Five Poems | Stephen Mead
POETRY
12/12/20243 min read
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.