CAROL PARRIS KRAUSS

May 2002 | back-issues, poetry

[b]Charles Town[/b]

Spanish moss curtains
fluttering in the wind
A gauzy layer over
the banks of the Ashley.
Down by the market
Ebony skin glistens
Sculpting a basket
of the reedy sawgrass.
The old market echoes
cries from the past
that trail a carriage
of modern day belles.
Sidewalks sizzling
Paddle fans twirling
down Meeting Street
people shuffle.
Over to St. Mary’s
with whispers from the tombs
over to Poogan’s Porch
Miss Zoey speaks.
Lazily sipping on the side porch
trying to catch the afternoon’s breeze.
Over on Queen Street
tantalizing smells waft
calling your name.
At the end of the Battery
regal homes stand
taking notice of
all the years.
The images pieced
create the majestic.
Charles Town
your spirit will always remain.

[b]Talk of Nothing[/b]

talk of nothing
nothing on the black double
tracks of phone line

nothing but birds
birds like crows
or blue jays squawking

birds bearing bad news
news from the Mockingbird
two streets over

news of a neighbor’s death
death by electrocution
fried burnt hair and smoking bones

talk

of nothing

but
lines
of birds
news of death.

[b]Blackberry Summers[/b]

Plump,
Juicy,
Sloe-black,
the summer fruit of mine
tempting on a vine.

Scratched,
Stained hands,
plopping into the tin bucket slowly
stretching highly and bending lowly.

Sun,
sweltering,
summer fruit,
to be savored to the last bite.
Eaten morning , noon, or night.

Flaky,
butter crowned,
crust,
displayed on the windowsill.
Dyed blue mouth getting its fill.

Ambrosia,
Delectable,
the fruit of blue-black
the memories of my youth take me back.

[b]I’ll Take Ft. Lauderdale[/b]

“New York is cosmopolitan”
Maria once
piped to me.
“Florida” is so pink flamingo-ish.”
True
but not iced in
dun tinted snow
in mid-winter.

I am loath to leave my
-aquamarine
-chlorine scented
-kidney shaped
-palm hated
pool
simply to be
cosmopolitan.

Besides
the
– portly
-Aqua Velvet reeking
-tobacco stained
man
at the air port terminal
took my new
size 10 Herringbone coat
instead of his when

airport security was frisking
my 11 year old
-peanut butter smudged
-gotta go to the bathroom
– wiggly daughter.
Because they deemed
her squirming terrorist like activities
to be a threat to national security.
Obviously they had never been on a two-hour flight
with a bored child.

so
Maria
instead of being cosmopolitan this winter
I will reapply
another coating of my
– SPF # 25
-Coppertone Bronze tan like a goddess
sunscreen

and simply stare at the
-plastic
-flapping
-one legged
flamingos
by the pool
this winter.

[b]Lunch @ La Belle[/b]

Down to La Belle
for escargot
garlic-butter gravy drippings
down Kelly’s chin
The large lady next
to us reeking of
lavender
toilet water
and adorned with a droopy
chapeau
flies buzzin’ in a craze around my crepe
exhaust filters in
the city sounds
certainly not a Monet
lunch @ La Belle
the monsieur in the tropical print
and polyester pants
belches not-so-discreetly
excuse moi
or something like that
cheap blush wine
and
tap water in a cobalt blue bottle
re-corked I believe
lunch @ La Belle
Kelly laughs
the sounds and scenery charm
her
amusant
or something like that
Lunch@La Belle

by Carol Parris Krauss (c)2002
([email]ck*****@******ol.com[/email])

Carol Parris Krauss is a poet and teacher. She currently lives with her daughter Kelly in south Florida. From September to June, Carol teaches English at a local private school. She longs to return to coastal Carolina and inhabit a rustic beach cottage. Her poems are quite visual, complexly simple, and usually about the South.

[b]Author’s Note:[/b]

More of Carol’s poems can be found at [url=http://www.deadmule.com]Dead Mule[/url], [url=http://www.kotapress.com]Kota Press[/url], and The Florida Palm.

