The value of jewelry
is in its beauty,
the power it has
to create contemplation,
to almost stop one moment
from going into the next,
to say, “Here I am or lose
me forever.” Always precious
stones, precious metals
against flesh as if that’s
where it shows the best.
-Byron Hoot
Fresh red roses gifted crisp in a shiny crystal vase,
Deflated balloon danced gaily on its bobbing string,
Yet, spent no time or change for late night dates
Or other stale, male-female things.
Dry- bent stems flatter-chattered their small talk cheap.
Eyes saddened dull cried their cruel half-truth lies.
Stare-glare glances pierced hearts drowned in trance-deep sleep
As tender petals withered brittle, tumbled pity-parched to dry .
Gripping death shriveled crippled, dripping its unfelt cold,
Against a strain-wrinkled, pain-crinkled face,
As pink waned to brown, bitter romance waxed old,
Mere dead rose tokens in a broken, ring stained vase.
~P.S. Colley
April 1989
Rev. Dec. 2024
Love
isn't
energy
spent carelessly
Living
ignorant
effortless
shallow fantasies.
Love
is
encouragement and
security.
Isn't it ?
~P.S. Colley
April 1989
Revised: Nov. 2024
Cries of the Unheard
Pity the Antichrist's duped followers as they lift the Antichrist to power once again, pulled by lies that hook their hate-disposed hearts, their reason put to sleep, the harm to the world inflicted by their folly invisible to them through the waving of their desecrated flags and empty crosses as they elect their deceivers' ill conceived chaos in service of the greed of billionaires, as they share images of the Prince of Peace sportin' an AK with zero reflection of God off its dull black finish, as they defecate on the American dream of the Founding Fathers, blind to proven crimes done before their eyes, swearing to accelerate the destruction wrought by greed's foul reign, oblivious to the nature of evil, as they supplant any connection to God they might have had with adulation of their deceiver, never feeling the shame in their incomprehensible self-betrayal, as they ignore all reports of their exploitation, ignore the suffering of human beings, ignore the destruction of their very air, ignore the cries of warning in their public squares drowned by the high tide of blind hatred in their misappropriated hearts stoked by their deceivers' lies. Now this legion of duped minions is poised to bury truth and attack the truthful at the bidding of their deceiver, poised to end history with lies, poised to extinguish anything and anyone resembling the Messiah, as their deceiver leads them toward suffering. Pity them. Pity us all for the hell they blindly bring.
-Will Found
The white pickup goes by at 7:10
each weekday morning.
There’s nothing up the road
but where the blacktop turns to dirt,
scattered houses on the mountain,
deer and chained dogs and feral cats
and posted and no trespassing signs.
I like to imagine a lover’s tryst,
the road going no-where leading
to a waiting heart, eyes looking
out a window, hoping who has left
will not return having forgotten
something – discarded love
a long time ago. . . no memory to draw
him back. The woman hums Love Lifted Me
as the white pickup pulls around back.
-Byron Hoot
I am trying to understand my parents’
life from their point of view
and keep overlaying it with my experience.
I am haunted by what they had,
by what I’ve lost and what I’ve found
so similar but for the language I cannot
speak. Their causal-serious acceptance
of mystery in all things great and small
and what they grasped from those moments
that could not be held for long never
weakening their grip. I think of whatever
strength I may have as a gift. The way
they thought of life. The way the red sky
on the horizon is this morning –
being awake at the right time and place
to see such beauty and natural order.
They lived awake in the dream
of grace and salvation. I admit to resurrections
in my life; another mystery
they embraced as if breathing.
They are three decades dead.
The hymn, Love Lifted Me, haunts.
The red sky of morning warning is now blue.
It is Sunday morning.
-Byron Hoot
From Tudor’s blood,
the son of God appeared
when the crown was torn to pieces,
a regent limped in the rear.
Under the crown with Jacob
went Frederica’s daughter,
and Jacob created the church,
forty – year peace finally reigned in the state.
The duels quickly stopped,
the plebs reconciled with the baron,
justices of the peace appeared,
the stronghold of small landowners prevailed.
From lethargic sleep
The Royal Customs Service came to life,
The Hebrides islands first saw people
in time when white smoke was coming from the factory.
Canadian land will know «Nova Scotia»
the colonists swear for Irish fields,
Macdonald’s mutiny sank sudden
-Vyacheslav (Slava) Konoval
Black mouth prophet growls vaguely
in the languishing silence,
destroying the peace
of a sleeping homeless person.
He conceiving a grudge against sparrows,
an old assessor of a million city,
shoots a passer – by’s dog by eye.
***
A prickly scout
in search of forest truth
glistened with little eyes,
He raises a sharp nose.
Having limped on the dorsal spears
of red – cheeked apple prey,
the prickly animal disappeared from the horizon.
-Vyacheslav (Slava) Konoval
The wind moves the leaves.
The sun rises.
A scout crow caws.
A bluejay squawks.
I am trying to conjure
up a deer in my heart
to put before my eyes
so I can take a shot
but I think the pauses
between the words
of the incantation
are too short, do not
allow for the elongation
of meaning to seduce
the moment in its fullness.
My shaman says, “One
incantation a day. Tomorrow’s
another day.” Grins.
And I sit in a natural
blind starlings overhead
in the branches, know
sometimes the magic
works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Think I may be caught
in some other incantation
the way I’m so hesitant
to leave the spot I’m in.
-Byron Hoot
The first felt air on the body
is a baptism, the way the sky,
foregrounded by horizons –
north, east, south, and west –
is holy communion, the whispered
urgency – “Take me as I am or lose
me forever!” the holiest of holy language.
The world and time are sacred
and we are in both offered
the only salvation that makes
any sense -- Nature never saying, “Guilty”
but only, “Come unto me.”
-Byron Hoot
