No running in the corridors! No!
It is time to sprint in wild panic, hammer on the Principal’s door, pour into the staff room and yank out all the grown-up idiots telling tales of their lit lives, signifying nothing. Cry betrayal! Start yelling Baby Boomers hath murdered sleep! No time left for Time Out. March them to the gym, guilty hands tucked in deep, bloodied pockets. They told me to do it. It was their idea. Kids, don’t fear your milky nature. Demand they write a 5 part essay: why you adults forgot to teach us how to avoid taking the nearest way. Let them quote the three charms: ignorance, greed, digital distraction. For an A-grade include curricula creators and corporate transactions, experts poisoned by mis-information. Dismiss claims of air-drawn daggers. Remind them: credit your sources, follow the money to where it swaggers right back to the classes of the West, having to buy your own school supplies. Be kind: they don’t get paid enough for all these toil and troubling sighs. If they get cold, wrap them up snug in their own flags. Confiscate phones and only one at a time to the restroom. No playing games while on the throne. Take a tour of your school. Note all the unusual, all that’s missing. The ‘closed’ notice on the library, signed by sounds of political hissing, the playground’s broken swings, the school garden’s tingling glow, the horizon darkening with smoke. Inside everyone! the whistle blows. Have the adults act-out their show dressed up as the nearly-extinct today. Don’t say the cursed name. Too much bad luck. Instead call it The Earth Play. Time for the truth, adults. No need for hands-up. You are all to blame. What’s done is done is no excuse. What has to be done is our game. You’ve scotch'd the Earth, not kill'd it. We still have a few more tomorrows. Lights down. No applause. Everyone, go back to your classes, open sorrow and your books. There is work to be un- done, something wicked this way comes. We must dig out solutions, feel it prick our conscience and our thumbs. :Published in the Oregon English Journal, Spring/Summer 2023, Vol. XLV, No.1.
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Only a 5G satellite can see you, 234684,
aged just five months, tagged for your first flight belittling the line between Alaska and Australia, the adults all gone six weeks earlier. The flock of first-timers fluttering hearts, tails trembling, the wait for the favoring wind. How they know what fronts are forming, the pulsing lay lines of the hidden remains hidden, a magician’s trick. 11 days, 1 hour. 13, 560 KM. Praise be to numbers. No stops, not for bemusement or applause or delaying winds, storms, the fist of the abyss. A marathon no Iron Man can manage. Limosa lapponica. Bar-tailed Godwit. A bridge between the functional and the divine. Organs of your existence shrunken to myth so the fat of the landlocked - insects, molluscs, worms - can keep you watered. You bulge twice your weight with lungs so sharp they cut air only Sherpa knows. Scientist don’t know why you didn’t die after 3 or 4 days. Peaked pectoral muscles, missile shaped. You beat 4BBRW, the twice record holder older male. No tourist you, passing Hawaii by, wings struck with Vulcan’s eye. Unihemispheric sleep - you’re halved and twice the wonder. Did anyone see you bullet by Kiribati, Vanuatu, track east of Sydney? What glitter, gut instinct or commune mind attracted you suddenly right to find Tasmania. Already mapped out is your March return: China and the tidal flats of the yellow sea. Published in the Clackamas Literary Review, Volume XXVII, 2023 |
Poetry Biography:I have had over 70 poems published in the following worldwide magazines and literary journals: A Handful of Stones, Acta Victoriana (Canada), All the Sins (UK), The Amethyst Review (USA), Amsterdam Quarterly (NL) The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bolts of Silk, Borderless Journal, The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Bushfire Literature & Arts Review (US), Cadenza, Cake Magazine, Carillon, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), DASH (USA), Clackamas Literary Review (USA), Cooch Behar Anthology, Dawntreader, Dreamcatcher, The Dillydoun Review, Earth Love, The Ear (US), Eastlit (East Asia), Erbacce, Envoi, Finger Dance Festival, Ginosko, Gloom Cupboard, Hidden Channel, Inlandia Journal, IS&T (Ink, Sweat & Tears), Into the Void (Canada), The Journal, The Lakeview Journal (India), Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lunch Ticket (USA) The New Writer, One Hand Clapping, Orbis, Oregon English Journal (USA), The Passage Between, Prole, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sonic Boom (India), Third Wednesday (USA), Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), New Contrast (South Africa), One Hand Clapping, Opportunity Publishing, The Oregon English Journal (USA) Origami Poems Project (USA), The Paddock Review (USA), Panoplyzine (USA), Paper Swan Press, The Passage Between, The Peacock Journal (USA), Pens on Fire, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Potomac Review, (USA) Prole, Pulsar Poetry, Rear View Poetry, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Qutub Minar Review (India), Red Ink, Shiela-Na-Gig (USA), South Bank Poetry Magazine, Stand, Waterford Teachers Centre, (Ireland) We Are a Website New Literary Journal (Singapore), Weber - The Contemporary West Review (USA), Windfall (USA), Writing Magazine, Words for the Wild and Verbal Art (India). Archives
March 2024
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