Kooser's Unexpected Tulips ©2005

Plane filled with passengers
Air conditioned vents dulled the engine's roar
Seat buckles clicked like cocking guns
and ear phones shackled minds to LDMonitors embedded behind
          someone else's skull

Mother sits at home on a moth-eaten sofa
chomping on stale apple pie and CNN reruns
expecting the latest on her son's soon departure and
          early arrival

While brother raises acoustics on the better mousetrap
mouse scampers, ears plunging, toward her children,
skurry nest
          no droppings tonight

Baptist missionary blondes the earth with gold preachings
fingers pointing to trees' designs and crystalline rays
North Dakota ranch houses and Nebraska plains
          leveled blue skies

Up in the frozen tundra of Northwestern Iowa
an old man lying dystrophied in bed
meets the eyes of his son-in-law and says I don't care
          about the rest

Take care of my daughter

Hollywood Cemetery on A June Afternoon

Hollywood Cemetery on A June Afternoon (after Sara Teasdale’s “A November Night”)

Peter Manda ©2013

Let us go down to where people die

Across the highway and, There! Up by,

Where the streetlights shine; and lie

preaching sobriety on Fridays; the White Men give

To you and I a token. Thinking surreal is

A necklace hugged around your shoulders.

The coffee fresh still to play with

Styrofoam, folded along the edges open.

Down the street where once we

pried the second story windows and sat

On the warm tar roof; smoking cigarettes and drinking beer

The cicada not yet ruffling in the trees, the

Damp heat not yet settled on the hill;

Our royal carriage, your bed, where in many long

Afternoons we enjoyed our youth; you on me

And I … hard at work for several whole days.

Across the street and around the corner;

A gate.

Some will hurry out from and others wade in

Down the curved hill; a chain and bars and velvet

Grass, carefully shorn; some dimples and divots in the ground.

Children could have played with haughty joy

Were silence not so golden.

Out in the corners past the thousands buried for bars

And stripes; memories fade of blue eyes, a smile, and

Hatred for Nixon! The shadows of chestnuts and magnolia

Cover those traces of scattered skulls under

Angel wings. Some hope here that love will find

Them; among those empty fields of hearts remaining

On benches, one last time. Wedding

Rings no more. Over the crest of the hill

And on the river. Flowing past in daytime

You can imagine the moon.

A man standing beckoning East –

In hope for cotton trade; as others, wrought under steel

bars and gates Sought union; still in delusion that their commerce

Could continue, intertwined in the withering

Decomposition; of dust

As footprints in the grass, barefoot and all

Carried the frail dew with them

Like firefly nova; bursting, then flickering.

One last time.

An "Our Father" for our Times ©2013

Dear God,

 you who do not exist but in the conscience of Man
and whose voice I only hear in the space between my ears, 
shallower be your name, 
thy Kingdom done, 
thy will be undone, 
at least as imagined here on Earth. 
I hope I can forage my daily bread 
and that the luck of the hunt is mine, 
that In hunting I'm not so foolish as to rely on you, 
the figment of my imagination, 
to replace the abundance of resources I selfishly deplete; 
and I hope no one notices how selfish I am 
so that maybe this time I can get away with it 
without anyone noticing 
so I can continue to claim 
that I am better than anyone else 
and can get people to follow my self-righteousness. 

Amen.

Captain - (after Sara Teasdale - "Pierrot") (c) 2013

Captain - (after Sara Teasdale - "Pierrot")

Captain plays in the garden,

The one we never had -

He digs a hole to find a bone;

The one that makes me sad.

Captain plays in the garden,

He thinks I'll come for him -

But he is long forgotten,

His memory would make me glim.

Captain plays in the garden,

And all the field hands know,

That Captain loves his ball -

Do I still love him so?