CHAINED

By Jean Bush

A city lies smoking and ruined

As far as the eye can see.

The people are saddened and shaken

As they walk  through the newest debris.

A wretched cry goes out for justice,

The Masters respond with glee.

Your soft chains will always be bloodless

And reach farther across the sea.

The people grasp quickly their shackles

In fond hopes of staying safe.

And ignore their last gasping freedom

As brave history is erased.

The Phoenix is stricken and fallen

As the world looks forward in dread,

I hear no hope that's a callin',

Is Europe most truly now dead?

READER

 

By Jean Bush

 

 

I feel your words upon me

As they race across the page,

A running sense of wonder

Even late upon this age.

 

The whispered flips of paper

As the pages turn and burn

 

 

Setting me afire,

It seems I never learn.

 

The secrets whispered to me

As I pause and try to hear,

 

Are echo cries of memory

That are laden wet with tears.

 

 

The hardened cover closes

Shutting down the riot sight.

I nod and ponder deeply

Slipping off into the night.

 



 



 





The Fall of Icarus

"Fall of Icarus" by Pieter Bruegel

W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how it takes place

while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

for the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who especially did not want it to happen, 

skating on a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course.

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Bruegel's Icarus, for instance:

how everything turns away

quite leisurely from the disaster;

the ploughman may have heard the splash,

the forsaken cry;

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun

shown as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

London Tom-Cat

By Michael Hamburger

Look at the gentle savage, monstrous gentleman

With jungles in his heart, yet metropolitan

As we shall never be; who- while his human hosts,

Afraid of their own past and it's primaeval ghosts,

Pile up great walls for comfort - walks coquettishly

Through their elaborate cares, sure of himself and free

To be like them, domesticated, or aloof!

A dandy in the room, a demon on the roof,
He's delicately tough, endearingly reserved,
Adaptable, fastidious, rope-and-fibre-nerved.

Now an accomplished Yogi good at sitting still
He ponders ancient mysteries on the window-sill,
Now stretches, bares his claws and saunters off to find
the thrills of love and hunting, cunningly combined.
Acrobat, diplomat, and simple tabby cat,
He conjures tangled forests in a furnished flat.

The Call

By Jean Bush

Oh, who do you call,

My beautiful one?

Rising in iridescent splendor

In the dark side of light against the creeping dawn.

A mourning cry to follow ere the heat of day,

Dries up the velvet feathered throats of longing.

A reddened eye of patience waits and watches;

Awash in tall grass, brown eyes blink

Then more as fear leaps to flight in graceful bounds.

But a muscular coat of dusty fur and the ruby spray of death

Insures another day of life and an all too ready hunger.

SEASCAPE

By Jean Bush

Oh, how you loved it, puppy,

When first you saw the beach.

“Sit, stay, don’t dig the sand.”

I had so much to teach.

You barked and jumped and chased the crabs

And snapped at flying foam.

And fell asleep within my arms

As I gently walked you home.

We took long walks together,

As you splashed and jumped on me.

And the years and tides rolled into one

At our place beside the sea.

The dimming years would clutch my fears

As you unwound from life.

And I put you away and there you stay,

So far away from me.

The tide pulls back so slowly

As I weep on bended knee;

But I can feel you run forever

At our place beside the sea.

A Very Dark Night

By Libby Stott

When ever the wood and sea are dark,
Whenever the stars are high,
All night long in the deep, dark park
A bat goes swooping by.

Late at night when the lights are out
Why does he sweep about?
Whenever the sky is black and sad
And people are no longer awake,

By on the shadows, dark and bad,
By on the swoop goes it;
By at the swoop it goes.

And then by it comes back at the swoop again.

In Time

By Jean Bush

If you see me in a circle

You will find me everywhere.

As you pull me ever closer

And you gently touch my hair.

As your burning kiss engulfs me

And the flames reach high above.

I know now you truly mean it

And we really are in love.

As the pain of separation

Keeps us altogether near

And the thought of losing you again

For the next 600 years……..

As the endless span of time

Tells me always that you’re mine.

John Sokoloff

I would like to introduce the amazing and talented John Sokoloff, whose magic and music ignites the mind, stirs the heart and soothes the soul.  Enjoy and fall forever in love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhwwPWQGLMM&index=10&list=RDFr8Bf6QeRMI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yznu1javGA&list=RDFr8Bf6QeRMI&index=3

For Love Of Juakina

By Bruce Wolf

Passing along the way, flowers blossoming with a sweet smell of melancholy joy.

I stop and smell a tender, white rose

And I know that I am wondering about you.

There is a pause in the wind and God blesses the silver sunrise.

Will you kiss me and hug me and bring tears of joy to my secret heart?

I wonder if you will keep me in the moonlight.

I venture to laugh and cry with Autumn wonder and I feel you there with me.

Juakina, I am your best friend

and I want to reach out to understand

how you are worm to me, sweet sunshine.

Tell me an eternal gum drop, my little daisy,

and I will always love you.

God brings my face to tears of wonder and a little kiss on your little form

and I know that I have some understanding, a Valentine for you.

Raulito laughs as a gentle and a quiet breeze caresses his little frame now

and he is in love with you the way that I have found.

