Five Poems | Stephen Mead

Yard

No doorway, only window space,

open enough, sanctified.

Here's privacy pristine

as a woman's voice at her piano.

Here snow is the key between the wrought

black fencing & the whispering specialty

of trees in shade.

Now leaving is entering

blue glorious twilight & sunrise skies

of enchanted marmalade, the perfection

of minutes all to be took as the flesh of

the round & hollowed spheres carved full.

Come, know this as love.

Trust, receive when barren but for need.

Inside

Most intimate, this of the one rhythm merged as a match

for one pair of hearts. Most intimate, this is of that flesh

beyond nearness where connection is all the single clutch,

chest to back, & thighs firm with life pumping symmetry throughout.

Some reject, censor.

But some, in communion, likewise lie down,

likewise find a smile rushing to the warmth of eyes,

the blush of lips.

Inside, it is all within as skin of sweet tongues

becoming every breathing pore, each synapse & neuron.

Inside, it is all cell within cell though we shall separate

as magnets calling to the other's poles as if flesh alone

beats beyond division, death itself, when another is left alive.

In Sanctuary

Between rain & steam is twenty-twenty hindsight

for the time we were young, screwed up, but good of heart still

under some bushel or other for hiding the goldenness

whose light we could not believe came from us ever

when so wild, shy & afraid.

Later, warming hands over a bowl of rice seemed an absolution

& from eyes streamed gratitude amid the lace of blossom shadows

creating fans across each feature.

Camouflage, war paint: what a geisha-watch then

of silence & rare serenity without shame sitting judgment

on embarrassed innocence for what purity made us lame Achilles

in reality's teeth eating sensitivities alive.

Fix your sandal strap now, veteran gladiator,

easily breathing at last beyond Pele's ash

& the skin of sheep smoldering boy, girl, boy...

What sacrifices, they, in the daily news reels deadly brutalization

for a glorified nothing. Nothing - you call that,

when it is a weather map for time's great edifice

fog-carved from the blood of rights abused

amid climbing & descent, those conflicts of flags...

Statues line the cloisters. Pigeons coo in the nave.

Soldier sit a minute with the balm of what mist is lifting.

Is it your spirit after flesh, wondrous with the thought

that reincarnation's another chance for every life of dashed dreams

& every slave made from hope?

I do not know, dare not claim, here inside what moments are temples

for refugees asylum seeks the way an atheist may pray

because it is just something to do in this thin sphere of light

between darkness & darkness-----

the precipitation, the reports, the steam coming in

over the late breaking rain.

Voice

Sensuality suffused despite stroke,

mastectomy, tracheotomy tube --

Sensuality still the wheelchair's waltz,

the I.V. pole's wheelies & pogo-stick

go-cart canes, the braces, the orthopedic shoes...

Move, there' a moving choir yet all about you,

you, once strawberry-tongued, once, golden clapper,

gong of the loins & the umbrella-as-lamp

balanced on roads as tightropes while a circus

storm swirled emotions as soundtrack

for the movie alone in your song.

To the ankles & the feet I now fit the metal,

the laces, the straps, & tap yet on that music

true as my lover's skin.

Yes, he is a grouch aging with punch line-timing

& though small, compared to some, he is salt-tall

as the earth & down-to, all rooted rock with welling

rhythms, with beauty as false teeth piano-clamped.

From this come his pop: Youth before the mirror

doing Miss Ross in the name of. Stop.

Through dreams I find my voice flying to greet

this Supreme duet, & growing old is there,

crafting us into threesome.

Listen in, you who are bed-bound,

I can hear your breath singing, can see you making love,

your old bones field-seas in yesterday's deep south.

Living

This hem of

silence keeps in

hymns, doggerel, the rustling

of a world: that self-contained vase.

Up against it, seconds conspire,

resurrect, our time

an interpolation, that

racket of white sound.

Conversion is work, these attempts to grasp views,

voices caught in a beehive sea Gulliver shakes

like a radio gone awry.

Next he tries putting an eye

to the scope curving fingers form.

Darkness, then light squeaking,

the panorama of cracks with, occasionally,

some crystallization as if of a dream which

in a moment

becomes

Stephen Mead is a retired Civil Servant, having worked two decades for three state agencies. Before that his more personally fulfilling career was fifteen years in healthcare. Throughout all these day jobs he was able to find time for writing poetry/essays and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this work. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum.