Wordwright II

Sitting, slouching, at the keyboard,
Dusty as day's first thought,
The light spitting in my eyes,
I consider what to write.
Holes in the heart,
The majesty of nature,
The shortcomings of men,
The screaming of the beaten,
The smoldering greed of all in charge,
The rampant nitwits at FOX news?
Why can't there be miracles?

poem by Stan Petrovich
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My Last Day

It was a day like any other:
I shaved, I ran the shower.
The bus was right on time.
My necktie was green, like lime.
I stepped lively off my stop;
On the regular corner the regular cop.
My office bristled with business;
I felt a little dizziness.
The only difference from that day-
All the best, all the rest-
Was that it turned out to be my last.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Statue of Zeus

My Lord High-Thunderer,
You are in a deep well now,
Are you not?
The mad Caligula, a man of shallow waters,
Nevertheless had your head removed,
Not replaced.
You are the same as the whole messy string of gods there have reined
In the minds of madmen and greedmongers:
For the lot of You, I do not feel;
For the respect of You,
I will not kneel.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Wish You Wait

I glare across the causeway
But cannot see
Beyond the lumbering beachcombers
And their city of twisted gray shacks
Any sign of life

Then again no man may see into
His future
Or past
The marine landing
Mirrored in a pane of glass

Will I see you again soon?
Will you fall into my reach?
Will you wait for me until then
On that rockstrewn brazen beach?

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Another Dusty Trail

He had walked the desert
For a lifetime; he had pursued trails
Leading nowhere but to buried dreams.
He was at last on the trail of the dead.
The winding last trail he could take.
Every other way was misleading, confusing.
He accepted that he had to suffer,
And suffer greatly,
Because he had worn-out feet.
Without feet he had no trails left.
Except one.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Ah, Trivial Compensation

Sit in the summer's rare breeze-
Should be a pleasure for a suffering man,
But spies alight from every corner,
From electronic device,
To make an innocent reprise
Into a naughty behavior:
My pants remain,
I do not engage in smalltalk with beatiful strangers:
I fashion lines like these,
To force back the gloomy insolence that lurks
And festers within.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Roads

Roads are vessels rot buoyant tires
that churn us along paths
where we have always been
all the while;
Veins are vessels that direct
platelets to where they need belong;

See out there in the sunset bush
afire with the dying sun's light,
and you can be free of the longing,
the longing for place
you can never be.
Even if you get there freely
and stay forever.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Shoals

On shore I like to sit
Entranced by the evergreen algae
That someday became erect
And gained self-awareness;
The time it took stretched to the bottom of the sea.
The time on the order of billions,
When even the sun will give out.
Alas.
But I must,
Because of the hour today,
Hurry within,
For I hunger for shrimp,
Smelling it's nearly done,
Smelling it's my turn.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Not Johnny Reb

I am not decadent;
And I am not your servant
-Cofederate traitor-
Or savant to use
Like a cutlery set,
Unleashing the taste
Of love by wiles.

I am not wanton,
And leave evryone I can alone,
If that's what they want,
Because it is a built-in right,
Not an invitation forever
For an excuse to fight
And become so flightly
By nuture or nature:

Get thee to a nursery.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Hurricane heart

My heart is the eye
Of the hurricane:
A calm central wall
Divided from the stroms
Of my body.
The suspriration of violent
Heaving, passion.
Flows out in funnels,
Breaking what it meets,
Good or bad,
Sandy beach or saddened brows,
Undeclared lovers of the sudden
Sun, under which I hide,
And the unleashed currents
Beckoned by the tide
And the continuity of time itself.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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