Bourgeon

Arcadian Eyes


dark eyes reflect smokey flashes
 
           from deafening staccato machine guns
 
                      fixed on three-dimensional flat screens
  

fingers scurry over wireless consoles

	    like spider legs attempting to evade death

		      from hunched lumbering gamers
 
 
a binary coded world
 
                   never burning
 
                           but always on fire

                                  forcing sweat to boil from our pores

                                  to cool tranced, agitated monsters
 
 
thick layers of masked decay

          melt from our lit faces
 
                  like wax partitions between
 
                            real, fake
 
                            human 

                            artificial
 
 
in this crowded metaverse
 
         where all has been equaled
 
         and corrected
 
                                    we are lonely 
 

a world that can no longer be unplugged

          where soft hands without heartbeats join

                    then pass through 

to emptiness


Rooms without Nightlights

Sparring with moonlight

          prying through shutter gaps
 
                    menacing figures

                    cut from a cloth

                    of night’s deep sky

                    haunt the walls of our youngsters’ rooms
 
                    compelling little feet to rush through 

                    adrenaline filled corridors 
 
                              to escape 

                    cracked basement doors 
 
                    leaving lonely spaces 

                    with ruffled sheets

                    to tend to their own ghosts 


Now safe in the arms of loving guardians
 
          nestled heads

          with tousled hair
 
          gently sleep 

          beneath stuffed beasts


But imagination tempers with age

           and villainous allies

           crawling out from

           between the covers

           of twisted fairytales

           swap darkened spaces

           for inviting masks

           fooled only by our children

                    framed on forbidden trading cards 

                    in palmed devices 


At the threshold of French-vanilla taffy wallpapered hallways

          like strained umbilical cords

	  leading to once unlocked doors 
 
                     we are desperate, discarded sherpas 

                     in the thick of some impossible trek 

                     lying awake on stone-like mattresses 
 
                     grasping unread bedtime stories 

                     with stressed spines
 
                     as sunlight fills our now adolescents’ chambers
 

In rooms without nightlights

Louis Efron is a writer and poet who has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Deronda Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, The Ravens Perch, POETiCA REViEW, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Literary Yard, New Reader Magazine and over 100 other national and global publications. He is also the author of five books, including The Unempty Spaces Between, How to Find a Job, Career and Life You Love; Purpose Meets Execution; Beyond the Ink; as well as the children’s book What Kind of Bee Can I Be?

Image: Phone Screen Under Diffraction Lense by Jeffreywang23 under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

From The Adirondack Chair

When young’uns (poets mostly)
say elder

They spout it 
having concluded 

that anyone over 39
sat a couple of rows back 
from Sappho 
in grade school

In the days and weeks before 
bistros 
where they freestyle 
long past midnight 
fell to earth  

While you
erstwhile scribe emeritus 

Hair white as 
this gentrified city 

dream of days and weeks 
of flawless skies 


Kelly Donaldson Jr Reflects On The Changing Same

Dogs have always loved me.

It's genetic 
I used to tell the regulars
at Clifton's Barber Shop

The shop whose picture window
gave regulars a vivid view
of the moving vans 

ferrying soon to be
ex-white neighbors 
to less terrifying lands.

Now Clifton's 
and most of the regulars 
exist only in memory.

But the dogs 
on the other end of 
high end leashes
approach me with 
the same 
love 
I've always been blessed
to engender.

The nervous 
and or averted eyes
of their owners

are as familiar
as the ghosts 
of the city
which raised me.

Some of whom
are commemorated 

On equally lonely
historical plaques 

Reuben Jackson is the Archivist with The University of The District Of Columbia’s Felix E.  Grant Jazz Archives. He also co- hosts The Sound Of Surprise on WPFW in Washington, D.C. His poems have appeared in over 40 anthologies. His most recent book is entitled Scattered Clouds (2019, Alan Squire Publishing).

IMAGE: “Sunglow Ranch. Cochise County, Arizona. Chiricahua Mountains” by kretyen under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.