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46 · Mar 2020
Untitled
45 · Feb 2020
113
TJ Struska Feb 2020
113
I barely made it out of the shadows. These symbols
Etched in eternity.
I look in the water,
I see a ghost vision,
I walk in a field at dusk,
I feel the leaves beneath My boots. And you remember..

Alone, by the torn tree
In the prairie You walked
That day,
9 miles of turning road.

And you walked out of your house of brick And cedar shake, down to Main
By the junction,
Along past the hospital
On the outskirts of town.
You walked and you don't know why.
Partly out of boredom,
Maybe out of frustration.
And she's at work,
And you were on call to nowhere.
And you walked and you
Forgot about that six-pack
You were going to buy.
And you walked The turn
As cars blew by,
At first they were surprised,
And then they were annoyed,
As a thirty-something slightly
Overweight man walked
Alone sown Route 113.

I finally got there,
To the torn, barren tree.
And somehow it reminded
You of your life.
And my feet hurt,
And my marriage was not so good. And the new house
Was too much.
And I walked back to town.
Stopping for coffee in the afternoon.
And the waitress looked bored. And I was
Just another nobody drinking
Coffee at 2 in the afternoon.
And I walked home
And turned on the news,
Cut up some vegetables,
Starting the oven,
I wanted to jump in.
A lot of people go through such an experience. Sometimes were lonely and misunderstood the most by the ones we love.
45 · Mar 2020
Gentle
TJ Struska Mar 2020
I bury a butterfly Beneath
The second tree of the College turnaround. I sat with him as he slipped away. The shade and the cool breeze flutter
His black and Gold wings.
I walk out wondering
If anyone saw me.
And then not caring.
Goodbye gentle friend
He was a beautiful monarch,
All this time later I still remember.
TJ Struska Feb 2020
I see you Blue Brother
On the corner of Utah and Prairie, Bottle in a brown bag, passed, shared.
I stop and say hello.
We knew each other as children.
I'm offered the bag,
I take a hit of the burning wine, We talk of family, memories. Three kids
And no money. I tell him
A working man can't get ahead these days.
He smiles, sad in his eyes,
Says time's have been better.
I say yeah, I know.
But he knows it's better for me.
And I know too.
And he knows I wish for for something else.
He sees that also.
He knows the veil of blood,
The truth of the Holy Tree.
I scratch for meaning,
He knows it's older than the ground we walk.
And we smoke and we talk Of the desert and the mountains
Sharing the sunshine of memory. And he laughs,
And I awake to the sound
Of the city.
And the bag comes around once more, I look at him,
Trying to remember us as children. I pass on the bag,
Say I must be leaving.
I turn away, a light rain
Begins falling.
I reach my car, hearing a siren, Smelling the stink
Of the city.
My friend disappears In the shadow.
I turn the engine over.
I spent some of my childhood in Arizona. I had a Navajo friend.
This is a "What If" poem
45 · Mar 2020
Road To Illusion
TJ Struska Mar 2020
As far as the post conciliatory
Is concerned- It's been delagated to those just pulling out of Suffragette City
For those just entering the foyer, the bulb's been flickering for days. No mention of of attorney fees
At this juncture of the proceedings, Moonlighting
As high tragedy on the
Road to illusion, More a dull
Sideshow of sunny Saturdays
And blue Tuesdays.

