| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
Tara A. Elliott Midustouch Steve Phillips Suzanne DelaneyA DEED WITHOUT A NAME
“There are two tragedies. One is my children and the other is my wife.” --Russell Yates
Jason never really knew what she could do,
until Medea slew his brood that day.
O, she set the strand of revenge &
hacked her children clean.
Only seven,
Noah had waited more than forty days
and forty nights for his mother to return.
She never truly did.
Mount Ararat is fiction.
O, she set the strand of baptism &
drowned her children clean.
Every parent sweeps prayers to the air.
Every parent weeps.
MONTMARTRE
A Tribute to Henri Toulouse Lautrec
Cheap whores and absinthe
night time becomes the day
floating in a hazy cloud
a crazy cloud while wormwood
rots your brain.
Stunted legs could not your love
of life deny
and so you painted dancers
who flashed theirs to the thigh
and more!
The Can-Can girls
the flirting gay chanteuse
were subjects for your art
and companions in your bed
just as long as you had money
to blind their age old eyes.
Paint and sketch
no time to rest
silk screen posters
oil and crayon.
Bright colours filling billboards
outside the Moulin Rouge.
I have a feeling that acrylics
would have been your forte.
had they been around in your day,
but the mediums you worked in
have lasted through the years.
You take me with you on your midnight
forays through the streets of cobblestones
to watch the aristocracy at play
amidst the cafes and theatres
of seedy old Montmartre.
The glitter and the glamour
are only on the surface
misery and bondage
wearing make-up with a smile.
Somewhere along the way my friend
the booze became your master
and syphilitic paranoia
held you in her grip of death
not wanting to let go.
So sad to watch you falter
when all was at your feet
Paris in its Summer of Love
became your Winter of defeat.
Yet when I see your work
on walls in fine museums
I long to see those posters
back where they should be
among the noisy revellers
back in old Montmartre.
THE SPINNING WHEEL
It revolves, and makes a soothing
sound that evokes the winds of autumn
grieving for the child whose path is twisted,
whose troubled silence speaks fear.
Gandhi listened for a time
and felt the colors of his faith
revolving too, entwining there
among threadbare longings, gaining
silence from the spinning whispers.
Patience is almost gentle in his heart
as the thread of time emerges
continuous, eternal,
graceful and serene.
And this thread is our connection
to the majestic light of stars
which still shine in Mahatma's eyes
while he sits, humming softly,
singing the wheel around.
UNICORN HOOFPRINTS
One morning, I awoke
to find
in the soft earth
among garden shadows--
mythical unicorn
hoofprints.
How I imagined its perfect
form!
A magical horse with a
spiraled horn!
Stepping through a pink mist,
into my garden at dawn.
I decide to hide, where
the first light
slants through the trees,
my heart all aflutter,
waiting to see
this miracle.
A rustling of leaves,
I hold my breath,
Ready to face the impossible....
Oh! disbelief--
What do I see?
but
two horse shoes-- attached to
sticks--
and father--
planting mythical hoof prints
Quiet as a fae
I steal away
and later, with wonderment
I say,
“The unicorn has strayed again
Pa Pa,
into our garden today.”
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