There is a party going on...

There is a party going on…..

There is in this vast spinning

cerulean marble

a party

going

on

and

an

and

on

You need no invitation

Stay until the very end

Happy New Year -

Happy New Year

Party so hard that your legs fall off

Party so hard that sweat pours down

your back and between your breasts

and your breath comes in gasps as

the room spins and the music pounds

and you dance banging your heels into

the ground.  Party so hard that your

skin flames onto bone as your features

slide into melt. Party through the dark

night under strobe lights of the mind

Party - so that tears will not fall into this

New Year

Ready

George Hodan

Ready

She sits alone in her room – her bed neatly

made - waiting with lips closed with the same

silent penitent patience of a novitiate – waiting

in a clean old-fashioned dress–claimed,cleaned,

pressed just for this finally arrived day.  Grand-

mother’s locket glows golden warm on the scar

between her newly burgeoned breasts. Listening

to the screeching laughing of the others scoring her

mind – claws of stray slit eyed cats – ferociously feral,

screaming enemies of struggled sacred, holy, peace.

She sits alone waiting for the chime of the doorbell just

down the hall at the front door –  willing its pure peal –

Breathing in and out – Out and in – calming the cat calls –

clearing the tumbled trouble times until slowly the vast blank

quiet plain of mind returns stretching as pale wheat waving –

as she waits for the chime of the bell and for him to take her

away from this silent screaming heinous home.

She waits, alone through the afternoon –

As sun falls she rises and looks over the field to the

road and a pinprick of light widening curving ever closer

to her – and when, and only when it is but a single curve away

she smoothes the bedcovers and runs to the door on tiptoed bare-feet.

Bong-Bong. She flings open the door - is already outside running past him

her shoes in hand - a sigh on her opened lips – door slapping behind her –

Ready – oh so very ready to ingest whatever he offers in place of all she has silently swallowed for far far too long. And when they are moving far out beyond the fields, the house a fading memory already erasing itself –

She leans out the open window fingers stretched to catch handfuls of soft cool breeze – shakes her hair free and howls. One single joyful howl – laughing at the silver moon – Full, fresh and sumptuously round in this sanctified sky flung with shooting stars of far better tomorrows.

Sands of Time

Petr Kratochvil

Then - there was

a tumbled swirl of

scattered smiles

sparkling- as limbs

stretched and time

gathered memories

filled your firmament

as a steady flame -

all that was, all that

is and all that is still

unspooling as a satin

ribbon into the future

Today - there is

A Happy Birthday

to savor and enjoy

With love abounding

Mother-Child Disunion

Sharon Apted

Mother-Child Disunion

Talk swirls about them

She bends and lifts adjusts

And fusses in a thousand

Ways – wiping a sticky

Toddler chin on the edge

Of her apron carefully with

The tip of a fingernail freeing

One of the aunts’ sweaters

Who caught its soft loops on

A nieces’ jangly bracelet

Talk swirls about them

And food and drinks and

Hours slip and if they don’t

Melt they don’t bang either

She continues to perform her

High wire tightrope walk

Without help – all alone

In the jumble of happy family

A small puddle of panic-sweat

Gathering behind her neck,

Sliding between her shoulders

As her eyes meet that one

Child finishing a laugh and

A clap on an uncle’s back –

One child – her child – now

Grown staring at her the smile

Slid from his face – eyes dead

As he shakes his head at her

Tentative step toward and mouths

“Your bad – Your choice.”

Though it is neither     

~

The Sunday Whirl