The ticking clock, like gunshots through my head
aimed at my youthful ignorance...
the scent of you still lingers in our bed.

I ghost through space, not living, not yet dead -
straddle chasms of our best intents-
the ticking clock, like gunshots through my head...

My mind still hears the poetry you read,
replays the laugh of youth's exuberance,
the scent of you still lingers in our bed.

I enter empty house now, filled with dread.
I feel your absence, all it represents-
the ticking clock, like gunshots through my head.

A fog billows in, begins to spread,
as death comes to erode all innocence.
The scent of you still lingers in our bed.

My nose has plundered through each precious thread
for faintest linger of your redolence...
the ticking clock, like gunshots in my head.
The scent of you is fading from our bed...



© Mar 2018, Winnie Carolina

I found you
As a friend
Took you
By the hand
We both
Got ******
Lost you
In the wind
Because
My poor
little head
Went round
The ******* bend

To the ones who were taken!
The ones that left for greener pasture!
For those that eloped…
Insearch of love and comfort.
To the ones whose country was at war!
Had to leave not because of the fun.
To you all who have not seen your relatives in decades!
To you all I hail thy!

Your country may be in disarray
You may had been trafficked
Maybe even by mistake.
Yet a new home you had to find
To you, I hail thee!

To the anchor babies, the ones who got bullied…
for what they are not responsible for.
You are my star!
You shine so bright they find it hard not to pick from you. 'Not on you'.
For the great brains that have to live with little, for lacking a Green Card!
You are bigger than what they thought of you.
Your turn to succeed would come. Please don't give up.

Her mother's daughter
The one that was told of great opportunities.
She left with big dreams! Only to see the cruelty of the world she knows nothing of.
In your is the odyssey. Your strength is unmatched!

For our ansestors that were taken and made slaves.
Called "Colored" because of their beautiful skin
Our dashing Milani beauty!
Oh! Your flawless skin under the ray of the sun or its coolness with every cold breeze.
A Resistor!
My ancestral goddess. You found a home amidst all odds.
To you! I hail thy!
And to you is this day celebrated.
Happy International Migrant day!

Ilsa's hair blew like silk in the soft Parisian breeze.
Rick looked 10 years younger driving his sportster
down Champs-Elysees. Arc de Triomphe was in the
distance. Young, radiant, Ilsa was the most beautiful
woman in the world. Every man who ever saw her
instantly fell in love with her, myself included. The
German army was only a day from entering Paris,
but that didn't stop Rick from proposing to Ilsa in
La Belle Aurore as Sam played AS TIME GOES BY.
That Ilsa didn't meet Rick in the pounding rain at
the train station as they had planned to take it to
Marseille on their way to Casablanca foreshadowed
the protracted, brutal war the Nazis had already
begun one conquest after another across Europe.
But ****** was not prescient enough to realize
"...a kiss is just a kiss...." and in his Berlin bunker
first swallowed a cyanide capsule then put the muzzle
of his revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger,
his only constructive act since becoming Chancellor
in 1933.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

I am made of infatuation, shame and forever gloom
You could not fall
This is not the chessboard of your dreams
No pawn makes—
No bishop makes
The queen takes, is taken an equal
This is not an aisle of rebirth
Or some sombre remembrance
It halts, it halts
The numbers lessen
I did not abandon, I am still here
Yet, a halt lingers
Like death stuck on the precipice of throat
A life of a single lifetime of a thought
I am energy, a little restless
But restless so out of the nature of self
Like the eye of a rook
On the king through a rook

A stupor unblinking
Like the sharpening of a dream
The knight-slide like an Arabian sword
The king scuttles
Rook takes rook, king takes rook

I fancied myself a manly dream
But it doesn’t work like that, does it—
The game writes, and children play
Now I wait the shameful minutes away
(And I watch your hands, so patient, simple
Say, are you dead or pleased?)
And I watch your hands
I should’ve looked up when I had the chance
Now the brooding leaves
And my eye hardens
Father, you have won
With a dream so well, you played just right
I should have not worshipped the pawns like that

3.
Picture:
smog pilfers
away some stars;
some cars
my words

Silence:
like a pinch, a piercer,
a piercing

Little winter:
a pistachio
salty, sweetly
confined a bead
I crack the door open
I eat it up

Clock:
a pistil
in it
time incubates

This lamplight
is like a pineapple
I want to write, write, write

1.
Hibiscus rue.
citrus.
cataclysm.
but so gentle rue.

2.
A cappuccino night
eavesdrops,
the lamp sleeps slouching
its jaw slack,
my clock's monotonous cadence
is loyal as always

4.
A quaver
from a cadaver
that is what muttering trucks
do to the night

It is like startled birds:
they never sit back just right

5.
Insomniac mosquitos
have a *******, I think

The night sky
moves like a swarm

I watch it like a friendless owl
but I am happy