DeVry Creative - CyberSpeakers: Poetry

Postcard from a village church

in Fira, Santorini, Greece

by Carol E. Dietrich

In hyperbolic archness

Regresando solo

Three bells rust

Unscrutinized by water blue

Or stucco’s whitened crust

It’s such a little thing

To hold—atop a dome,

A tower, a temperamental tide—

The scandal of a cross

The hammer’s sinking of the nail

No will to raise the cup

The flesh denied cries out

The dove, the love, the loss.

Don’t grieve me, for now I’m free

God is leading me down a special

Path he made just for me.

I could not stay another day

For my time had come.

So I closed my eyes and left it all.

I was welcomed by God’s loving arms.

If my parting has left a void,

Then fill it with the memories of joy and laughter we shared.

Oh yes I will miss all the hugs kisses and smiles too.

But don’t be bothered with times of sorrow,

For you have the sunshine of tomorrow.

Lift your heart be at peace and know I am with God.

He has set me free.

ARROWS

Your arrows cannot fly unseen for all your splendor no longer remains.

Come, let us unveil a child’s lonely and forgotten birthday balloon

Embraced by some alien angel now cast along the Pacific Coast Highway

Fueled by the deaths of too many American soldiers who fight for

Oil they cannot use to light their now empty Hanukkah lamps.

The days of whine are lost among the He-roses again and again

And never-ending battles for which there are no more winners.

Shall we play the victorless games while their capricious greed

Slowly and relentlessly devours whole the souls of the meek?

Should we dance upon the moonlit sea like crazy one-legged

Sea gulls lost upon some barren high desert poppy field while

The loveless cry out for money, but no one joins the One campaign?

Wherein lies the truest unity when the stone heart though broken

Yet returns like you, the star, who rises despite all the best advice?

Arrows are for marksmen who con the masses with their commercial

Messages and air play that will never land squarely in the sanctuary.

Instead, let us write the third book no one will ever need to read,

Pages torn from spiral notebooks to float upon the sewage we call the sea.

Tides of masses restless thus scream for free domes we cannot hide beneath

And for love that you refuse to redeem into the earthly plane.

“Soar, my soul,” I scream, seeing the emptiness of such needs,

For wings are for the foolish who whisper words of wisdom lost

Among the empty worm tubes in the tide pools of your buried treasure.

There is no Dover Bitch in this sea, for her tide has come and gone,

And endless armies clash by both day and night in one final battle

For the soul of the lost world and its lost boys and girls.

We cannot come let us away,

For there is nowhere left to go in the vast plain of death

That surrounds us everywhere we turn. Nothing lives and breathes;

Metals cannot be detected in the mired, and gold can no longer generate greatness.

Anger is a woman and the scars she reveals to the silent, who whisper

Her pain to pagan stars, while angels weep unshed tears and present

A lost Sea of Faith to alien creatures who linger and await for nothingness.

By Linda Beauregard-Vasquez

© 2022. Linda Beauregard-Vasquez. All rights reserved.

Smoke, and the Mirror

Drag me not back to your Gilboa and yet another

          Disastrous defeat falling on deafened ears,

                    For my hand even now clings to the gnarled roots of

                    Too many buried bones beneath that tamarisk tree,

          The apparitions that spread readily by seed and by root

As stubborn and fierce as the stamina of a Cretin

The long lost memories of your memorable murmurings

          That rise like the mountainous tidings of Saul.

O, Gods, chop me down. Burn me in the brazier of my desire!

          But … stay Your hand a while, for new shoots will up.

                    You cannot parasite me for the source of all water

                    Is dried up in the salted entrance of my temple

          Now riddled with the arrows of boiling springs.

Meet the Hem-netjer of the gods who denies access to the

          Sanctuary where the Divine Image is kept,

          No mere handmaid’s tale to confirm the Word

                    For I have fallen upon the sport of your sword

                    Displayed on the walls of wasted centuries.

What matters pouring my soul out before the Lord when

          My womb is barren and my spirit oppressed,

          My lips moving but my voice still unheard,

The razor upon your head whether I will it so or not

You, the cloud walker, who rips open our understanding

          And the knowingness for which we are unprepared.

          Let us rejoice, us uncircumcised daughters of triumph,

For Jonathan came to me at the reddest of robins with

          Whispered strains of his song embedded in my bow.

I am She of the forgotten earthen camps

          Who does obeisance to the memory of the Word

                    Chariots and horsemen hard upon my heels

                    The strength of the lion that even now is

          Clawing at the crystal cavern of Her heart

          Scrying out the recited chant of the festive scroll.

What matters now the appeal to the gods

          Or the ancient advice of deities now dead,

          For the diagonal band is upon my chest

And the ostrich feathers upon my brow

          The Wing-Wearer who is the Mother of the God

          In a temple where there is nothing to worship

And no water to sprinkle before us.

Join me, you command, knowing I AM powerless to refuse,

          For the endless weeping of the sons of strangers

          who have fallen upon their own hands can never be

                    Enough to deter me from your golden path with its

Mortuary cults of destroyed names in our chapelle rouge

          Dressed in panther skin and the side-locks of youth.

