Concerns

To Whom It May Concern: And just like that, the phone went dead. And something else too. But the new day will ressurrect the dead and call upon dormant hearts,  kiss the mouth of the sleeping, suck out the bitter taste. And all will start again. Now you have a choice. Make it happen now. Don't count on the next new morning, each day weighs a little more on the heart and the bone.

by Nili Roberts


This does concern you. Your choice. Don't go back to sleep. Live a thousand dawns within each taste. The day's lips to yours. Kiss back before there is time to count befores and afters, before one more something else is buried beneath another name for separation.

by Jerry Gordon

Cries

I was born
and when I stopped crying
I was shown my home
I loved it
I went through a wall
and I was taught everyone was an angel
I learned to speak my tongue
I was told,
"With these words you can tell the truth"

I climbed the mountain behind my home
I could see over the walls
and as far as my eyes reached,
everywhere were angels
and there were no ends

But when I came back down
my home was gone
and no one welcomed me as an angel.
My tongue sounded like nonsense.
The mirrors said,
I was a foreigner.
The silences said,
my words were noise.

Not heard
not understood
I cried
without meaning.

I cried, my tongue a stump of sorrow.
I cried, my lungs a bellows of joy.
I cried, my mouth like the open hollow of the sky.
I cried.

I cry
and in it find a home
not of place or flag or time,
but of this lost and momentary
bark of the heart
echoing off from others' lips.

I live
in this ever unnamable emotion
always breaking
open like a seed that can only grow in abandoned soil
and takes each road back to wild.



by jerry gordon
5.13.09

Circus

The circus feels in town.
The town being my mind.
Its three rings my doubt, trust and fear.
The trapeze this emotion
swinging from wires I as yet have no names for.

The clowns dive into a drinking glass.

I jump in
to save them from drowning.



5.9.9