| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
BURIED LOVE Koi (Konglish1) WITH NO REGRETS, FORGETTING Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett) JOEL Julie Mazza (TornScorpio)
My love is masked as mere camaraderie,
Concealing half the heart I ache to show.
My smiles display a feigned felicity;
The cracking smiles I fake are all you know.
I’ve buried in my heart my fantasy
That friendship should not die, but rather grow,
And hidden hopes that perfect unity
Is only dormant ‘neath the winter snow.
But smiles crack, facades fade haltingly.
When buried desire cankers love’s sweet rose,
A heart grows cold that once burned merrily –
Sweet gardens turn to dust where naught will grow.
We bury flower seeds and corpses both
and buried love breeds death and rot, not growth.
This dad clearly loves the tow-head two-year-old
splay-legged upon his lap – as ardently as he
adores his older brother, four, propped next
to them, inspecting subway seat and floor and
door – hair like tousled straw. “Why does this
train go backwards?” straw-boy bellows more
than asks. Kissing tow-head on the crown,
his kingly tasks of fatherhood divided, daddy
fakes a pensive frown – then squeezes straw-boy’s
knee affectionately. “Looks like it’s going straight
ahead to me.” “But where’s the button?” straw-boy
now commands – non-sequitur which raises daddy’s
eyebrows – for a moment seems to strand him –
as they land at 42nd Street toward which they hop
like deer – presumably to trek back to their secret
woods – though not before the youngest, tow-head,
points with urgency, wide-eyed, at me – then flips
his sight back to the prospect of the three of them
departing through the parting silver gates – his
startled mind refocussing – surely now, and for some
years to come, quite happily forgetting many things.
Right now I can’t imagine him regretting anything.
Clenched
Lily white and lopsided
The creases in his hands
invent etchings of cranes
Swooping across
From thumb to index finger
Tiny marks of blue
His phone call two nights before
Seeped its way into the carpet
Where my knees scattered
Like his ashes
And his cry echoed
solely and singular countless times
while I sat
High in self centered orbit
Up above a life where
He was constricted
By worry
Or fear
running out to that lake
And stopping just long enough to load the gun
With his sweet blue crane hands
As he blessed himself on his way
To die
still
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