And its all waiting just up the road of Monday morning,
While I numerate this dull
Reunion, Watching the ambulance light swirl
In the mix of Sunday night
Turning seedier by the moment. And the police cruiser's slow to respond,
And the parametics leave
Empty handed as another Sunday night comes to a close
And we run the race we know we're losing. And most
Times it's just eternity nipping at our heels.
Guess I've got to check out,
But not tonight. Meanwhile
I have a lamb stew burbling
In the ***. And there's
Wreckage on the highway,
Debris in the field.
And the first siren wails
In a place you do not hear.
And a rustic barn looms
In a dream of dusk,
As bluebird rise with the sun,
And the siren fades
To the distance.
By the way, I'm a vegetarian, I would NEVER EAT LAMB. I love Hemminway and E.A. Poe.
Some of my poems are dark but I am not. Thanks, TJ.
45 · Feb 2020
In The Horse Latitudes
TJ Struska Feb 2020
See the palaces swinging
On their axis?
Hear the gondola
Rocking in the sea?
See the horses falling
Off the latitudes
Beyond Norwegia?
I'll back petal this thought
Of late night,
Learning little in the lesson Dreaming fire from the floor
In peppermint nothings.
Then you wonder Who woke you before the movie ended
With the credits.
And it's summer with
The Coke machine humming,
And the night bugs
And the breeze
And the sound of car tires
Grinding up the highway.
Swinging on the moon
In the nightshade.
And the roses bleeding Red
With her blouse spilling
Open to the moonlight.
And you die a thousand
Deaths as she draws you
Deeper into the dream.
                 BY TJ STRUSKA
44 · Mar 2020
Genesis
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Its begins with one word,
And one word become five,
And five words fill a line.
And the page fills with fire,
And fire consumes cities,
And cities smolder in ruin.
And the world revolves in eon,
And eons fill spaces,
And space fills with light,
And light fills stars,
And stars spin in galaxies,
And galaxies spin to infinity
And infinity is but a lash,
And lash is but an eon,
And eon is but a time,
And time is but a space,
And space is but a void,
And void is but a beginning,
And beginning is but a sea,,
And a sea is but water,
And Earth is but a rock,
And life comes from a sea,
And a frog is but life,
And life is but a shore,
And a frog leaps from a rock,
And a ripple wakes a pond,
And a wake fills the Earth,
And one word becomes five,
And five words fill a line,
And the page fills with fire,
And fire consumes the pen,
And I become the pen,
And the pen begins the word.
This poem is new. I never wrote a poem like this before. Please let me know if you like this. I had fun writing this...TJ
44 · Apr 2020
A Knock
TJ Struska Apr 2020
I bury myself to this rusted root,
The sum of sun and moon
And the synchronicity of
Car horns and bleeding streetlights. And you *****
And it gets no better.
And you **** down A celery stick,
And the cops turn down your block,
I put on Coltrane,,
Rue the Muse from his slumber, I knock,
But not too hard,
He shuffles papers,
      Invites me in,
The ancient fan whirs slowly,
And you reach
For a light switch, a connection,
And he leads you
To the place of water,
Where fish cry,
And I drink the night,
And I ******* no right
What is mine.
All these monochrome reflections,
As you dwell
On playwrights,
Editors,
           Poets,
Symphonies,
Ready to buckle
From the gate.
A hulking Brahma,
Raised on his quarters,
You steady him
For the charge,
And he beaks the gate,
Terrorizing the clouds,
And long highways
Carry you to the same destination.
You know them all
By name,
And they throw dirt and grit,
And bust up your tires.
And the day doesn't
Turn out like ice cream,
It just turns out,
As you fall in your snowsuit
In 1962,
Winter light cold in the sun.
And your four,
And you cry in
Your hot cheeks,
As old cars
Smile with metal teeth
And glinting glass eyes.
And you turn to your Mother,
But she's not there,
She died in a photograph
In 1987,
And all you have
Is a pockmarked moon,
Ragged in it's glory.
As I sleep between the page,
As a distant fury of winds
Build on the east,
Carrying my words with them
What has happened to my readers? I never get a comment, Good, bad or otherwise. I'm kinda hurt and disappointed.
IS ANYONE OUT THERE?.....TJ STRUSKA
44 · Mar 2020
The Other One
TJ Struska Mar 2020
The Other all acoustic set
Features tambourine and lute, Bright Makimbo dancers, Skyscrapers ready to take on the world,
Strange meandering in this psychedelic pie. The mean child within has since
Given up sharp objects,
Some used with bad flatware,
Well, what can you say,
I guess that's the price for
Doing business on the boulevard. Looking for the
String of pearls in God's eyes.
But you only see them
After they fade to dreams.
A sitar and a scythe,
Cutting the the psychic air
With the fluidity of a mantra
Sung by Holy Angels, pondered by Saints and drunks on the avenue.

