Poetry




No Roads


With the roads blocked
How will I work?
With knocking and searching
How will I sing?
With a house with no walls,
How can I cook
Tonight and tomorrow,
In a windowless cell ,
How will I play the violin?
And with a wall encircling
My land
Can my thoughts
Fly like birds
Over the barbed wire?
I did nothing,
How can I work?
How can I sing?
Alice E Rogoff
San Francisco CA


Alien


How did this world
get cut so far adrift
across shimmering surfaces
alive with spirit?

Lost from love
we drift into wars and isolation
as though some alien wandering in
has scribbled instructions upside-down
into our hearts.

Love could not create like this.
An alien consciousness
has enticed and bound us in flesh
with apertures of perception
that obfuscate vision.

Love creates
only what is indestructable.
In his image
as spirit only
were we made.
Indigo Hotchkiss
San Francisco CA


Spring Fling


Spring nights, sleep is hard.
Earth breathes through her mouth,
snags me from rest.
In my yard, moist coils
unfurl from tiny moons,
slurp at my dreams.
Seeds brought by wind and cats
take hold in this local
place of worship. God,
I can't sleep! I like to think
the cuttings need me, restless
in their cardboard huts.
Colorpacks of annuals, delicious
floral cupcakes: my fingers
itch to scruffle soft white roots,
adjust the fit to a sweet dirt home.

I toss and turn on percale with pansies
in my fertilizing dream.
I drag volumes of barnyard zest
across clumps of iris, lilies,
baby hydrangeas and early bloom
roses. Never enough,
I can't feed them what they need.

In the dark I think I hear
slugs, possums, bulbs
comingle in cross-species
love and death. By sunrise,
I am exhausted. The earth, however,
looks refreshed.
Lisa Krueger
Pasadena CA


The Field Behind The Tracks


The wind settles loosely in the trees
Bringing along the thick night,
Men talk low from the deep grass,
Pass the bottle around.
In sleep old loves stir,
Dance softly and sleep again
Heavy as a rock from which nothing
Could rise.
The air of their breathing unraveling
To the dust and stones.
They open their coats and out fall stars,
They live in this world but do not belong.
Superman lies helpless in the plush grass,
The smell of Kryptonite on his rumpled clothes,
With only the darkness to lean on.
David Beard
Wichita KS


For Gina Arline Berriault


In the California Gardens
evening primrose, wand flowers,
red angel trumpets and poppies
abound in an extravagance
of beauty
that leads inward
where silence itself is beauty
and in that interior altar
is the recognition
of joined minds.

A sculptor of words dwells there,
her presence is clarity,
musical and precise
with a quality of friendship
that blesses us all.

This is the privilege
of life itself
and however far we fall short
in our friendship
the lines that stretch between us
are all there is

God is what we have between
each other and is never lost

I walked up her steps,
knocked on the door
and the door would open
into her rare air

A tea table perched in space
above sailing boats,
her head tilted
or held in her hands
a salad and cheese
and the spring light of her live spirit
carried me into higher currents.

We don't know what we are
or where, or how to look upon
ourselves or the world.

But in a dark place this week,
I turned and there at eye level
was an orchid of such translucent
radiance, it's her!
I thought with a jolt of recognition
And it is.
Thats how I remember her.
Indigo Hotchkiss
San Francisco CA


These Poems are from the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal

558 Joost Ave. San Francisco CA 94127 - Tel: 415-751-9226 - Speak With Indigo Hotchkiss

E-Mail: indigo@haightashbury.zzn.com

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