Portrait posies ghost friend | jsburl

David Whyte Self Portrait / Blackout poetry

We human beings never seem to tire of wanting to tell(ing) others what to believe, how to believe, and even at what hours of the day or week they should (when to) practice those beliefs. It is a core dynamic that though often issuing from some original revelatory experience, becomes systematized in the end belittles other's individual experience by treating them like errant children it has nothing to do with what lies behind the unutterable mystery of existence? and everything to do with the command and control that the immature human psyche craves over others as a hoped for antidote to the unending vulnerability of existence. This piece was written many years ago as a way of beginning to claim back my own way of asking 'The beautiful question', often squeezed out and overwhelmed since childhood by the overbearing over privileged and over controlling questions of the so , calledself-admiring and astonishingly self-satisfied, inherited, 'adult' world...

field of posies

sprouting with many colors
     on the dry earth so brown
greens and blues, tans and yellows
     all mixed with the hue of red

so many strewn all about
     in all the stages of life
from tiny to old and graying
     are the posies laid before me

now comes the time for change
     turning the earth and plowing
all the colors soon hidden
     as if they never once lived

but such are the ravages of
     man against man, through time immortal 
who really wins, how can anyone
     against the atrocities of war

but yet, in one darkened field
     comes something tiny, raising its head
amidst the destruction left behind
     comes a flower of hope and beauty…

the ghost of…

forgotten yet here
     who remembers me alive
          once a heart beating scared
why are we here—look
 
     there—he’s just a boy
          doesn’t know why just told point
and shoot they’re bad he’s
     told anyone with guns

John shot him but it’s too
     late for me have to leave 
          you boys why can’t we 
just go home and play ball

     I see me      you take my dog 
tags        I see you leaving      but
          I’m still here      no I’m over
there      covered in my bright 

          blood sinking
into the jungle floor all's quiet
     the animals come to eat till
          all that’s left are bones my

bones covered in mold then 
     plants cover all time has no
          meaning all but forgotten 
I wander over the place the

     bones my bones lay covered
          as mice gnaw on those 
remnants of what was me
     once a heart beating dreams

          hopes plans muscles sinews
skin tanned by sun but
     there’s no sun in the bowels
          of a jungle nothing but the

critters and me 
     waiting but
          forgotten 
               like time…

Appeared in the Adirondack Center For Writing, 2023

goodbye my friend

land—sweep through miles
     of jungle then beachhead
picked up—land—fight our
          way to the jungle then sweep
more jungle—another beachhead
               each day haunted by
the dead we leave behind
               yet never forget—each 
day accompanied by the
          hum of mosquitoes—but no
talk just forever moving 
     forward and the gun fire
oh—no music—no joy but
                    shooting to stay alive
               goodbye my friend I wish
          there had been more 
     classes at college for
us but we must keep 
     moving—forever moving—more
          islands to clear more japs
               to route why why do we
                    run forward to our deaths why
where is the glory when
     we leave our friends bodies
behind can’t stop only those
     still breathing get a chance
to fight another day I will 
     bring your dog tags home if
I can and tell them you 
                    fought to the end…

Appeared in the Adirondack Center For Writing, 2023

jsburl…

…MFA is a hemorrhagic stroke survivor who lives in Northern NY. She loves family, mountains, gardening, writing poetry and stories, oil painting, dragons, and animals large and small. She lives with her her dog Tippy, and has just finished her master’s degree in Creative Writing. She was inducted into Sigma Tau Delta International English Society, and The National Society of Leadership and Success. She has been a journalist and won state and US competitions, and has two children’s books slated for release this year. Her poetry appears in the American Poets Society, Theater of the Mind, 2023 Poets Yearbook, Sunflower Poetry Review, The Bezine, The Waverly Poetry Review, Portrait of New England, and Whimsical Poet. The stroke took her mobility, but not her creativity. Her favorite thing to tell people is “Make every day an extraordinary day.

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