The other all acoustic set
Draws poet's dreaming of
Lauds and sonnets and pink and blue evenings, As I draw
Little but the wake of sunset
And somber cello, drawing
Infinite sadness of a world
Turning slowly away from the sun. Yet I walk with the
Wings of Seraphim and choirboys singing the eternal
Songs of Angels passing over
Broken tiles and tilted streets
Under a silent moon lavishly
Grinning at the absurdity of it all.
A companion pies to The All Acoustic Set, but a more somber, reflecting work.
44 · Apr 2020
Eating Up Inside
TJ Struska Apr 2020
This ain't no daydream,
This ain't no disco,
This is a
Lion
On the
Prowl,

This is a
Wolf
In sheep's
Clothing ,

And ******
Bells
Clanging
The hour
Of
Destruction

All these
Hungry hours
Leave me
Wanting,

I hear
My last
Thought
Drown
In voice,
Moving lips
Telling
Of
The blues,

Who blues,
My blues
Strung
On a string
Of illusion

Eating up
The night,
Eats me
Up
Inside,
All the time
Clanging
The hour
Of formation,

Wing it,
Watch it
Sail
Right
Over
Your head

Who blew
Up
The bus?
We
Blew up
The
Bus,

It was us,

We come
Cheaper
By the pound

You way up,
You lay up,
Think of
Rocks,
Socks,
Electric
Clocks,

You call,
You fall,
You think
Of nothing
At all

Its all
A slight dream
Minor hallucination,
Psychotropic sandwich,
Relish and
Mustard
Gas,


Eat up,
Beat up,
Can we
Have this dance.

Beach front,
Beach front
Bikini
Baby,

In your
Seventeenth
Year,

This last
Stupid
******
Situation,

Rusty nail,
Rusty nail
Driven,
Rusty
Nine penny
Nail
Driven,

Rusty Nine
Penny nail
Driven
Right through
This
Dream.
That you for all the response. I feel blessed again
44 · Apr 2020
Vigenette
TJ Struska Apr 2020
Poe took Tylenol,
Hemminway's passed out on the floor,
I'd rather drink blurry-eyed
With Ginsberg,
Beer stained beaches in the afternoon.
Throwing up prose to the dying light.
Cicadas rub the summer wind-
Me, I barely connect the dots,
Writing rubbing in the dirt
For Shelly tanning in the sun.
Poe, Hemingway, Ginsberg and Shelly are writers in case you didn't know.
44 · Mar 2020
Shadow Partner
TJ Struska Mar 2020
My funeral guide,
Shadow partner,
Silent enchanter,
You take my hand,
Lead me down a moonlit street, I follow, not knowing why. Something clouds your eyes. Dark in ravished moonlight.
I study the lines on my face,
My dark nature,
Darker cohort,
This connection fraying,
This dim receiver,
I ask only for a ladder,
A place closer to the stars.
Dear Shadow Sam,
My Sweet Delia,
Shelter from the storm.
Some slivered dream,
But it gets under your skin,
A red tick burrows deeper.
TJ Struska Mar 2020
See the palaces
Swinging on their axis?
Hear the gondolas
Rocking in the sea?
See the horses falling off
The latitudes Beyond Norwegia?
I'll back petal this thought
Of late night.
Learning little in this lesson
Dreaming fire from the floor
In peppermint nothings.
Then you wonder.
And its summer with the
Coke machine humming,
And the night bugs
And the breeze
And the sound of car tires
Grinding up the highway,
Swinging on the moon
In the nightshade.
And the roses bleeding Red
As her blouse spilling open
To the moonlight.
And you die a thousand Deaths as she takes You
Deeper in the dream
This is a mystical poem influenced by listening to The Doors
42 · Feb 2020
Final Comedown
TJ Struska Feb 2020
Hear the heart bleating
For the lot of us?
Me, I've suffered the
Dullard's jenune
Once too often.
I've begged off another,
Hoping for lights out
Before the final words are stripped away
In a final comedown.
Night, with it's visceral lassitude,
Adding insanity to the notion.
I'll say its random,
Not much lately,
But enough anyway.
I saw a dream once,
Falling like light
In a doorway,
A tulip dying in drought.
42 · Apr 2020
Life In Romans
TJ Struska Apr 2020
(Authors note:Dear Reader, in 2013 I got hurt, put on pain meds. Never in a million years did I think...Well it did.
And here's the story)

