At low of night she strokes
Familiar tastes exquisite,
And quietly invokes
The spirit of laureate --

An orphic instrument
Unfit to take for granted.
It’s profound atonement
Stirs in her heart despondent.

Her fragile shell’s embrace
Of wood and gut and metal
Point out her shallow race
And weakness fundamental.

Yet all the night she moils,
Mistrusting augmentation,
And secretly despoils
The overzealous beacon.

-- Kerry Herrmann

Called by dolorous prayers
spawned at the hand of pandemonium
the fearless mercenary
extends her silken wings

Living pinions
enshroud the broken hearted
cultivating safety
and validation
allowing sincere grieving

Her gentle but fearless nobility
confronts the vulturine beasts
of doubt
angst
and despondency
freeing the wounded soul
now progeny of  hope

Her perceptive optimism
is discerning
of the healing path
as she carries the revived chrysalis
to sovereignty

Once there
her wings separate
to release the newly formed star
luminous and vivid
as though plucked
directly from the castle of God

- Kerry Ann Herrmann

You are gathered with your friends
to play a board game
called "What Next"
Four people total, Including you.

First, the person with brown hair
and blue eyes to your right,
filled with HATrEd,
withdraws a card and
deciphers its MYstery:

"You are lost
at sea on a wooden
catamaran. There are others
with you. The phone that shows
where to turn is broken.
How will you unMASK
the land?"

The pitiful one across
from you whispers
the answer: "Unlock
the old, rusted telescope."

It is the pitiful
one's turn, who reads
with self-reproof, "You are on
an island. The boy child
with a broken glass face,
exposing the fire
in HIS head, looks
at you accusingly.
How do you extinguish
the volcano?"

Raising a hand in ANGER
is the disdainful person
with brown hair, who yells,
"Punish the boy child!
His SCARS will never heal!"
The loving soul in red
smiles and says: "Wrong,
you silly creature.
You solve the MYthical puzzle
by joining the flesh
on the boy child's FACE."

It is now THE loving
one's turn to select
a card (the ticket?), done
with a GENTLE flick of the
delicate wrist. One singing
VOICE chimed, "Spoiled farmer
makes you confine the
bamboozled man that names
your strengths. He
SUGGESTS
THAT
the befuddled
has already been put away.
How can you possibly
solve the Conundrum?"

You must answer. Relax!
I order you! Find the solution!
The patriarch has ordered it!
Or else you MUST walk through
a curtain of falling bullets
showering down.
It is the only ESCAPE
back to the beginning.

Kerry Herrmann

Strangers acquaint, announcing particularities.
Thrills run across hungry nerves;
pleasure mounts in rising expectations:
First ruminating, next devouring,
then coalescing into one complete whole.

Gently the wintry chill advances
imperceptible to unschooled senses.
Mirages of fullness fade while realization grows.

Ah, the tender vulnerability of intense gratification.
Discovery of naivety’s betrayal is complete
in the consumption of perfected death.

(Cold as mirrored glass, rebounding time,
numbing fire.) An embodiment of suffocating pain,
The paroxysm climaxes... waiting for release.

(Stretched, drained, quietly entertaining sympathy.)
This sultry expansion - extended abeyance of joy -
turns knowledge of fulfillment into hope that
blends with the waters of insecurity.

(Moments of compression, burning sickness
intensifying with each presentation,
development of indeterminate expectations,
vacillation between stimulating passion and alarm.)

A formidable moment charges toward the funambulist.
Balance seems impossibly demanding.

Abruptly the event ends, time stops, breathing ceases …

        The babe is held in loving arms -
        forgotten pain, dissolving woe.
        Her tender grace, alluring charms
        beget a great, supernal flow.

Kerry Ann Herrmann

I jump through the loops
     on River Styx Street.
Sharp clicking from my tapping shoes
     produce haunted echoes
to which the ****** can dance
     and celebrate their
     hollow chocolate existence.

The false front city surrounds me,
     its victim,
     patiently biding its time,
stalking,
     breathing,
          watching
     with empty square eyes.

