Acrobats in Ash
by Janet I. Buck
In light lace snow carolers roam.
A moment is music in time.
Children seem like soft
equations of a wish --
a lute to strum because
the strings we trusted fell.
Trauma zones of galaxies
have thrown us tanks
and waterfalls of shedding blood.
Perhaps we're acrobats in ash
that rub against the icy urn.
Wobbling staffs of politics
reveal the long white cane
tapping at stick and stone.
Who's to say who is blind,
who has eyes arched wholesomely
at luminations waiting there.
Corpses litter months of war,
play metaphors for wasted dreams.
A school bus, a plain café
serve pints of organs to a grave.
My sister signs for altar guild,
decorates a chilly chapel hopefully --
picks brown leaves from red poinsettias
as they crumble in her hands.
Party crowds will gather in the ethered fog,
grasp at the flattening straw.
In Bethlehem, the manger
and its hay have burned.
Hunger owns the winding street.
Any verse and any word
should bicker with the cracking vase,
with trumpets of the yolki flower
consigned to uninvited frost.
Janet Buck is a five-time Pushcart Nominee and the author of four
collections of poetry. In 2003, her work is scheduled to appear in Zuzu's
Petals Quarterly, Recursive Angel, Moondance, The Montserrat Review,
and dozens of journals world-wide.
Note: Featured
author in January 2001
E-mail: JBuck22874@aol.com
Writing interests: Poetry
Poems: "The
Orphan", "Caught
in Lesser Tragedies", "The
Broken Promise", "The
Gargoyle", "The
Going", "The
Bag Lady", "Rushing
Toward Entelechy", "The
Paralyzed Apocalypse", "Frozen
Sonnets", "New
York, New York", "Live
on CNN", "America
Under Siege", "Gutter
Balls"
Links: Hot Links:
Janet I. Buck, Janet's
Latest Interview, Desideratum's
Doggie Dish, Author's Den,
Active Amp.org—Features
Janet I. Buck, Poetry
Magazine.Com-October-Janet Buck, The
Part-time Postmodernist (August 2000), San
Francisco Salvo, Moongate:
Janet I. Buck, Offcourse,
The October
Country , Cafe
Society: Poetry Life & Times, Kookamonga
Square, The
Adirondack Review , janetbuck.com,
Funky Dog Publishing—Janet
Buck's Strawberry Nipples, Athens
Avenue—Janet I. Buck, One
World-One Heart Exhibit , Ygdrasil:
Issue 9 September 2000