          Though we were once stronger than lions

The scarlet remnants of my rent clothing lingers

          Soar me not on your eagle wings to thine high places

          Tis safer to hide behind the smoke and the mirror,

For the weapons of war do not cease and cannot.

          And the mighty, though fallen and slain,

          Are yet our deaths not divided.

By Linda Beauregard-Vasquez

© 2022. Linda Beauregard-Vasquez. All rights reserved.

WHEN MARY POPPINS COMES BACK

                A few years ago, I wrote these thoughts in a bedraggled journal I still carry. I spent a long time in my cave today. Yes. It is a literal cave, the place where I go to write without fear of humans bothering me.  As I sat there in the near perfect silence, I thought about the original Mary Poppins books -- not the Disney movie, but the actual book series. My mind wandered back over one of my favorite scenes in the second book, Mary Poppins Comes Back, which was written by P.L. Travers. In the scene, Annabel, the new-born Banks baby, joins Mary to visit with a starling and other animals. Of course, only infants may talk to animals, for within a few months, human children begin to forget everything, so it is essential that Mary and Annabel make this visit as soon as possible. This piece is the result of my reflections about my favorite scene.

WHEN MARY POPPINS COMES BACK

Despite all of your protestations, you will forget, Annabel, as all humans do,

               The glorious such a Dark where you and all things always have their beginning.

No amount of Mary Poppins and her rocking of your cradle as if in a dream

               Will help you to remember such stuff and nonsense, such beaks and claws....

Despite the Starling’s soft whispers, your memory of what you are will fade, too.

               You will never again hear the ancient bird sitting beside you who is

Even now murmuring its forbidden words ... that you are indeed the earth and air,

               Fire and water, the sky and its stars, the sun and its brightness,

And how you and I come from the sea and its tides and the forests of the earth.

               Mary’s steady swinging motion cannot help you to recall how you first moved ...

The slow sleeping and dreaming of all you had been and all you shall be, for

               Your deafened ears will not hear the stars singing as you first landed on this plain

And your mortal body will soon fail to feel the warm wings that were about you as

               You made your long journey though the deep waters, passing all beasts of the jungle.

The Fledgling’s stare at you with his bright inquisitive eyes will eventually stop

               Mary’s rocking of your cradle even as you kick at your petticoats to deny the truth. Why

By week’s end, Annabel, you won’t remember anything of birds or what you are

               Or where you came from, for it is the destiny of every silly human except Mary to forget

All about the fiery stars, such dreams, and the great wonder of your own divinity.

By Linda Beauregard-Vasquez

© 2022. Linda Beauregard-Vasquez. All rights reserved.

First Step

by Angelica Martinez

My heart drive to happy.

I want to dream: living

   in Canada

   in a small town

   making a living

   making me happy.

To get to happy, I go

   to school

   to a career.

To get to happy, I avoid

   Six Flags

   the beach

   camping

   bugs in my face.

When it comes to food though,

   to coconut, I say no!

   to coconut shrimp, yes.

Her Idea of Order

(with apologies to Wallace Stevens)

by Carol Dietrich

He slept in the boat rocking with the sea. The water never splashed upon his cheek. She wanted to rouse him to help her see The dolphins frolicking in perpetual bliss, A welcoming companion of the sea. That was not hers although he understood Her emotions, like his swimming in the ocean.   The sun was not distressed.  No more was she. The sound and water joined as a melody That she heard repeated when he spoke, And what he said was echoed word for word By something in her being that was stirred, The lifting lap of waves and the breeze, But it was his song and not her own she heard.   For he was the maker of the dream he dreamed. The imagined supernatural sea Was merely a place by which she longed to be. Who spirit is this? she said, because he knew It was the spirit that both sought and knew That they could pray this often for relief   It is was only a dark memory That spoke, or even shaded, by many clouds, If it was only the distant voice of the sky And gull, of the hidden depths, winds, and shoals However clear, it would have been  pure air Without the salty speech of summer's air. A cool rain, a mountain stream, a smooth stone, And joy alone.  But it was more than that, More even than his voice, and listening Among the ebb and flow of wildest wind, Psychological distances, boats sailing On far horizons, eagerly reaching shore, After a long leg.

It was his voice that made The day acutest at its vanishing. He measured every hour by his watch. He was the sole interpreter of the world Which he had made.  And when she talked, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self Of his attention, for he was the maker.  Then she, As she beheld him sleeping there alone, Knew that there were never was a world for her Except the one he called and recalling made.   Please, tell me, if you know Why, when the sailing ended and they turned Toward the sea, tell why the crowd pressed on With pleas for healing anchored at the shore, As the night descended, waiting for him there, Amid the softening flicker of lights, Once more he set aloft the sail.   Oh! Blessed hope for living, brighter far, The empathetic straining of the sea, The spirit hovering over the waters And over all creation yet to be, In celestial annotations, sacred ground.