So, this poem of mine needs work, but I'm going to go on and put it out there. If anyone has any comments, or constructive criticism, go for it. I can't seem to get a writing group together, so I will take feedback wherever I can get it! Enjoy.
Pablo,
Please be waiting for us when the serpent
finally strikes his own tail,
when the last landowner has bought all the land.
I would wish myself there to you already
were it not so terrifyingly beautiful here.
Even as we are present on the edge of the world’s end,
soft sighs of mothers and their incessant televisions
blare. Sweet herons travel over the treetops
and diesel-fueled interstates, going to their nests
in the middle of the river.
I sleep soundly, wrapped in the mantle of my husband’s love
while feral cats take refuge in our bushes,
silent brakes of drug deals hustle across the street.
There is no end to the gruesomeness of humanity.
Wars rage for minerals and the name of a forgotten religion,
and children hunger and die without lament.
Here in the supple southern wind of Tennessee
I see hope in twilight starling afternoons
and the joy of reading your verse.
It quiets the din of debt and expectation,
it feeds the wailing child of anxiety.
Here wrote a man who savored the pomegranate expanse
of the esoteric world, and howled at its injustice.
Make you a galloping steed on the sand,
a triumphant prize fighter with a secret pain,
an orphan alone in the night searching
for the teat of his mother -
Whatever your ether ends up becoming -
I give you the slight twinge in my ankle,
recently sprained, and the flight of a nighttime bird,
the puff of a rainy day mushroom,
and the blood of a thousand American soldiers
that never heard your name.
We will see you at the festival’s end -
and the gray metal birds will bring us home
to a dog, perhaps a plot of land, and a sweet love
to hold us tight.
- RPJ
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