But how could that be?
Was it the law that caused my doom?
The wrong I don't mean to do, I do anyway,
Though every higher thought
Within me Screams at this outrage....Led to be a monk,
I fell from the top rung,
I'm a martyr in motion,
My own worse dream,
But I got a woman in the other room,
Know what I mean?
She tries to keep me out of Romans 7,
But she only pulls me in deeper,
Between the pills and the drama, It's psychotropic
Hades before your eyes.
Seems I have to have it by 4
Or its a bumpy ride all the
Way home.
It's a whirl-ago,
A real wild ride.
The perfect storm of fate and circumstance.
This Act Of Contrition, I've brought on myself.
Nowhere in Romans 7,
Do you go it alone,
Yet there remains an isolation,
Even in the presence of others,
There's a sense of isolation,
Aloneness,
A shrinking of The Spirit.
Crying out to Him,
I sometimes feel only the coldness of wind,
Then silence.


At the bottom of the stair,
Here at the bottom of the stair,
The shadow casts its pall over sunlight.
And the only shadow I fear
Is the one I create.
Is there anyway out?
None you see from here.
Ah-alas, two 10-325's,
Climbing the dark stairs to the bottom.
Zoom, Zoom- here goes nothing to Nowhere.
Where's God's love in the depth of addiction?
Closer I think, I gather.
But when I get closer,
I seem to let go,
Take another ride down the stairs.
Roman 7 is my name, my horn, My albatross.
I want love yet end up
In the dirt,
Making mud pies in the alley
Instead of sand castles on the shore.
There, another Heineken
To wash it down.
I sift flowers in the gray afternoon,
Sketch my despair in the dust.
How far I've wandered
To find where I am.
As darkness has it's own light
I so have mine,
As the eye adjusts to the darkness,
And I hear the whisper of God through the mist.
And love makes me naked
As ghosts begin singing
A solitary bird rises to the sky.
   Mar 13 2013/Apr 22 20.
I wish this poem had a storybook ending, but it has not. Altering substance is a writer's affliction. I am better. In great shape an exercise addict" yeah I have that too. Things are better but life is hard. God is my solice. And yes I did think of becoming a monk..Thank you, Tom.
41 · Mar 2020
From Time To Time
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Sometimes you see something in the eyes of a stranger, And ponder it's
Dark division, Or what the world gives,
And what you take in return.
You wax philosophical,
Yet its hard to remember hunger. But that's what you
Observe so close In your mind. You see, I've put
On this coat of armor,
It shines like Jericho.
In it's bareness it surely does.
Its then I throw my star map
To the sky.
It's a strange vibration,
Picking up subsets of information, Not that peculiar to what's already known. A hazy retelling of
Dreams we recall
In sunlit Rooms of morning.
This sensory yawing, this come hither, This de facto drama, This temporary breakdown of transcendental machinery, Nervously factored in the equation.
This sackcloth of ashes we carry, This ponder, TIS dark stone, shiny and cool,
This question, hurled from the sun, this dark advisor,
Ready to draw us due west.
I play jazz music, I draw
The rustic image, Castles
Crumbling in the sand.
I see the flitter on the screen,
This turnaround from the ditch, A bad day in Mexico,
The arc of the sun returning.
A roadmap of red and blue highways, I wish to pick one,
Perhaps end up on a dusty
Reservation in Utah,
Or a dark avenue, a pale ******* in heat and hunger of night. It's wild fate, And you haven't broke through yet. A shell game you just can't win. This
Strange world of lamplight.
Earth and roots and dark back roads, A spare key
Under a rock,
A slip through the slipstream,
In a rising beyond this dark vale.
39 · Feb 2020
Summer Dream
TJ Struska Feb 2020
I sit,
      Watch it go up
       In a cigarette haze,
Dreaming of pools
And tan women,
A beer raised
       In the sunset,
Wondering
            How far
              Can it go?
How far
         Have I come?
How far
       Has it gone?
I must be silent,
                     A cat
Licking it's paws,
                   Patient,
Watching from the dimness,
                     Waiting
On the mouse,
             The woman,
                    The word.
A sleek cat
        Sliding across
                    The sun.
The breeze
            And the beer
                The breeze
  Across
        My arms,
            My legs,
               My toes.
The cat returns
            To his quarters
                 Purring,
                  Waiting,
On the mouse,
         The woman,
               The word.
Meow.
39 · Mar 2020
Untitled/Uninspired
TJ Struska Mar 2020
This rich experiment ran out
Of beakers and Bunsen burners. I wore my glasses
And lab coat to little avail.
No blue moon in the cupboard tonight.
So much for the well worn thesis. Here's where it runs out of gas.
Only tinkling flowers
And bare rhapsody, Shivering
Like a ****** in the night.
It's here, and here, and here,
Places I can only show
In the dark.
Things which have no name.
But here, and here,
Feel their shape?
Dim, Oslo in the rain.
And the Nazis occupy
The last of the city.
It's here, and here, and here.
It's nowhere, nothing.
Dry places, bones of dust.
It's here, and here, and here.
This is a brand new poem. I feel inspired by you kind readers.
Its here, and here, and here.
39 · Mar 2020
Are You With Me?
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Are you afraid
It will take you
Where you cannot go?
Surely in your mind
You paint it black.
Did it tank
In the middle of the suite?
Throw in the towel
When no one's watching?
I bet it swung out
On the laundry line
Before your old man
Woke to bakery trucks
And all night drunks
Sharing the same place
On the page where
No one shops anymore,
And they moved from the
