Cartographers

The drive back felt long,

as if the hour and forty 

minutes had multiplied,

the miles adding to themselves

as time and distance elongated

by recollections whole and fragmented.

I drove the roads I know and it 

was like digging in a mine where

someone was yelling, “Get out 

of there!” and I yelled back, “Not

yet!”  the exchange tinted with some

unknown but felt fear that later

might conclude by some logic

beyond my understanding though 

nothing I could deny.  I drove and drove

and drove.  Pulled into my driveway, 

an hour forty-five but it felt like time

out of eternity, that reckless disregard 

of time and place to be in what is called             

now, memories the cartographers used making

the map as I drove. They waiting as I got

out of the car, unlocked the front door 

and entered before I did.

 

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoetry.com.

Lovechild

I am reconsidering the story of my aunt

born thirteen years after my mom.

She was a lovechild, my gram had said,

and also that she was not wanted.

It dawned on me the way dreams and words

sometimes simmer that she may not have

been grandad’s child.  That gram, for all

her control over everything, everyone 

had lost control like some teenage girl.

She told grandad he had rolled over

in the middle of the night, got on her,

fell back to sleep.  He didn’t know if

that might not be true.  What I know 

is my aunt always tried to fit, that she often 

wore a moo-moo, no bra, would lean

down to talk to me, beautiful white breasts

with pink nipples she may have wanted

me to touch and I did but didn’t.  That

if she was not her father’s child, she was

not that much of an aunt to me.

I have the .22 six-shooter she kept

by her bed at night in case she’d have 

to “shoot any preacher coming after me

in the night.”   Later,  I’d visit her in the nursing

home.  She’d ask accusingly, “You still have my gun?”

and fall asleep as I wondered if she was

dreaming gram’s memory.

 -Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com/

Of Time and Eternity and Undulating Prayers

Seduction is always the seduction out of time,

fulfillment always in the moment.

 

This is how we are held by eternity and 

time.  We know the grip well.  Long to feel

it again when it is released.  Feel that freefall

into that abyss where we can grasp nothing

and nothing, no one reaches out. Until. 

 

We were made to be seduced and fulfilled.

And to pray whispered undulations, Again.

Enough is never enough.  

 

The midwife, whose hands first touch us, 

casts the spell of time and eternity into us.

 

The first word we speak, Yes.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Proof

I often see my mother when I look 

outside.  Her blue eyes first and then

her smile.  The way she stood – ready

to move, ready to stand firm.

I take her spirit in again and again.

The body dies, the spirit lives;

I believe this.  The proof?

The way I smile back at her.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

HORSEMAN OF WAR

HORSEMAN OF WAR

MARK A D Hay

2022

+

Commanded send your sons to slaughter there is room for your daughter

Victims to the cause the apocalyptic horseman of war gives applause

+

No turning back time just throw them untrained into the front line

No regretting this mindless insanity in this just male justified vanity

+

Weeping and the wailing ignored no room to admit military failing

The unforgiving bullets cost is cheaper than the life that is forever lost

+

Carrion birds soar only winners in man’s testosterone induced war

Maggots feed, cockroaches survive as man’s humanity takes a dive

+

Defence makes sense when a tyrant raises and commits such offense

This is the 21stCentury & still mad men write their chapter to history

Reminiscing

Reminiscing

reminiscing it makes me sad but also happy

I remember when I was young and now I'm old

I see my children they are not little children any more

how I wish we didn't age or at least we did not die.

I reminisce of TV shows and the actors that are now gone

I think about the lives we lived and it makes me cry

knowing that some of my friends are dead and not alive

it feels like only yesterday i kissed my first girl

but I know it's just a memory but how I remember it well

why do we grow old and why do we get sick and why do we die

I know the Creator created everything to be the way it has been

but still I ask myself why oh why.

Reminiscing makes me cry but it also makes me happy

but how I wish it could be different

O, how I wish we would not die.

by Carlos Gomez/Water 11-28-22

Assimilated

Memories are just a life of past events assimilated in my head

I finally figured out how to live and now my life is over

Are my heart beats just memories of a past that keeps me alive?

Or a torture chamber that petrify my soul.

Are my thoughts the imaginary symmetry of the cosmic universe?

You know I tried to see the reason in the madness

And the chaos in the reasoning of intelligence

A flack of black birds occupy my window

And ants are crawling on the table.

The emptiness of my mind is the forgotten memories

And the memory is me in a time that is only existing in my head.

Is it crazy to want to be mad and yet relate intellectually

Or is it unreasonable to be intelligent and want to be crazy.

There remains only one of me the other two have died

But what really happen is that I engulfed me and myself

They didn’t really die they are assimilated into I.

A ghost is supposed to be the spirit of a dead person

And a person is supposed to be the living soul of a ghost

A memory is a ghost of thoughts that reflect life

Reach deep very deep into the subconscious

Remember what you never experienced

It unfolds into the shadowy gray of the unexplained

There is nothing new under the sun there is memory

Of events that have not happen.

By Carlos Gomez/water 5-25-14