Across A Field

by David Milligan

Today I walked under the hot afternoon sun
Across a roadside field,
My childhood danced before my eyes
Yet the dance was forced to yield ...

For as my feet ascended a craggy hill
The effort reminded me,
That memories were all I still enjoyed
While the children wandered free.

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Copyright 2003 David Milligan (wy605@victoria.tc.ca).
Reproduction is prohibited without express permission of the author.

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Reformed

by Dorothy Fleischman

I'm often asked how sloppy me
Could become so orderly
Once I could tolerate the press
Of living with a daily mess
I'd grieve but it was still my style
To leave a lot of things in piles
I calmly could accede to clutter
While my kids ate peanut butter
With nothing new, I could be lazy
When guests were due, I would go crazy

Now I crawl where I once raced –
Allow no sprawl or out of place
You barely get about on feet
Then turn out to be fairly neat
For truth to tell, it's only wise
To keep your life well organized
Expect your habits to improve
When it gets difficult to move
New ways insure me from distress
But truly, I prefer the mess

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Copyright 2003 by Dorothy Fleischman (dorothy_poems@hotmail.com).
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I See Their Bones

by Gerald Bosacker

Coasting easily down the long rain shadow slant
of the mighty Rockies, toward the rising sun,
the endless eroded wasteland seems to pant
for rain. Bygone buffalo chips, their decay done,
still tease arrogant clumps of sagebrush to defy
thirst. In this barren land, millions of Bisons fed,
lodged and heated the affluent and grateful Cheyenne
and Sioux citizens of their beloved meadow-
land nation. They saw no need to tap the less
fertile lower layers of furtive mineral prize.
Vast rivers from ancient melted glaciers coyly
seep toward nirvana. Ancient flora carbonize,
waiting for rebirth as smoke and cinders. Oily
graves of corpulent cadavers coalescing
to black gold, waiting to belch a deadly oxide
for a greedy, mechanized world. These blessings
bode beneath the barren bushes but bastioned hide..
Paleface come with buffalo guns on iron trail.
They dug and drilled, fenced and killed dissecting
the Earth Mother's belly for her hidden holy grail..
Pied Indians now fight only themselves, neglecting
to thank intruders for bad water, starvation
and decimating small pox. Brave warriors that fought
for their children are as dead as the Indian Nation,
white as bleached bison bones, embalmed by bourbon bought
from the Indian bureau's temporal padrones.
Beyond the southern sky-edge, the brown Big Horn
sometime floods, exposing bits of Custer's bones.
Brave and sober Sioux warriors rise up in scorn
from their hidden pyres to ride their dust devil steeds
through sleeping reservations, whooping war chants
to their drunk descendants and resigned half breeds,
timidly afraid to dance when the red man leads.
Gerald Bosacker 2003

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Copyright 2003 by Gerald Bosacker (Bosacker@aol.com).
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I Pray

by Cher L.

So much of the time,
I just don't understand
the reason or rhyme.

Uncertainty consumes,
then God shows his warmth,
and for a time, it makes sense.

And I wonder,
how I ever doubted.

Then times move again,
and fate takes a twist,
and I fall perplexed,
my faith questioned.
My hopes shaken.
While fear slithers in.

And so I pray.
And I pray,
and I pray....

Everything I have ever believed in,
rattles around me.
My own will, no longer a friend.
Yet my heart screams ...
Who can hear me?
And I don't know what to do.

The insides whisper:
Reach again, reach to God,
He is all you ever had.

While my will argues:
Hush! God did not let him stay!

And the battle goes on.

And again...
I pray...
This time,
Not for him,
Not for them,
Not even for I.
But for understanding alone.

I fear, I ask too much.
I fear, I pray too little.
And again,
I don't know what to do.

To my knees I fall,
weary, beaten.
Heart full of scars,
Soul full of holes.
Tears running like rivers...
But,
One day ... I think I will understand.
Yes, One Day.

Until then ...
I Pray.

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Copyright 2003 by Cher L. (SingTaMe@aol.com).
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Her Beloved's Lips on Her Face

by Sylvia Lukeman

The sound of the starting rain
had caught her by surprise
and she watched each leaf
as it darkened
and changed colour
in front of her eyes

the lashes of her eyelids
glistened
but she stayed
and watched the rain
and sound of it falling
was soothing
as she listened
and felt calm again


the rain mirrored
the falling of her tears
as she longed for her lovers embrace
and it would be her own teardrops
that kissed her
and not her beloved's lips on her face.

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Copyright 2003 by Sylvia Lukeman (SylLukeman@aol.com).
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Admit This to Women:

by Luke Buckham

I don't dip into the core, or the cares, of life.
How there are so many men terrified of the end of time,
waiting for rewards and punishments that never come.
I don't even know how to write about sex.
When I was having it I didn't understand it.
And I have to ignore politics to avoid suicide.
If I spoke of the meaning of life
I would probably make life meaningless.
I can't satisfy you any more than I can satisfy myself.
But there are moments when I look in lonely clarity
from a stilled distance to see your remarkably soft hair
or your tough little hand or your liquid shadow
draping an otherwise jagged part of the earth
in a gentle, peculiar way, and I am stuck
simplified and puzzled to the spot
for unstained centuries, to document
being in the mist of your breath no longer one body,
helplessly watching you do your beautiful work.

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Copyright 2003 by Luke Buckham (aworminmywall@hotmail.com).
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Afflicted

by M. Richard Smith

Affliction drives her hardened heart's intent,
while pity masks the mysteries of her truth
and comforts her with mutated hope.

She contemplates the days gone by,
when the luster of her countenance
concealed the frailty of her dreams.
And visions of escape assail her crowded mind,
to suppress the swelling of her fears
and adulterate the bitter taste of her soul.

She veils herself in the coolness
of a dampened cloth
and breathes...

Then she paints her face to cover up her shame
and stuffs the undergarments of her soiled life
inside a tattered sack.

And as she labors for the door,
she hears the stumbling of his graceless steps.

As she nears the threshold of her sovereignty,
she's tempted by the tease of no return,
convinced that someday she could learn
to somehow love herself.

He smiles at her in the bliss of his oblivion
and knows that she'll be back.

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Copyright 2003 by M. Richard Smith (m_richard_smith@yahoo.com).
Reproduction is prohibited without express permission of the author.

Smith's book, "emissions", is available online at: http://www.lulu.com/M-Richard-Smith

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