Three Poems
By Timothy Resau
Rendezvous at St. Paul’s
Rendezvous outside St Paul's stained-glass windows—
lips locked—
breathing crowded
with floating radiation—
Why say more when
Jesus is behind the wall,
selling knives to Lord Byron,
as Ms. Lamb squints
blue eyes at a rag-muffin hillbilly
riding a pony down the asphalt hill?
A real woman in these lost-n-found arms.
And in the backyard
America's cooking its dreams:
plastic poets dreaming
in bowling alleys—
neighbors selling
lies painted Catholic.
The radio plays broken Mozart,
& babies are found in junkyards—
An aroma of gasoline drifts
thru the air—
& acne is real!
A tattoo of love
is on her face forever—
The kiss of life from
the high poet, selling paperback
books for a fin—
Glitter & gold
summer & cold—
yes, I'll be old!
Acid Love
Broken love ride—
love wreck-wired—
the outcomes always the same—
unreality-a cold chill - iced!
The anguished heart
throbbing, throbbing,
pumping, purple
cold fear — alone.
The design itself — wrecked.
A high of love — lost.
Love constellation—
stellar vibrations—
a child's pleading eyes—
A young black man on corner,
waxing mustache, saying:
I'll never come down from this—
like a bird frozen in eternal flight.
Everyone's a delusion,
trying to be real—
The experience is all....
Nobody Thinks I'm Human
The full moon hid across my face—
my shadow missing in the pale light,
& they kept saying that they wouldn't
have missed it for the world.
Things you never forget—
like the murder of love.
The pain of each death--
the fear
the hate
the waiting.
Two Poems
By Scott Renzoni
Red Hair, Blue Jacket
The blue of her jacket was primary.
You wouldn’t’ve called it
anything other than blue.
Not cerulean or indigo or delft,
and with no modifiers
like baby or powder, sky or navy.
That hair, though!
Cascading over the collar…
An autumn sunset over Walden Pond.
The embers of humanity’s first fire.
The way the sky sometimes looks
at dawn when you wake up
next to a new lover.
I’m sure she doesn’t think of it that way
in the mornings, before coffee,
as she drags her comb
through fire
and runs her fingers
through flame.
A Refrigerator in Paterson
His wife must have been beside herself.
Not one plum left for breakfast,
and that maddeningly casual note:
“this is just to say”,
despite having been told, probably repeatedly,
they were intended for the morning table.
And that report about how sweet
and how cold they were—
insult to injury, making the
“forgive me”
as hollow as the bowl with its gnawed pits.
Perhaps there had been other notes,
making excuses for why
the dog wasn’t walked,
the garbage not removed,
the car not washed,
or the Sunday paper left on the step
to soak through in an afternoon rain.
Or perhaps it was the only one,
scratched on a scrap
in the middle of the night,
knowing that no note
and no apology could ever fully explain
how sometimes even plums
are too beautiful to be left alone.