Neighborhood 30 years ago.
And its never 1973,
But sometimes you think
You see it In a moon
Whisking white clouds
Above your window.
39 · Apr 2020
On Smoking
TJ Struska Apr 2020
It enters you
Like a ghost,
You release,
The night rises
In slow orbits,
Planets rise and fall
Behind a waning moon
Where pyramids
Dissolve
One grain at a time,
The sky holds
Their silence.
I breathe in
The gray syntax,
This toxic level
Through
The hourglass.
Whispered prayers
At 2:14,
Beseeched
Second graces.
And the Omniscient
Studies you,
You wonder
What fate
Follows you?
I list one way,
Then the other,
As the dead
Sing Oceans,
As my gloom
Follows room to room,
Leading to a cusp
Of shadow,
A fall
Beneath
The House
Of Usher.
I quit smoking a some years ago. The habit reminds me a a sullen ghost, sad of its expulsion
38 · Mar 2020
Smoking Gun
TJ Struska Mar 2020
The moon rose pink and silent, an adornment on the lawn, I bet 9 whorls around
This thumbnail sketch the
Sun rises red near Cairo.
Too bad you lost it on a
Good strech,
An operational hazard,
Some lame 45, long on memory, short on talent.
Bet you cleaned up on the margins, but I bet you can't explain the stain on your shirt.
I think it's a hoot.
All those dark horses,
Come creeping in under the radar on a blue Sunday
With the sparrows lifting
One way then the other,
Silent, back to the wire again,
As cars hiss below the marginal scenery.
It's a dreary 9 to 5,
Nothing shaking on semanics
Catching 500 buses for the coast. Those suckers came and went while we watched
The moon rise over Memphis
But the sink drips and I think
Of olives stuffed with pimento, As a sweet thing
Walks across my window,
All legs and shining in the sun. When you make it free
You only make it worse.
Until then: create mythical
Creatures in the air.
Redo the blue laws every
Seven years. Tip the Triple Crown toward the sun.
Leave your shark tooth smile
At the door.
Its not really misinformation,
Its a hundred dead dreams
Lying on the stoop.
As the fan sails silent overhead. And trains run backward
On the other side of the Earth.
37 · Mar 2020
Oslo In The Rain
TJ Struska Mar 2020
No blue moon in the cupboard tonight.
So much for the well worn thesis.
Here's where it runs out of gas. Only tinkling flowers
And bare rhapsody,
Shivering like a ****** in the night.
It's here, and here, and here.
Places I can only show
In the dark.
Things which have no name.
But here, and here,
Feel their shape?
Dim, Oslo in the rain.
And the Nazis occupy
The last of the city.
It's here, and here, and here.
It's nowhere, nothing.
As ideas scatter like ghosts.
Dry places, bones of dust.
It's here, and here, and here.
The idea for this poem was loosely based o the Marathon Man. Lawrence Olivier was drilling Dustin Hoffman's tooth without novicane trying to extract information. He kept repeating 'Is it safe?' Over and over. It was chilling. Writers soak that up Like a sponge.
TJ Struska Feb 2020
I woke to hell bleeding
In humid night
So hot, no fan,
No breeze to cool me.
Women complained
The few occasions
I brought them home.
My love suffered-
Except for Judy,
Who came round
At the right times.
I forgot I had no job,
No money.
Judy and I would
Get a bottle,
Pretend its New Year's Eve.
But we'd remember
Its really Tuesday.
Crawling naked, wondering
Could we even go home.
Even though the poem is fictional a lot of the circumstances were true. I lived some hard years in my twenties. It made me part of who I am. And I'm grateful for every minute
36 · Mar 2020
El Camino
TJ Struska Mar 2020
I gave directions to the El Camino looking for 75, said
He wandered a bit off the way.
I don't know if he took it.
He laid up the highway,
I saw his car gleam in the sun, A half mile or so before
The slow curve of the Earth
Took it around the bend.
Later, I saw smoke and the wail of a siren. I wonder of
He wandered off the way,
As I sit on a half pile of junk
And some bad ideas.
I got a cream color couch
And a velour ottoman.
My, what a sight,
Unseemly in the moonlight.
And I refigure the abstract
Of cloud formations.
I draw it up close in my mind
Skin and sky and moonlight,
I watch it rise from the east.
I forgot about the El Camino
As the dry wind eats up my land. I pull back the blinds
To the yellow sun.
I wonder if they'll junk
The Camino, Maybe I
Can sell her for parts.
Sort of a dark story poem.
I see East Texas and a hard as nail rancher in my mind's eye.
36 · Apr 2020
Under The Radar
TJ Struska Apr 2020
Under the radar,
Moon list like a pearls,
And I spike the test tube
Down round the circle of the sun,
Under a blue cowl of clouds.
Night lies jagged,
Profane in it's beauty.
And Cicero dreams horses
Falling from a canyon,
And I draw dinosaurs
Leaping over deserts.
As Angels and Sailors
Sing far off sea.
And I lisp on the page
As Jericho crumbles
In the awake of the sun.
That's a new poem. I like the sparse images. I hope you will also
36 · Mar 2020
Mother
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Your teeth smile like pearls
Though your eyes are hollow orbs.
You smile and the snow
Is black and silver.
Inside the negative
You smile with me.
We smile to the camera
In the sunshine cold that winter day.
I lost my Mom at an early age.
All I have are photographs and memories. I found a negative of us when I was four. We we're smiling on a cold winter day. I miss you Mom.
36 · Mar 2020
The Off Season
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Looking through as glass darkly, Silhouettes and shadows gathering in the corner, with old books and half burned candles losing their scent,
And you knew you'd end up here, riding out the off season. Where cars fade
In the window, And
Pilate washes at the sink.
While Grandpa shaves with a straight razor,
Smiling without those Sunday dentures.

