Poetry

by Carmen Mason

I remember Search
for Tomorrow, Ernie Kovacs
Pinhead and Foodini
benevolent, laughing times

years later with my first child
still resting inside me
I watched the President and his
pink pill-boxed lady
spilling and scrambling
through blood, then
Ruby getting Lee Harvey
in the gut, again and
again, a flip book
repeated on every
channel through the
day and night

fifteen years later the
Amazing Wallenda weaving, then
plummeting again and
again onto a San Juan taxi cab
his granddaughter, the crowds
and the city buildings staring
all day long, all night

So I could only
sit still and give him
my unimportant tears:
Robert Kennedy? son
who sat alone
forgotten in his motel room
switching from daddy
to daddy to daddy waving
triumphantly
waving and waving

then shaking some hands
then falling and falling
again and again
and again, the boy
watching him fall
through the day
through the night

I have been writing poems all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love and loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

by Carmen Mason

Every thing was tongues
the lapping candle flames
cloud tails above  then
paper-thin eggplant singed

and curled at the
edge near the endive
portobellos fat and lush
he licked the cigar

its end coming unraveled
smoke lapping the window
of the car; later
pink-tongued rose petals

his tongue around hers
and after deepandmany kisses
he’d sucked her tongue
so hard it felt

ripped from the center
torn from the red
wet tunnel that lived
without shame, without censure

for food and words
and flesh and wine
and so much more.
In the morning she

was worried she could
not speak…..she sucked
on ice…..she said
ahh…she said  yes.

*Allen Ginsberg once said to choose any four words and then write groups of four lines or something like that.

I have been writing poems all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love and loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

by Carmen Mason

I’m the burnt crust of the
canned fruit pie

I’m the contact lens in a
stone blind eye

I’m the locked tight fence that
allows all entries

I’m the dagger straight rain
in a forest of bent trees

I’m the crooked front tooth
in the shy girl’s smile

I’m Martha Stewart without
any style

I’m the Tower of Pisa
leaning way into France

I’m Fred and Ginger without
any dance

I’m the last strong door
sans lock or latch

I’m mismatched,
shoddy, uber- smashed

But still, bet on me
you won’t waste your time

A peakless mountain is
still worth the climb

I have been writing poems all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love and loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

by Carmen Mason

” Man at his best, like water, serves as he goes along.”
Lao Tzu

Acting, poorly from above
I might not have looked down ~
Louima, Trayvon,
Malcolm, Thorpe
Nelson, Niwot, Biko,
Zora, Anne,Virginia, Joan
so many more
far from my life
of hap and good-intentions

I gurgle   bubble over them
covered by shadowy gray islands
shallow meandering
flowing willy nilly :
clotted leaves  seeds
pods   husks   twiggy branches
like ancient alphabets
moving on  down
washing, rushing over  ~

I might have ignored
their essentialness
they  patient or embroiled
beneficent or haranguing
standing or falling
there in the water
waving or drowning ~

I might not have known
the difference or
ever cared enough to know
and then I dove

I have been writing poems all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love and loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.