poems

Vanished

i hurt every day remembering
that i wasn’t there for you
the hardest day of suffering
— i left you painfully alone
when you needed me most
so damn close, but not there
which is the farthest away —
i was a fool, oblivious numbskull
a frozen hearted ragdoll zombie

            i am sorry.


The Wharf of Dreams

Strange wares are handled on the wharves of sleep:
Shadows of shadows pass, and many a light
     Flashes a signal fire across the night;
Barges depart whose voiceless steersmen keep
     Their way without a star upon the deep;
And from lost ships, homing with ghostly crews,
     Come cries of incommunicable news,
While cargoes pile the piers, a moon-white heap—

Budgets of dream-dust, merchandise of song,
Wreckage of hope and packs of ancient wrong,
Nepenthes gathered from a secret strand,
     Fardels of heartache, burdens of old sins,
     Luggage sent down from dim ancestral inns,
And bales of fantasy from No-Man’s Land.

—Edwin Markham, “The Wharf of Dreams,” The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, 1899

My World

If I had a big balloon
Round as any Harvest Moon
And a bully kicked it, say,
With his foot, and ran away.
All the world would comfort me,
Saying softly, “What a shame!”

Well, it wasn’t stamped or kicked,
My balloon was only pricked
With a very little pin
Touched to it, not driven in.
No one came to comfort me
Though ’twas broken, just the same.

—Janet Barton, age 17, St. Timothy’s School, Catonsville, Maryland, “My World,” 1920s

Bottled

trapped in a bottle
thrown out to sea

trapped in a bottle
my wishes are three

trapped in a bottle
that’s drunken me

trapped in a bottle
emotions stormy

trapped in a bottle
flashing brightly

trapped in a bottle
this vessel empty

Terri Guillemets

Strive & struggle

I am a poet, — though
I’ve yet to write a poem —

when my soul blossoms
and my mind goes free
when I finally let go of
the suffocating shroud
o’er the wildness of me

my beauty will spill out
the ink will overflow and

finally I’ll be able to see
through a sapphire lens
into the heart of infinity

         ✻    ✻    ✻

I know I am a poet —
someday — I will be

but the earth hasn’t yet
shattered inside me

         ✻    ✻    ✻

I have still only yet got
the seeds of the words
within me; I am learning
and yearning and earning
and living my way toward
being born into harvest

         ✻    ✻    ✻

There’s a meteor shower
inside my brain —

stars shooting down
every bright idea
words burning out
before inking the page —

broken-hearted dementia
sleepless engulfing fog —
search and rescue crews
report every line gone

Terri Guillemets