C'mon all scruffy behind the ears, Let up partake of evening, with the ghosts of dead Uncles.
As dreams remember what we've forgotten,
As an eyelash falls to the floor.
36 · Mar 2020
La Reverie
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Soon it fades,
A breath falling away,
Something you always lose,
A dream,
Now but a vapor,
Somehow a window
And a field of flowers
At the edge of waking.
And the sunlight rubs away
The last of the dream
In the call of voices
Below the tenement
Reminding of drudgery.
And you don't blink back
At the dullness descending
For another day
As you fathom
Your loss
In the last of the wake.
This is a new poem. My friends times have been rough of late.
This poem is real time for our family now. I that everyone who takes they're time to read my work. Thank you, TJ.
35 · Apr 2020
On A Cool Summer Day
TJ Struska Apr 2020
It starts again,
This starting over,
This breaths of faces,
This shine of places,
This recollection of second graces
This movement of twilight,
This line of shadow,
This symmatry of streetlights
This movement of sound and silence,
This parable of time and motion,
This moment of birth,
This second passing
35 · Mar 2020
Type A
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Man, you've got to take a step back. I mean you come on a
Little heavy.
I know you've got to write,
But it can be a little intense
And creepy.
I know you'll vdraw me an
Expose on Ecclesiastes,
But I'll show you about baiting hooks in the wind
And learning to let go.
There's something more..
Some larger connection
To the moments we live
For more than ourselves.
The missing part we call
God.
That silent stirring,
A rush of wind, A whisper
At the edge of waking.
A brush, a feather,
Someone calling our name,
But we know not where.
In a moment's clarity,
Seeing ourselves for who
We really are.
A dry time turned oasis.
The healing heart rises
With the Spirit,
Both infused with God
And separate in Father
And Son. Sometimes my
Catholic heart bleeds through my tee shirt.
And I always end up where I
Should be. To the edge of the page and over.
35 · Mar 2020
Triage
TJ Struska Mar 2020
( three short poems of unease)

