
falls into the water.

The torn balloon was once the sky dome.
The yellow and red balls left by little Lilly
contain the code for future universes.

Evening touches morning.
Night swallows high noon.

A door opens in the basement ceiling,
goes up to visit the attic.

Advantages

Being buried under an ancient olive tree
has its advantages:
Not ever being bothered by distant relatives.
Pleasant shade at all times.
Some of the tree's wisdom may be
rubbing off on me.
Inspiring view of the watermelon and the wheat fields,
being intoxicated by the fragrance
of the citrus groves in the fall.
Resident scorpions scratching my back.
A remote possibility it will be mistaken
for a holy sheikh tomb encouraging pilgrimages.

Pizza

A ghastly pink beach.
Polka dots mushrooms sprout,
grow shells, stick out tongues

Knock, knock, knock down shells.
Squirt with greenish goo.
Here you are, You wanted gravy. Parasite!
Ants with head flashlights
march quickly between mushrooms rows.
"looking for your lost tribe?"
Blue crystal parachute land on the beach
accompanied by angelic music.
God's well modulated voice:
Organic peanuts, organic peanuts.
No?
O.K.
Anyone for pizza?

Lightseeds

For Salvador Dali and Pieta

Roots are confidently burrowing deep.
Moist and excited they order
the stem to straighten.
The huge sunflower
lifts its head stretching and yawning.
Dark seeds tremble in tension and anticipation,
Inner glow comes up from the dark earth, bathes them,
illuminates the sunflower crown.
It is swimming in light.
Day and night, the seeds blissfully dream
in a bed of delight, in harmonized breath.

Till one moves, uncomfortably beckoned by sky signals,
All seeds stir.
One by one, they shoot out, seeking
hidden dark discs in the skies,
tracking them, chasing them, tricking them into submission.
Penetrating them, the seeds linger inside
until the discs stretch, enlarge,
in a joyful flight into orbit,
become sun discs, colliding with each other playfully.
They cross heavy curtains of dead stars,
disappear behind them
form a bell quire,
ringing through veils.
Wrapped in a shiny blanket of fog
they acquire comet tails.

Looking into the vast extinguished spaces
They are falling fast.
Their blood freezes.

Overcome by yearning and longing
to their luminoussunflower mother,
they tear the walls of the sun discs,
leaving them bleeding and dark.
Wounded seeds make their way
through fierce galaxies and
mountainous planets,
consumed by dragon meteors, hissing flames.
Except one who desperately continues the impossible journey back to his
Luminoussunflower mother.

Our eyes register the light of dead stars
Andre Schwartz Bart "The last of the just"

Our eyes register the light of dead stars.
One of them dubbed NT 2248 by astronomers
was our warm home
where pale grasses soared to red rooftops
where flowers blossomed on our windowsills
where we nestled our dreams.

The planet was the origin of the great exodus
521,000,000 years ago.
We were not aware or warned that
we violated one of the seven hundred twenty three injunctions.
Kicked out by the whim of a disgruntled locksmith named Job.

We traveled with turtle houses on our backs
across the vast expanses of shadow holes,
crossed moon galaxies,
cut by star shards,
shoved into snowy sky caves,
charred by comet tails.

Torn skinned, dumped on a planet of flat roofs,
plastic covers, fake flowers, shuttered windows,
strapped to metal chairs
taped to walls,
stuffed into monosyllabic cells:

Br-ea-th

Br-ea-th

S-T-A-R