You can relax.
This isn’t another poem
about love. Nor of pursuits
for that end, nor is it about loveless
endings.

Okay
that’s a lie.
Actually it is.
Should I part ways
with concealed knowledge
of the planets or a faraway star
and send them on their way
to the cochleae of sweet ears
you possess to impress
you with my secret life
as an unfledged amateur scientist,
then arouse your mind
by filling it
with scientific questions of the day?
Should I tell you
of my recent infrequent exercise
that may have slightly toned
a hidden body beneath baggy clothes?
Do you seek out truth
on your own or do you require a nudge?
How much do you really want the truth at all
if all it serves to do
is make us both worse off.
Have you been fooled by many men before
who have put up a brilliant front
in their own concealment of
behavioural nasties and hapless insecurities.
If so, did you like them anyway?
Did you like that they had lied
so desperate for your kiss?
Would you have preferred they had
told their truth
all along
getting them nowhere,
somewhere,
anywhere but here,
listening to my monologue.

There is no resolution;
no happy ending to this poem.
I just want your truth
can you help with mine?

I thought about ending the poem there,
I probably normally would,
but some force kept me on.

I don’t know where this poem is going anymore.
To tell you the truth
I never really did.
I will not ask you to help with it.
Just do me this honour, if you will:
to ask to watch you in your element
would seem too clichéd (this is a poem remember,
or at any rate that is how it has dressed today.)

‘I thought you said it was a monologue,’ you say.
I told you I was
never much good
at this business
of telling the truth,
and you cannot interrupt me,
this is a monologue.

Instead what I ask of you
is to show me where your work finds you
or to take me on a trip to a passionate pastime
of yours
where
learning
I will watch;
help me
help me.

 

first appeared in Blognostics

 

 

Joel Schueler has published works in over ten countries in over forty publications including Pennsylvania Literary Journal & The Brasilia Review. From London, he has a BA (Hons) in English Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. https://www.joelschueler.com

Shovel

It’s what I lean on
in the heat of day.
The goon spoon.
The old banjo,
it’s what I play
and who I am –-
a mover of things:
coal, earth, snow,
nothing shall remain as is.
How else do I make
a hole and fill it?
What other way
can the gravedigger
marry the dead?

Ladder

Without a doubt
a ladder goes both up and down.
Most certainly,
a ladder takes us and all
to where we’re going:
web-riddled attics;
highest deadwood;
unwashed windows.
Absolutely, dear customer,
you can climb
the hatchways into heaven
or cellars of hell.
Wherever you most desire.
However you’re destined.

Saw

I’ve never seen
what the saw has seen.
I’ve never spoke aloud
its secret name
or passed a comment
on its toothy grin.

O bloodless tragedy,
I’ve never cut off
the heads of dolls
in a cold sweat.
There is no tree
I haven’t considered
cutting down
to the ground.
No forest offends me.

Mop

This is no ordinary mop, my starlings.
This is a wand for warding away evil.
It’s a thin man in search of his head.
This is how we divine for well water.

Not just a mop, a consolation prize
in a contest no rational mind would contemplate.
A lever in a mechanical heaven.
A stick you heave at the darkness.

A mop, if only to the unschooled eye.
It’s possibly the last oak on the planet.
It’s the one I love. A comely dancer,
wherever I lead she reluctantly follows.

Hammer

The hammer doesn’t know it’s a hammer.
The hammer has never heard it’s been said
‘every tool is a possible weapon’.
Round nails. Brain pans. Piano wire.
It’s much the same when you’re a hammer.
Gallows. Mansions. A tall ship’s decking.
A hammer doesn’t weigh up potential
or adjudge the concerns of carpenters.
It’s we who make things and take things apart.
That’s our blood that holds us together.

 

 

 

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,600 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press); Like As If (Pski’s Porch); Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

“So we grow together
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition…”
—William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This is for you,
who once took me in
your wide child’s arms,
strawberry wool,
and tea in china cups,
spools of honey,
your little sisters
tumbling
like golden apples
over your bed,
the snowdrops
of your fingertips
on piano keys,
finding silver yearning
of Für Elise, dreams
unfurling from our pillows
like the peach ribbons
of a surprise party
or midsummer picnics
and the plummy pageantry
of Shakespeare’s rhymes
in the rose garden where
we romped and caught
our sleeves on the thorns
of adolescent naïveté.

Now, across a continent,
as your heart gasps
in grief’s cold tunnel
and clusters of friends
offer you tender
apricots of prayer,
may my voice be
a single petal
floating over miles of time
to land like a fingerprint
of sun on your hair,
for my words spring
from a heart that’s one half
of a double cherry
that still grows,
as ever,
next to yours.

 

 

Linda Ferguson is an award-winning, Pushcart-nominated writer of poetry, essays, and fiction. Her poetry chapbook, Baila Conmigo, was published by Dancing Girl Press. As a writing teacher, she has a passion for helping students find their voice and explore new territory.

A part of my heart
I never knew existed – if
it existed at all before
that moment – began
to beat the day
you were born.
That first new movement,
a chamber opening, filling
with bright blood,
stilled my breath
and whitened my vision
as you emerged into the world,
all eager lungs and flailing limbs.

Later, your fresh skin wrapped
in layers of blue towels,
I held you and lost myself
in your closed eyes, the cries
which announced your arrival
echoing through the new and tender chamber
of my suddenly meaningful heart.

 

 

Edward Lee‘s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll.  His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com