    From The Shadows

The ghosts within the room
Stirring to the outside of periphery, Blending
Within the shadow,
Silently they wait.
They await my passing
In forgotten rooms
Silent, but for a passing moon
Over books and broken horses,
          Shadow dust
Ghosts within the wall
Vibrate they're inner mantra
Turning in dreams of dust

               M.O.

Chrysanthemums chatter
To a blind moon lisping
Over a city where
Junkies and lovers
Embrace their torn heartbeats to a night
Devoid of stars.

    Another Town

Jeweled pink pony
Frozen in your scream
Your muted agony forever.
Only to move in circles,
Endless circles
While your painted eye
Stares into the blindness
Of the sun
Sleep well.
34 · Feb 2020
Faded Glory
TJ Struska Feb 2020
Sparks fly from the Hillbilly's hair. A mad conflagration
Up Rural Route 9.
Someone tried to douse It with moonshine.
The County cruiser rolled up,
The sheriff said " Boys stand back, I got a hatchet and shovel". Well, you should a
Saw the stir I caused.
Mrs. Johnson lost her denture plate In all the commotion,
But they was broken When
Missy Sue ran in with
The fire extinguisher.

Later, the hillbilly escaped
With some bruises,
One or two scraps,
Later he wrote a story,
This is how it went.
As you can tell, this is not a serious poem. Sometimes, just to have a little fun and levity when you write is good for the soul and to keep your ego in check. If anyone gets a chuckle out of this then I did my job
34 · Mar 2020
Overture
TJ Struska Mar 2020
In the tombstone gleaming,
This discordant singing,
Whoosh- says the seesaw
On the arc descending,
To the sky beaming,
Down the coil,
Up again swinging,
We start as snails,
End up as Angels singing.
32 · Apr 2020
Other Gig
TJ Struska Apr 2020
Like Hitchcock,
These dark things appear,
This darkling,
This darkling down.
Some conjured from shadow,
Others crawl up the psyche.
Slings of recognition,
Lust in pink light,
These pounding Marauders,
They are here
They are gone,
While light and darkness
Subsist forever.
This still silent pen,
This flowing aromatic,
This sparse confessional,
This alchemy of logic
And light.

Shadows, like Hitchcock's Vertigo,
Falling to the still image,
Brushes of black and light.
And you light a cigarette,
Prowl the room like a leopard.
And the trains run East to West,
And somehow this comforts you.
And the sun roars against the window,
Your face,
Gliding up the road,
You think Of Yeats,
Poe, the Shaw Of Iran,
Perestroika, Persian Rugs,
You know your friends,
You know your enemies better,
You keep a mental list,
Cross check it to later entries.
Listen to Bortok and Liszt,
And the lights come up in the theatre,
You make your way to the car
As streetlights shine in the mist,
And rain dots the windshield
As cars hiss up the street.
Light and shadow, faces and form.
Hitchcock and imagination.
Always a poem lying in there somewhere
32 · Mar 2020
Fever Dream
TJ Struska Mar 2020
My blue love weeps
In a field of silver.
I think to comprehend the mute sunlight,
Dry wind through the field
In winter's cold disposition,
Lovelorn to the night.
Weeping in blue love
Poaring to a glass
Of vermilion and gold,
In this fever dream swelling,
In this night descending.

Your eye settles beyond.
Into a cold country lit in briiiance, a space in time...
Separation.
Drawing inside the other.
I dream of carnivals in moonlight,
Exploding in a million suns.