JOEL R. S. YOUNG

May 2002 | back-issues, poetry

[b]at the joining of sky and horizon[/b]

the prints now left behind in sand will soon be washed away
the fires that burn bright tonight will all burn out by day
remembrance does not come for those who carve their names in stone
their memory decays and fades as even stone erodes….

no guarantees implied or written come with human birth
no standard set nor written guide can say what life is worth
one day life is, the next it’s not, the next new life begins
that life will live, that life will die – and that is how life is….
the author writes – his paper fades; and so his story dies
and who he is and what he was gets lost in seas of time
since all men great and small one day must breathe a final breath….
the greatest shame of all would be to die in fear of death….

[b]illumination:[/b]

the darkness from the light of day will leave unmelted snow
illuminations far removed leave candles left to glow
that candlelight is still romantic – so the lovers say…
but are dim lights and silent nights the proof we’ve grown afraid?

if so then those who pause to look might see what has been lost
and if in this lucidity – they choose a road unwalked…
if finally they gamble and let go of all they grasp…
they might discover candlelight can light their life at last….

[b]in the dream and what is hoped for, maybe[/b]

in the dream and what is hoped for, maybe;
i will see with different eyes.
i will walk inside your shoes,
i will live another’s life.
as maybe you would also.

maybe in my aspirations;
i’m the man i’d like to be.
i’m the hero of the story,
i’m the difference; i’m the dream.
and always living in it.

maybe in my daydream fancies;
i was things i’ve never been.
i was who i’d least expected,
giving out; putting in –
with so much left to offer.

in the dream of what is hoped for, maybe;
mirrors show me things i like.
reflections are the least revealing,
i paint truth about my life.
and there, i find my shelter.

it’s just a shame
that when it’s done,
when i must leave the world behind –
glancing back,
i’ll see i lived…

in dreams alone;
alone in life.

my nightmare then upon me.

[b]maroon and somnolescence[/b]

the words i write upon this page are thoughts which slowly fade
as time makes mind and body blend into the endless shade.
the will is strong, the dream is real, or so it seems to me
though empty glass and ticking clock is all i now can see.

fatigue sets in, and makes itself at home… like it belongs.
and till the sickness runs it’s course there are no sounds of songs.
there’s just the old ironic dream i sip from reddened glass,
the dream that i might wake to find my happiness at last.

by Joel R. S. Young (c)2002
([email]Fn*********@*ol.com[/email])

[b]Author’s Note:[/b]
Joel R. S. Young poses this question: “Am i an artist? Read what i have written, and decide for yourselves.”

CHRISTOPHER SWAN

May 2002 | back-issues, poetry

[b]Sunshine State[/b]

In wood gray comes
soon before falling down.
Inland Florida being no exception,
across the road a gate creaking
“Keep Out” where the rusty sun sets,
and a seven-year-old girl tore her dress
on the barbed wire fence
behind which a dirt road
disappears in a field of burrs
and weeds and nothing
ever happens.
The sun seems distant,
yet it bakes the air
from horizon to horizon;
and the moon,
when it gets close to the land,
turns maroon, turns the land
a kind of sinister shallow pale.
The three of us watch the
bonfires down the road
set by a man my mother
calls a pyromaniac.
And when my father comes home,
with his usual bright humor,
calling this place “The Ranch,”
she reminds him of the fact
that it is a shack. A gray wood shack.
The shack adds fuel to their nasty fights
this being only the latest, sorriest hole
he?s dumped his family in
along a string of failed jobs, binges,
increasingly prolonged absences
.. .until one final sun-seared afternoon
she drags two suitcases
and her three children down
the long, hot, shimmering road
to catch a bus to another life
bought by her father,
leaving behind only
a letter from a woman,
hotly disputed and in pieces,
blown and scattered on the floor…
Turning back to look, I see the shack.
Dead wood; unkindled by the sun.