Unalterably, feline curiosity
     will consume me,
and I will enter into
     an unlocked mouth.

Until then, I jump through
     candy cane hoops,
Ignorant of the concave heaven
     hovering above.

-- Kerry Ann Herrmann

How did you die?  Were you ever alive?
Questions asked by a torpid fool
executing the sterile interrogation.
Capricious witnesses laugh in pain
as I sit, strapped by leather bands
to a frigid porcelain bench.
This is the bloodthirsty courtroom of innocence
translated into cadaverous endings.

What can a fool gain through conviction?
Perhaps the eradication of necrosis.
The fool views the substance as trivial nonsense.
His purpose is to convict me, the wraith,
the amenable child, the abject wretch.
A conviction that will never arrive,
led by a foolish prosecution that cannot rest,
as long as I, benighted and unredeemed,
lack power to loosen the fearsome leather bands.

Kerry Ann Herrmann

Existence in the quiet place
between the changing of times
is safe, is sad, is constant, and
filled with disdain. That is where I went
to escape the cruelty
of your bawling silence.

With whom does my anger more agree?
Should I blame your disgusting selfishness
or my callow desire to please?

How can a man not love his daughter?
How can a person ******,
hate, and distort the world...
yet think himself desired and puissant?

I cannot say I hate you,
because to do so is to deny
the vulnerability of my injury.
But I can and will shout
to the farthest corner
of my and your collective universe...

"Your apathy sickens me!
Every tense muscle in my body cringes
as I ***** your feigned love!"

I will no longer rehearse
your betrayal over and over,
hoping each time for a
different conclusion.

My days twisted between the years
have reached their conclusion.
I am starting a new season,
leaving your carcass
to be eaten by the passage of time.

- Kerry Herrmann

Which hurt is greater?

Is it the fall from virtue and descent into madness,
where nerves are fully recognizant of an escalating torment
caused by the imposed absorption of each stinging needle,
where the active mind possesses complete comprehension
of the delicate innocence inherent in spirit and individuality?

Or is the true injury created when the biting freeze
finally penetrates through skin and bone,
creeping into vital organs of existence,
numbing the senses, slowing functionality,
tempting with graceful rewards the soul to carefully enter
into nightmarish sleep filled with related frozen carcasses?

No.  The greater hurt is felt during the resurrection of spirit –
when the overwhelming barrage of thunderous rain,
crushing hurricanes of agonizing recollections,
create a thaw in the protective safety of barricaded sensitivity.
Thick ice covering the immense lake of uncertainty begins to melt;
the chimera of safe passage over unsteady waters dissipates.
Then the feeble heart is left to drown in sorrow and panic.

Old wounds, formerly numb, awaken with prickling heat,
memories of betraying constraints and adversity.
Unable to see the source through the blackened fog,
counterfeit thoughts of exaggerated truths abound:
Is it a lie?  Is the need for sympathy greater than integrity?

But truth will no longer be constrained by blind adherence;
the waters of valor and virtue must flow again.
Verity and invention collide with booming force
and the healing spirit feels the formidable winds of anger unrestrained-
ugly, deafening, painful, and necessary for acceptance.

Somehow through this torment of perceived destruction,
through the bitter tempest of denial’s end,
the melting of all that is familiar,
somehow through all the chilling disquiet and daunting tumult
leagues of tender buds surface,
searching for light of day and moisture from the weakening storm.

Slowly, clouds begin to part and nourishment becomes available.
Life grows, colors deepen, and warmth spreads.
It is then that the still heart beats with vigor,
strength is recognized and gratification restored,
and a letting go of the greater hurt is complete.

Kerry Ann Herrmann

She lay in bed, contemplating, not thinking
Her buzzing head, pain abating, love shrinking

Weight pressing down, obstructing nerves, hand prickling
Forgotten noun, empty preserves, arm crippling

The numbness spread, rising body, hovering
Above the bed, disembody, covering

Surrounding space, where she belongs, not breathing
Fathermost place, abandoned songs, notes freezing

Paralyzed thoughts, empty solace, time creeping
Memory rots, darkness flawless, not sleeping


Kerry Herrmann