I wake to cold country.
It takes me to kingdoms
Of long ice cycles and deep shadow.
Night and sun and cold...cold.
The carnival explodes in Supernova, Falling to a place
Of water.
You enter it's wake"
Carrying you where it will.
This poem is a more disciplined work in the style of mid 20th Century poet's like Theodore Roethke, who was a poet mentor to me.
31 · Mar 2020
Handful Of Stars
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Handful of stars
Falling between my fingers,
Catching a saucer of moons.
Dreaming of bicycles With red and white ribbons,
Wheels spinning in elliptical
Stars strung in the sky.
A paper bag spins
In a last winter wind,
Rising to the motioning stars.
I love you on your bareness,
As Sunday night falls to shadow. We fear death
In the passing of moments.
We collect our thoughts
On fraying strings,
Alight our hopes, bash our fears to the dying of the light.
Sweet as rain, all falls down.
Wake to shiny symbols
Etched in Sanskrit.
Loose our meaning In
The blindness Of the sun.
A billion birds lift to the sky
As snow falls in a lazy dream.
I close my eyes,
Open them, reaching upward
To catch a Handful of stars,
Burning eons in my palms,
I open, release them
To the sheltering sky
29 · Apr 2020
The Tupolo Line
TJ Struska Apr 2020
My, my, sweet sun rain,
It's the Tupelo Line
Past Wilkes-Barre,
All flash and twilight
This side of Pentecost.
And Donald Trump
Has his pulse on the Nation,
And I've got my foot on the gas. Armageddon to the left
Of me, Covid to the right,
As I gaze this sad metropolis.
And I squeeze the turnip dry.
***** the Calabash,
I've got strange maneuvers
Halfway to the sun.
I since lost time to the clouds,
Counting sheep in this psychedelic Insomnia.
And Newton thought The Bible was a code
Written in Men's hearts.
I see God in a solitary bird
Flying a gray sky.
Not everything that mentions Covid must be doom and gloom. We need to lighten up too. God. Bless you in this time.
29 · Mar 2020
Film At 11
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Tepid air, still in gray twilight, not how I imagined.
A thousand dreams gone by,
None of them like this,
Yet all of them are.
A grainy film,
Drawn through a blind man's
Window. Taking asylum
In the Narthax of the church.
Miss September with child.
Madonna in the beauty of roses while you lie sleeping,
As her Son gathers mystery
In the dreams of children
Seeking pearls of wisdom
Falling to the floor.
Does it make a sound,
Dredging the dregs of life
Along like a possession
Drug from place to place.
Intrepid loner, looking out
For the loser charging his heels close behind.
Sure as a spark takes to the wind in a dry field
On the edge of waking,
As the light pale in the meadow, And Angels
Lie sleeping in the dust.
A poem to my faith and the mystery of Heaven and Earth.
28 · Feb 2020
Two Solitary Soul
TJ Struska Feb 2020
(A poem written in real time)

Empty beer cup and a new bottle opener on a blue May
Evening. Cessnas an Cubs
Circle as endless drones
With no map or meaning.
In this settled night, a lone boy bounces a ball off a croquet mallet:
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka, The ball,
The court, the mallet,
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
Until he tires of this solitary habit. Him with his mallet,
Me with my pen.
Now and again, he swats it like a baseball,
Across the court and into the fence- Both of us to silence after. Soon I hear:
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
As he retrieves his ball from the corner,
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
As I strain for words like a sad ape obsessed with a flea:
And finding none.
Soon the solitary boy with the ball leaves the courtyard
To the silence in a isolated
Moment in the American Fabric.
Into this mask of
                Light and darkness,
        Shadow and Imagination
A playwright, looking for a chorus, a melody.
Summer sounds and the race of engines. And the voices
Overtake the silence in the hours of ten 'til one.
And tires and arguing,
And sometimes the cops,
Or an ambulance
With bored fireman
And two paramedics.
And there's a drip in the hallway from the roof.
And I guess its not bewitching, All the noise for a small pocket of silence.
And I play Brahms,
And the police turn down my block, As the moon lurks pale
In the back of my eyes.

— The End —