Jean Jones

The Birds of Djakarta

I have the greatest
fear
watching the birds
fall

from your hands

listening
to your voice
on the phone:

Punctuated with pauses
uncertainties
about my
coming back

Why do those birds
fall from your hands
why?
Am I one of them?

An angel trapped
like the many angels
trapped

by the boys
riding the motorcycles
of Djakarta?

What brings
me
to you?

What brings

those pigeons

to those boys' hands
in Djakarta?

Jane Daughtridge

SPOILS OF WAR

The streets were cold and grey

On the day you marched into Paris.

I would not see the sun;

It did not shine in me until the Liberation.

You passed by me smugly.

Your boot heels clattered garishly on the pavement.

Pretty Arian face steeled in your duty to race.

But you saw me.

I threw flowers (because vegetables were too dear

And I had no hand grenades).

The City tolerated your arrogance

And I shared the urgency of your youth.

But I would not abide such treachery

Nor bow to the sorcery you invoked.

When I saw you on the street corner

You recognized me. Pulled the flower from your pocket.

Took my arm. Smiled.

You forced me swiftly into the alley.

Your maiming weapon swung at the ready

Threatened to discharge.

You ripped my skirt,

Pried me open in the Provinces;

Marched in cruelly to claim the prize,

Took me, innocent, a virgin;

Left me, worn and weeping, a woman.

My Fleur-de-Lis, battered, an open wound, bleeding.

But not my pride. I tied my skirt together,

Walked away calmly and survived.

I grew hard, learned new skills where lamplight mingled with radios and real heros

In the Catacomb boneyard of my fathers; in the sanctuary of hope and pride.

I saw you on Rue de Raspail, remembered you instantly, vividly

But you had forgotten.

I wanted you to see the skulls of Hades, Soldier.

Darkly, they would be laid at your door -- And more

“Monsieur, do you have a cigarette for a conquered jeune fille?

Aren’t the stars twinkling with promise this evening?

Would you escort me home?” I swoon.

“I fear there is danger in the night for a young woman.

Do you agree? Would you like to kiss me?

Please do not tear my skirt, Sir. Thread is so scarce.

Here, I’ll lift it for you.”

The ice pick found your eye . . . .

Scott Urban

Aftermath: West Nickel Mines

On Thursday, October 12, 2006, a crew demolished the

one-room Amish school where, ten days prior, Charles

Carl Roberts, milk truck driver, had shot five young girls.

Dawn is still an hour away. The bulldozer’s

chuff of ignition sounds like a dinosaur belching.

It startles the blackbirds from their red maple branches.

The clapboard schoolhouse is a murky grey box.

It seems transparent, an architectural ghost, as if

it too had died. One man, rocking on his heels,

says something, laughs like a weed-whacker.

A co-worker shoves the speaker’s shoulder and,

for a moment, all four hands become fists. Loose

crime scene tape flutters like thin banners of an

abandoned country. Ants have discovered the

splinter-edged holes the bullets made, and they nibble at

the dried brown pools. Rulers, textbooks, unbloodied desks

have been ferried to another school. A newswire stringer

murmurs into his recorder. ‘The walls vibrate,

as if echoing the frantic pleas of last week’s victims.

This is what happens when man cannot reach high

enough to slap God’s face.’ He grins, pleased.

An iron blade penetrates the foundation like

a lance bursting a boil. The birds and the mice

retreat to await the incipient pasture. They wonder

why men bother at all: building it up, only to bring it down.

Megan Singletary

Fiction is fiction:

Fiction is fiction

No passion is blind

No art spawns from still observation.

Though could we agree

That if fiction it be

Life would no longer need speculation.

Feeling and thought

Braided, twisted and taught

Could be spliced and examined as two

And those with a will

To employ the skill

Would form prose in a lateral view.

And if all that were ugly were easy to hate

Decipher, reject, and unwind

Then everything gilded and cherished to date

Would be courted by only the mind.

But emotion alas

Will perplex and contort

Bringing fire to all that is sane

To all who inquire

A life of this sort

Suffers long as a lifeless refrain.

-Megan Singletary ‘03

Jeffrey Wyatt

IN DARKNESS OF MOURNING CAUGHT

Not star, not planet, not moon

But a meteor flung too soon.

In darkness of morning caught

By folly's sweet melancholy,

Saturn's child lay deep in thought

Among cut-down trees from wild fields;

To be confined, hard heart reeled,

With sixteen men like sleeping logs

Sounding steady bubbling chorus

Like gnarled pack of snarling dogs;

Steel bars surrounding like forest

In this room within a room.

By jeffrey e. wyatt

@6/23/03

Sarka Houfek

A Fated Moment

by Šárka Houfek

(dedicated to a predestined moment shared with Klarka Pohlová)

We gazed at the skies

feeling alive and free.

Feet loose on the sand

smelling the warm salty sea.

