Eastern Heart

The Valley of My Eastern Heart

Selected Poems BARISTA There is a certain way the light hits a brown haired woman pulling coffee from a metallic cow The hissing moo rises like steam off the morning vgrass in late December Her eyes down-turned and concentrating a hint of colored moss sketched across her brow When she smiles an orderly row of stacked white granite boulders find the sun Her hair slips to either side vof her face fog splitting around a peak And yet it is more than these things of light that pull my eyes to her It is the shadows not dancing or becoming something else Just shadows darken her cheeks bringing her real light to the surface She is her own sun CARPET Here, as the dream begins to unroll a carpet of such intricate design that a thousand ancient weavers gave their eyesight to the task now gone we tread carefully across their handiwork blessing their blindness with soft footsteps our eyes caressing the golden pattern and human weave I would walk with you here in this neighborhood of a hundred Taj Mahals and sultry shacks of being understanding that wherever we step this is home wherever we touch another street lamp grows to illuminate our next tomorrow woven bright and golden within our own blue and white carpet the sky above our heads RED She reads harshly her sailor's sunset hair brambled, escaping ties any attempt at fashionable bondage Her long blue jeans are spiked by cowboy boots sharp toes She has to be smart Her eyes chew across the pages sucking the words from sentences fileting paragraphs Garlic fills the short patch of sky between her green eyes and the blue book A curl of spiritual smoke rises up from the red-haired barbecue She folds herself into the seat The window fans a countryside below her but she reads across the hurtling Her neck braced by a foam horse shoe She yawns but will not sleep framed by the darkening window I can only imagine her dreams how she must fight to own them then awake each morning her eyes red TAMARA'S OPENING She stands alone in the gallery eyes painting with hate the large black and white photos of those men who called themselves lover Each opened her legs with a secret word pried her knees apart with fulcrum glance pushed himself within her repeatedly until she saw white Then left in the mist of a dark cloud quick as a startled breeze They bought her with dinners in international cafes Sold her to their mothers fathers, brothers, sisters One kissed her on the cheek with Mafia lips a faint idyll of gunpowder remains from his greasy finger in her ear which he made her clean of wax with her red mouth The gun in her hand slowly lifts a crowd has assembled behind her they have brought money and cotton balls She turns to face them not sure who to shoot They pull back a school of fish facing a hungering walrus She shows them her tusks points the gun behind her a blind sharpshooter toward her past The first crack shatters plaster the gallery owner winces a lady in fur begins writing out a check her banker husband rolls cotton into his ears The next shot shatters a Kodak chin and a long-haired blonde in leotards puts her left hand between her legs A booming puff of smoke gives the frozen Sicilian a black eye that will never heal (unlike her own, which did) She turns away from the crowd smiles at her tormentors Six bullets perform heart surgery Six more, vasectomies The last six obliterate a hand a shoulder an ear a knee, hip Adam's apple Now hot, she blows blue wind from the aperture camera, gun weapon, tool She bows as the crowd applauds The owner wipes dew from his forehead with white silk The dowager tears her check from the book of money The blonde sucks her own moisture from a happy finger The artist smiles knows how she will spend her percentage THE SOUL STARTS AS AN IDEA OF LIGHT The soul starts as an idea of light The earth, in its revolving ardor acts as a kaleidoscope bending, refracting, redirecting these beams of existence This time a mother, next time a saint This time a sister, the time after a priest who refuses to recant Shot life-after-life through this filter of water and dirt and never any growth unless it really hurts Pain is the treasure map of existence and while joy is the goal pleasure must be resisted We are light in various colors until finally no sisters or fathers or brothers alone at the start we all end together as one universe in a single heart SWEET FLIGHT She is this long butterfly with four winds feathery tendrils others mistake for arms and legs No one she knows understands that she is capable of this sweet flight a rising up into the night pulling the white sheet and cottony blanket up up with her fashioning them into pretend clouds Where she hides and keeps them safe her finest wind-borne sighs More Poetry: Altar Catherine Clare Dark Eight Cross Country The Dew Down Under: All Over America Eating Rainbows Evolution Existential Café Feral Finally You Grateful Bread Halls of Heaven In The Sea Breeze Meeting the Dragon More Natural Oksana On Becoming Stars Patty She Follows the Dead Seahorse Nightmare Catcher Sanctuary Lake Thorns Poems from The Valley of My Western Heart Rilke, The Language of Trees, Blue Child, Their Portion of Sunlight, The Old Dancer, Regina, Tightrope, Meadow Viking, Buzzards, Heart Attack, Quiet Café, Kudzu Lizard, At the Pole, Tiger Woman, Last Supper Vero Beach Wednesday’s House also: Hands Up, Amnesia, Eureka Joe’s, Still Life Support the Artists Where authors and readers come together! 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