[b]Early Light[/b]

If all he had was the chance
to fumble darkly toward a better end,
and grope along his unlit stairway,
he’d have gladly accepted the opportunity,
if only for the feeling he was getting somewhere.
But now he must be content to stay,
to measure out the dimensions of his heart;
Because here, a light burns softly,
even through the hooded lens of his eye;
warm, numinous. . . illuminating
and, sometime, it tells him,
he will make his way into the crowded days;
single out the faces that seek remembering;
the identifying sorrows etched in every face;
record the time and place of their passing,
like an Etruscan painter whose portraits
left the only traces of a long disremembered
people–that their eyes might gaze,
limpid with futile beauty,
into ours.

[b]River run[/b]

Time’s the river rushing on,
swallows tributary lives,
visible until they’re gone.

Push against or pull upon
–life’s the thing that just arrives-
Time’s the river rushing on.

It’s the stream where humans spawn,
wriggle through their dwindling lives,
visible until they’re gone.

Earth, wind, and fire carry on:
Drink again what life revives.
Time’s the river rushing on.

Take a look at everyone,
know there’s meaning in their lives
(time’s the river rushing on)
visible until they’re gone.

[b]Insignificance[/b]

This place has been like
Out-of-season spring
These last few days.
Something has descended here;
Silence?
Hard to believe.
I’ve heard more silence here,
Seen more empty space
than I dare to recall.
Inner and outer worlds have,
for the moment,
Become convexed and concaved.
There was no autumn here.
There will be no spring.
The ice will splinter, not melt.
No mirror needed
For silent splendor
To be turned over, and over, and over
In the machinery; as if the earth were not
a catch-all of the perfectly insignificant.
When loud Significance
Rolled its hammered rivets over everything
To conquer, entirely, the Great American Plain,
To bring
The Urgency of Cities
It left echoes, now audibly caroming
off the planets and the planets’ moons.
This urgency must of itself
burn itself out.
Time tells us that.
Let the future come.
let it come in purple glaze
Like absinthe in the mouth.
And brilliant, multicolored sand in the eyes.
Let it seize itself with its own power
Let it have its compound hour, compounded again,
Turning itself into shards of ambition and chaos.
Leaving itself nowhere to go.
Which is exactly what it did.
Went nowhere. Did nothing.
Waiting to be rediscovered!
Immolation of the known
Leaves no residue on the unknown:
World after world. . . sigh upon sigh.

[b]Walking by the Cemetery[/b]

A butterfly,
the dog and I
and, yes, Spring’s Fool,
with those who sigh
for those gone by,
now sleeping in Time’s pool.

[b]Song for My Father[/b]

So, this is what you left us:
this is your legacy-
our hair full of rain, our eyes clouded,
we look back at you, across the dead years,
across the pain and sorrow,
tracing the lineaments of our inheritance
to a glazed stare
in a cheap hotel room
and a black phone
you never rang.

[b]In Remembrance[/b]

When you died you became as silent
as footprints covered by fresh snow.
You were suddenly an unwritten letter
composed in the mind, but not put to paper.
Your clothes hung empty in the closet,
as though waiting for you to step into them;
but you are no longer you and we don’t know
who you are, or where you’ve gone, or why.
Removed so far from us you might as well have
lapsed into the silent folds of the deepsea,
or lain scribbled in an ancient poem on a shelf
in the drowned library of Alexandria.
You have joined the silent chorus of the dead.
Like winter warmth you simply emptied yourself
into the perplexity of infinite space.
You walked and sat and talked among us once;
but that no longer happens and never will.
What you have taken with you is more
than can be said or thought of in a lifetime.
So the time has come to resolutely take you back
out of the mere shuffle of humanity, prize you
in the secret details of profound, unspoken grief,
and keep you in the sealed memory of our hearts.

by Christopher Swan (c) 2002
([email]ch********@***oo.com[/email])

[b]Author’s Note:[/b]
Christopher Swan’s life reflects his poetry – or vice versa. His poetry tends to the eclectic and idiosyncratic just as his life has, from truck-loader to apprentice for The New York Shakespeare Festival to work in films. Christopher became a full-fledged journalist as a New York Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, later writing features and an arts column there. His work appeared in The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times many other papers. He’s written for numerous magazines.

His poetry has appeared on the Web, most notably in the Absinthe Literary Review. Chris started writing poetry for publication this past summer.