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~for Verlie Burroughs, a ‘fellow’ islander poet with a sense of human humor~

walking the reservoir on a warm spring day,
Central Park littered with tourists and pale face,
fellow islanders, all of non-Algonquin Indian descent

released from Rikers Island (of course) Prison,
six month sentence served
behind bars of winter grayscale skies
and snowy steel and grey prison everything

an out-of-townsfolk young lady passes me in a pink t-shirt,
where humans these lazy days declare their entire philosophy,
“I’d rather live on an island”
and thus a poem commissioned

well, rather brought forth from the chilled, deep waters surrounding the brain where winter vegetables rooted but cannot  surface,
the iced ground frozen impermitting bodies to be buried,
no war and death monument foundations to be poured,
flower-powered poems unable to pierce as well,
even with the upwards ****** of cesarean birth
and or, one last push and me begging
breathe
winter strangled

but I walked today
the Central Park reservoir and
all I got was that stupid t-shirt provocation
with
tulips and daffodils, dogwood and magnolias, and
cherry blossoms confirming,
it’s okay today to write of
islands and shoreline once more,
of
boundaries now and again

though the idea had prior brief transversed
the thought canal, was struck into action
when realized suddenly a dawning -

a l l  m y  l i f e,  I  h a v e  l i v e d  o n  a n  i s l a n d

counting backwards seven decades with a
collegial exception, of living by a great lake,
which is but an island in reverse,
poet *** prophet had to always walk on water to get home

<•>

my poems are travelogues,
not pretty words and tonguing talk,
sorry not,
more tales than wagging tongue wordy tails

but dumbstruck by the ocean notion that I live by the
grace of an Ocean that waits patiently to reclaim my island,
stealing my unborn poem children and
tried with a Sandy haired girl a few years ago

hurry home to scribe, and imbibe,
write upon its streetscape
with colored chalk and
upon it once more,
the concrete paths and
a reservoir dirt path surrounding and shorelines
that are all the shaping of me

all my life, and Neverland realized
I am a seagull disguised as human
What’s is it that we are looking for
as we stare blankly at the sun
pretending to not be blind

what is it that we hope to find
in the lost space weaved
throughout the colors of our eyes
is there anybody there
we would really want to find

what is it we were thinking
when we lost our train of thought
I can’t remember were there
even any passengers on board

what is it that we are waiting for
before we can see the white
of one another’s eye
is it the lost meaning of the life
we are about to take away

different god
different country
same pride
same loss

killing in the name of who created who
the last whisper of a man praying
to a god praying to a man
pretending to not be blind
as he stared blankly at the sun
His head kept bumping on my shoulder
and he was not my father
or anyone I knew

he smelled as if a bath was overdue
and slept like wasn't a place better
than the ***** briefness of my shoulder.

Breaking down was my brittle patience
needled by his bristled cheek
brushed by his shabby dress,

was for rest the man hard pressed?

Wouldn't I have been nudged by pride
if the head on my shoulder was my father
happy to have him by my side?

as he gets older
does his blurry mind miss
a place where he is not alone

one or any shoulder
for an untimely nap in peace
a quiet stranger to rest upon?
A bus ride in the heat, Mar 15, 2018, 2pm
  May 2018 Pradip Chattopadhyay
Eric W
Sometimes the darkness is all I know.
A man sits in a chair in a black room,
television casting shadows and
violent fantasies onto the walls.
He stands
and moves slowly
as if he were submerged in the muddy water
of all the wrongs accrued.
He makes his way into the kitchen,
eventually,
and the pain shoots through his neck
— fool —
he stalls
and leans against the doorway.
The dishes remain undone
while parts of the broken dishwasher
are strewn across the counter.
Dirt from the unswept floor
sticks to his bare feet
as he shuffles to the fridge
again.
up and down, round and round
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