A smile that wouldn't stop

a rush that wouldn't fade.

Our heads swimming with sensation

from the moment we had made.

We were lost sisters, now found

understanding each other without a sound.

Enjoying God’s creations

without a complaint.

For that day we had bonded

it was our destiny, our fate.

We gazed at the skies

feeling alive and free.

Then the heavens opened-

allowing us to see.

Our guardian angel-

looking at her, then, looking at me.

John Marshall

Flight 1549, Miracle on the River

Racing like a mistral

a great machine lowers its wings,

lifts its face to embrace the air

and soars into the azure.

Three minutes after escaping Earth,

leaving thunder in its wake,

it collides with a flock of birds;

and its mighty engines fall silent.

Windswept pinions are turned to stone,

majestic flight caught in the web of gravity,

glistening metal like hollow bone

transformed into the fall of Icarus.

Below its descent a forest of steel,

below its collapse canyons of glass;

nowhere a landing, no field to alight

except for a river and its swift cold tide.

Down through the sky the silver ship glides.

Its pilot holds steady the wheel of fate.

Above a bridge like an arrow she flies

and strikes the river in a shower of ice.

Ships of all sizes, boats and rafts

hasten to her side like angels of mercy,

the best of America,

the best of mankind.

Hours pass as each human life

is plucked from the waves of the waters of death,

each human hand an armada of breath,

each human heart an instrument of Grace,

caring, comfort and ultimately release

from tragedy’s crypt on the darkest of days.

Dave Capps

Ten Thousand Suns

We shake off thought.

We walk in open sunlight.

Leave our trappings, traffic and streets like

startled dogs shrug off stars.

We keep our fathers’ hearts in jars.

Our boulevards, rotundas blaze at Christmas, Independence Day.

Sloughed in, we sleep a rough death only dreaming affords.

There are miracles to witness past these dozing benches,

past churches prim and drawn to bear His message on the poor.

The trumpet is coming (I hear one say),

Will be all that is heard and all that we pray.

He rose! He lives! He comes! Radios explode.

Who comes then, for the women bombed from their hovels?

Their intestines woven through neighbors fences.

Black faced sons of Kirkuk rub sand in their brown eyes.

Down in their brown fists the blood never dries.

Who comes for their muttering,

Their satanic vengeance? Who will they

Become? Only

Fathers, to pick their children’s teeth from

Cracks in paving stones.

D Capps/2007

Ryan Miller

Maria

Transition from unconsciousness

Thunder on the window

The morning train waits outside,

to the place Maria goes to hide.

Prophets under the headstones

Virgin acolytes in the sands

Maria crying with her waving hand

Waving to the conductor

of broken truths and lies.

She rides the train into the day,

and takes it to the end of the track

Where the forest station waits,

And Maria waits in back.

The night falls like a rock from a hill.

Maria, she's just lost ill her will

The whistle blows and again she boards

And not even the offering of the moon,

Or the bribery of gold,

can keep her from the rails I'm told

She rides and waits,

For her once parted love.

It was after all the last place he stood

It was after all,

the last place he said goodbye.

But "Don't cry for us, Marla" he said

"Just look to the flight of the crow,

for they know the way to the one that loves you."

And Maria knows crows can't be trusted

But she flies with them anyway

Smoke from the stack runs from the top of the train

It blackens Maria's face

It paints her with her pain

For the lover she had to let go

And her lover who took her heart and ran.

Oh but Maria he is not there!

Oh Maria...he is not there.

Mike Shea

Hospital Recovery

Brutally honest death is... but fairness always beyond comprehension
by mortals locked in the matrix...

Free your mind... free you Soul... the body is a prison used to
encapsulate,
to enslave the freedom of infinity.

I stepped beyond the body and the mind and found myself...

not in Oneness,

but in utter terror.

Absolute silence and no time beyond time beyond form.

The only thing left was my point of view.

In the middle of it all.

The abject terror of infinite dimension surrounding me

No form No time No me...

Yet there was an infinite fractal spinning as I turned

back and forth

trying desperately to get back

to this

even when I couldn't remember what "this" was...

thrashing about in the infinite center

thinking that I had to do something'

to get out

to get back

until I heard my friend say

remember "love"

and I did, I thought "love... love.... love..."

and I stopped by spinning back and forth

as the world formed around me once again

and I knew

this periphery, this illusion surrounding me

is just a diversion, no matter how real it seems...

like a dream I cannot wake from...

and I create this room, this floor these walls...]

and everything around me in a sphere of illusion

a matrix entrapped by my temporary senses

a comfortable prison of form

that barely separates me
from the terror

of abject infinity, fractals... fractals... fractals...

stretching for miles and miles until I cannot see the endpoint

anymore

and yet I do not fall like I thought I would

I remain here in the center

with nothing to fear

and yet I claw my way back to this mundane

drab existence where reptilians feed on fear

but I will never forget the promise I made

just to get back

that I will never tell... I will never tell... I will never tell.

