Master of the Street

Inspired by Wordle Words # 100! 
With congratulations and profound appreciation to Brenda Warren and the entire community who have opened doors to shared worlds 

Master of the Street *

“Master of the Street” lounging loose against the wall, cigarette hanging from your moving lips - hands gesturing affairs of the world.

“Come!” – the train calls for you - “Hear!”- the insistent whistled beckoning across the ribboned stretch of places yet unseen.

“See!” the plainitive cries falling together melting into the crescented faint future fast-fading over the horizon.

“Master of the Street” the world awaits – Touch! – the textured scents against your naked skin - Your die is not yet cast amid the cadre of the commonplace- 

There is still time - Come! – Taste the words! - the train calls for you – swing aboard and share the shouldered bump of comrades’ change - lest - 

all that remains is but a puff of evaporating steam – vanished -  as you lounge loose against a crumbling wall, cigarette hanging, imagining with - withering hands – a world that has always existed.

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* Published in Poets Quarterly - summer 2013


A special note: ......

Happy 100th anniversary to Brenda Warren it has been a pleasure "whirling" each Sunday wherever the handful of words led...  Thank you to all...

FOR BRENDA WARREN WITH DEEP AFFECTION  

(thank you for unlocking these worlds to be shared each Sunday)

"Master of the Words" 

Master of the words

Scattered on the street

Calls that bring from faint places

worlds to stretch, to share,

to march across psyche’s page

Rising from who knows

As I bump along a sleepy passenger

On the Wordle CreateTrain where the images

Never die

Serengeti Plain

Sunset In Serengeti by Richard Spencer

Serengeti Plain

Through the window she wrote carefully in intimate large rounded letters

“I love you”

Written across the reserves of a Serengeti plain on little girl stationary placed as a talisman against her still planed chest – 

all part of that fearsome summer when a chesty outsider arrived to steal him 

away as the summer heat arrived to use her,

to heat her with a strange aching burning

as she watched from her child’s bed

watched their late-night sprees in the grass behind his house under her bedroom window

her aching for him as futile as a whispered wish for the Serengeti sun to 

light the navied night with equatorial blaze  

Paint on a summer’s day

Dreaming In Red by Yana Ray

Paint on a summer’s day

with paint can in hand they climbed 

the tree to the window

brother and sister beginning one of their sprees,

whispering in the leaves missioned to keep the outsider away –

body to body brushing with a casual intimate touch  

endless nine-year-old reserves dipping their brushes 

again and again into the thick stolen paint

leaving ugly words written upside down,

in their signature style 

words, dripping blood-red on the new “weird boy’s” window.

“Stay away!”

Sliding down with a bump on grass they looked through

mullioned leaves and laughed at their work

even as their eyes met that frightened face watching them

they would have been shocked at how fearsome they were
how painful their paint

smile

THANKS TO Poems Gedichteposted toPoets Corner- for this share! 

smile

there in the corner
she sprawls
this night
of her own
volition 
loose as a cat
smiling and free
door locked
bruises fading
he on a train chugging
over a distant horizon

In Memoriam and Love

Clouds And Sun by Bobbi Jones Jones

In Memoriam and Love - His Smile

In her blue party dress, the yellow haired girl knelt

eyes raised to the first light, on bare linoleum
his gasps still swirling in air – and then - impossibly 
Gone. Bluntly. Silently - vanished into women's sobs

In her blue party dress the yellow haired girl knelt 

in a corner of the wake lilied air and waited for true belief 
to assure him, the very first ride in on wings of angels 
uncaught by any snare, snag, slap or tipped unbalance

clear passage to celestial swung-wide-welcoming gates   

In her blue party dress, the yellow haired  girl knelt

as she had not knelt for years, alongside her

family in the first pew, small in all that gold and marble
the gentle velvet against her skin scraping her raw heart

as she prayed him out of that box and into the incense

Eyes lifted - as a silver bell clearly pinged  
and in her soft blue dress, the yellow haired kneeling girl

watched as a glinted bit of dust, danced up a sunbeam 

Pausing, in its trajectory toward a high cobalt window
That diamonded-dancing dust beam, paused 
for a single, special, sparkling instant 
Smiling into her eyes, her grandfather's unmistakable, 
audible pop-popped smile 

Shining

Still-through-the-ribboning-years
into this day - here in the dancing dust, in the rain, in the ice,  
in the sunlight of dreams - 
There, always there in the -
chiming of a crystal clear belled-  

ping 

in the core of her heart, 
Yearning, lonely, yet never alone
embraced in the strong arms of his
shake-the-world-by-its-tail smile 
Forever the yellow haired granddaughter
Loving and beloved 
In a blue party dress
Lit by the sun