Posts for June 10, 2016 (page 2)

And of blood fall like this…
Needles inserted,
Needles removed-
Into and out of perplexed flesh.
Verses of crimson in ration
Extracted from these tired wounds.
Reels of fatigue
Summarized in numbers.
Again and again each numeral
Regained before a panel of doctors,
Yesterday.

Finally, I see the stop sign ahead
Intense carmine and bold white letters: S-T-O-P
Value of me once lost,
Everything anew.

Year five has lost its vein
Even at the barest winter
Alone I walk this new,
Recovered life.

Poem 10, June 10  

Chester Johnson, Poem Two  

I was born down the street from where I live now
in a white house just past a flower shop.
There is no house there now.  

I lived there until I was 13—really 12 and a half,
and then I went to the CCC camp
at Stearns, Kentucky.  

I have a cap up there above my bookcase—the one
in the middle. It represents
my time at the CCC camp.  

The other two caps there
represent my service on two ships
of all the ones I sailed on.  

After my time
with the CCC camp expired,
they told us we were going to the National Guard.

I struggle                                    

not to write poems about

butterflies

but conjure them with milkweed

whisper them in sunlight

Angelfish centimeters, bolt overnight
Flight zone, and a few years before
Using credit, the door, to the beaver pond.

On this advent morning, a stranger and I waited at the light.
Both bundled in hat and mitts, we crossed together,

he, pulling his rolling suitcase, I carrying my mat
under my arm. “You didn’t sleep on that?” he asked. Speechless,

I walked past the library and arriving at my car,
looked at myself in the rear-view mirror, and–enlightened–

wondered whether teeth whitener might improve my appearance.