I lied even then.

So, even at the cost of death, I will tell you now...

the truth I saw.

Infinity, terrifying infinity, surrounds us all...

Just beyond the limit of our perceptions...

Of what we can see, hear, feel, taste and touch...

Its there, I know it is.

I saw it.

I will never forget.

Everything splits in shards and the light appears

within

everything

all

around

you.

There is no sound in the timeless realm.

Only infinite fractal dimension spreading out from the center.

The center that is You without You without form or body or mind.

Just a point of view - but you can still think!!!

and that my friend is the terrifying part.

I thought I would find Oneness

and all I found was terrifying isolation.

and spinning infinite fractal spirals emanating
from me as me... as everything.

Joe Miller

keepingthefaith

What is this commotion

that is draining my emotion

is there a secret potion

for getting your devotion

Eternity is missing e

psychology has got a p

there is no breaking free

it is all just stressing me

Is there any wonder

so many people ponder

life that is way yonder

I’m dizzy with the maunder

Tired of all the clatter

sick of all the chatter

so many are Mad hatters

no substance and no matter

What purpose and what gain

for drinking from your pain

does it wash away the strain

from all the mad refrain

The first will be the last

hunger overtakes the fast

imprisoned by my past

and stuck in a cruel caste

Joe Miller

3-08-07

Eric Smiarowski

Poet Points a Finger at a Tornado,
Turning it to a Rose
Before Being Let Go by the World.

having read black and white
diaries of more sane men
I have concluded
all ends
with a
last
sentence.

of bravery,
brash ignorance,
indignant decency,
to accept the smallest specks
of hope.

somewhere,
there will be no need for poets
and that is heaven.

John O. Marshall

Mia Via Dolorosa

Echoing word patterns pushed by

egocentric impulses (electronic Genesis

My transistor- mine, all mine- heaven

sent)

Along the freeways of my nerves

Towards an inevitable collision at the second clover-leaf

Keep right? turn left?

Or shall we await calmly the Presbyterian

crash, blood bespeckled primrose path

(with death?)

Or taut as the Arabic thread spanning

the chasm twixt Heaven & Hell, I pluck some

music forth

To win reluctant entry there.

Where?

John O. Marshall

Robbins Keith Fowler

Sonnet for Mary

The years take toll of all our yesterdays,

Erasing from the slate of memory

The record of our youth; but yet to me

One portion is inviolate and stays

Untouched by time. As long as I may live,

I’ll not forget a narrow stretch of beach

Where ocean fingers fumbled forth to reach

The white and tumbled dunes; where, sensitive

To wind’s caress upon my face, I went

Along the sand, made magic by the foam,

Toward the waiting welcome of a home

In which I found the meaning of content.

Those things are constant, limitless and true;

As constant as remembered love for you.

Mary Styron Marshall

Grandmother’s Garden

Wandering through a garden old

Whose walls are weathered grey

Cast low, pleached* shadows darkly slant

Across the path to Yesterday.

The rows that once she daily trod,

Now want blue asters and goldenrod.

Still clinging to the aging wall

In slender, lacy dress

As if to lend enchantment,

Blooms a snowy clematis.

In her garden, old and rare

I found one lonely flower blooming there,

A sweet-faced violet, delightful to see,

It whispered, “Please don’t trample me.”

I gathered it gently, its fragrance to share,

Recalling the memories I treasure with care,

Of another old garden, long ago

Where only her old-fashioned flowers would grow.

Its paths were bordered in quaint designs,

With sweet alyssum and Jessamine entwined.

The picket fence had a border, too,

Where Ragged Robin and cornflower hue

Rivaled the sky in its shades of blue.

Like sentinels beside the gate

Gay hollyhocks in columns grew,

And stood divinely tall and straight,

Guarding the garden my grandmother knew.

When in the evening, her labor o’er,

She came to rest near her rose at her door,

She drank in its fragrance and gave a caress.

Of all of her loves, this rose she loved best.

“The Scotch Bluebells,” she’d often say,

“Came from a land far, far away.”

It grew atop a rocky crest,

Shaded by branches of Baby’s Breath.

A primrose bush, Four-o’clocks, a Morning Glory,

Forget-me-not, a Bachelor’s Button, and Cockscomb red,

Nodded with pride near the violet bed.

Violets grew with special art;

‘twas they alone could best impart

A secret wish to a listening heart.

Dear little Violet, my heart is listening

I treasure the wish you’ve bestowed

To revisit my grandmother’s garden;

Precious memories of long, long ago.

Mary Octavia Styron Marshall, circa 1960

Edited by Jane Bruton Daughtridge 8/04

*Pleach' v.t. interweave the branches of (a hedge, etc.) [OF. Plesser]

Cape Fear Poetry Society

Aftermath: West Nickel Mines

Grandmother’s Garden