There is a quiet word of wisdom, tender lady Madonna.

Juakina, hold my hand.  I need you and you are there for me.

Let me hug you and your laughter will bring me to a state of joy again.

There is a morning star in the heaven that guides me in a fight for your peace;

Peace for me, peace for us.

Juakina I will always love you.  And I am with you outside of the clubhouse as we speak gently near

gentle love the other day.

Never say goodbye.

Rice and confetti someday 

and a veil lifted up gently under a canopy 

tomorrow becomes yesterday and I feel might that comes from your heart this sunny day,

yes, we can dance again with freedom;

freedom love and power

are in the drizzle as we walk together hand in hand.

Please, Father, do not let it end.

TO LOVE WHILE DYING

 

“She had not made a decision to give up sex, only the clamor of romance, because it was exhausting her, doing her no good and too much harm….”

 

“If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.”

 

He stood close, looking at me.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asked.  “If you don’t I shall die.  And when they find my bones still upright, they will wonder what it was that made me stand and wait for something that would kill me.”  Jean Bush

 

One day, when he and I were busy saving me from disaster, he suddenly gathered me in his arms and I got into trouble all over again.    Jean Bush

 

It’s dangerous to try and pick up a wild thing; it will claw you and bleed you before leaping away.  But if you can hold it still long enough to kiss it, it will bring good luck all the rest of your life.    Jean Bush

YOUR LEAD

By Jean Bush

 

For Eric

 

 

 

 

You lead, I follow.

Tripping beside your dancing step;

One quiet embrace covering my life,

Wrapped in wonder.

The stillness of you leaves me

Unmoving, like a rock.

 

Hanging in your arms over the abyss

Like from a cliff with one finger.

You glance away and I am gone……

Falling forever.

 

 



THE SLAVE MAKER

By Jean Bush

You slithering obsession;

You creeping vine, wrapped round progressive centuries,

Til kings and rebels and dreaming men

Become as lackeys, 

Following  your trailing, withered leaves.

You visit men in midst of night.

Your comely form mirrors fates unbidden to light of day.

Rise up - - Oh Men!

But you, sheathed in shimmering sensation,

Beckon them to cross the barren edge….

Dust to dust

And men pass on,

Ever trapped by your treacherous caress,

And words:  “Ah, such is life,”

Fall as stones from unprotesting lips.

But as men lie on Death’s rotating rim,

They quick identify you, the Victress.

THE LAST FAREWELL

 

By Jean Bush

 

 

 

Winter covers all the earth

And blows both cold and strong,

But amid the group of four of us

It’s springtime all along.

 

Hand in hand we walked the roads

That wither we may tramp;

And in the night of deep starlight

Lay down our loads to camp.

 

Four elvish friends that hard and fast

To each adventure binds,

And find that they had always been

True friends throughout all time.

 

Together we’ve run sunlit hills

Of that called Wilderland,

And fought the dragons of the North

And all the foes of man.

 

We knew one day the time would come

As we stand to great the dawn,

That each and every one of us

Must sing his lonely song.

 

Who knows if when we’ll meet again

As we go our separate ways;

 

 

And lo, here come the coaches now

To take us each away.

 

 



THE GALLOWS

By Jean Bush

 

 

 

 

A gallows stands in the midnight light;

The empty rope swings left to right.

The rotting steps stand bleak and bare

Though many feet had passed through there.

 

A shadow recalls the wretched waiting;

Of rusty bars and iron door grating.

A teeming mob and rasping cheers

And a little child who stood in tears:

“They’re taking his life, who gives them the right?”

“The people, Dear.”

 

Of a man in black and a tickle of sweat

And the feel of the noose around his neck.

The yank of the rope and the gasp of the crowd;

The thrill of the watching

And the heads that were bowed.

 

Recalling it all for the thousandth time

The morning rang out with silver chimes.

Melting away beyond the bridge,

He left us all this heritage:

 

A gallows stands in the morning light,

The empty rope swings left to right.

With death advanced in range and scope

We use much swifter means then rope.



 



Dreaming

By Cooper, a child.

Pretend

dreaming

is

different

imagine

it's

magic;

fly like a bird

swim climb jump see read

whisper wish and do not ask how.



The Haunted Woman

 

 

By Jean Bush

Her hair is wild, her eyes are bright,

She holds him fast within her sight,

But demons take him in the night,

From the Lady of Alvarez.

 

Within the mists of dreams she’s weeping.

Through restless toss and turns of sleeping;

And in the night she rises shrieking,

Sad Lady of Alvarez.

 

What has torn him from her side?

She cries as vultures flap the sky.

But round her only shadows sigh

For the Lady of Alvarez.

 

Though without her heart grows fonder,

Deep inside her mind does wander;

With half-closed eyes she nods and ponders,

The Mad Lady of Alvarez.

 

With the dark there, something beckons,

She knows not what she’ll have to reckon.

And though with doom her soul is threatened,

Walks the Lady of Alvarez.

 

She steps into the coiling gloom

Beneath the chilled and shrouded moon.

She’ll find a way to join him soon.

Farewell, Lady of Alvarez.