CLS Sandoval

Flowers 

 

On the side of the road, near the place she took her last breath. 

They set some tulips in a little pile. 

The warms of spring imported to the scene of death 

Near the chain-link fence where they will no longer complain about homework. 

They planted some honeysuckle. 

On top of the grave he asked for. 

She left a bouquet of roses. 

Another bombing.   

Another shooting.   

Another group of children dead. 

Send more flowers. 

Goodbye Bugsy 

 

We had a deeper connection than you’d ever entertain 

You mentioned details about your past and perspective  

you usually reserve only for the safest and the closest 

I made my feelings and intentions perfectly clear 

You warned me against you and I didn’t listen 

It was in the spring when you walked away 

I made the same mistake I always do  

Writing our happily ever after before you agreed to be mine 

Cotton in the Snow 

 

The sun set behind the rim of mountains  

on the western horizon while I wasn’t looking.   

It’s always the snow crunch beneath my boot,  

counteracted by the warmth of a boy.   

Tears form icicles that would have been avoided  

if only this had been love. 

The heat from his wet kiss convinced her 

 until her heart iced over once more.   

 

Just when I had found my true love,  

I had to step backward.   

I still feel your moist warmth on my skin,  

on my lips,  

yet there are bars wrapped all around you. 

You are in plain sight,  

but as I reach toward you,  

everyone else pulls my hands behind my back. 

Tears rise to the surface and I am desperate for breath;  

I’ve never loved like this before. 

The snow serves as cotton to absorb my howls  

and moans of sorrow. 

All that could possibly save me is your touch. 

 

You have taught me what it is to solve the spring. 

Each touch you impart from your skin to mine produces another moment of renewal. 

Every word you allow to escape from your lips to my ear,  

your breath warm on my skin, supports the love you bring to me. 

With each impulse, you wrench the love right from and into my heart. 

Joseph Nicks

The Clouds Slip So Silently By

 

as do the years,

more slowly

but no less surely

in all their

fourth-dimensional

invisibility

 

life washes over us

spontaneous

and mutable,

as often as not

evading expectations

 

in its wake are left

the pools of fond

remembrances

and sorrow

 

that only deepen

with the distance

and the days

 

even though “just yesterday”

can no more be re-fondled

than a hundred

or a thousand years ago

 

 

Washtenaw County MI:  Spring, 2021

Gia Civerolo

SPRING & HER AWAKENING MEMORIES

Purple lavender lilacs belonging

to her neighbor’s tree

draped over a pale green

childhood wall even paler

and greener between winter

and spring. Decades later, still her

favorite color, favorite flower, favorite smell,

favorite sensory memory

 

Petunias bright pinks, whites, yellows

against the red brick of her childhood

split level home, where her mother still lives

Generations of little hands rummaging for

Easter eggs, the same colors, as the flowers growing

along with bright plastic eggs

and bunny shaped chocolates inside

 

Sweet Peas, her birth month’s flower,

springing throughout the garden

Ultraviolet blues, fuchsias bright pinks

Deep red lines, veins in the center

Mini orchids or real-life versions

of close-up flower paintings

 by Georgia O’Keefe

 

Irises standing tall guarding spring

Deep colors with a splash

of yellow, white, purple, violet-red

Breaking up the same color monotony

They remind her always of her

grandmother’s dirt-colored hands

happiest, busiest in the ground

Nails always pristinely clean

when it came time to cook dinner

Goddess Iris bridging over to

rainbow colors of tulips

whirling windmills of spring possibilities

and fields and fields and fields

of yellow daffodils with

California wildflowers, carpeting the Earth’s walls

along the black coast highway

 

Her memory awaking after being

dormant in the shadow snow

 

She is bursting colors bright with spring flowers

 

Then whispers of a cold breeze

makes her sad for a moment, memory awakening

Remembering bursting colors bright with spring flowers

Their only grave sin, is they die much too young

Before the heat of the summer

Purple Tulip Haiku 

Purple tulips in

the vase, paints Spring for Winter’s

buried memory.

 

 

FALL FORGOT ABOUT SPRING 

 

The flirting of spring

blooming into surprise summer love 

Considering It was meant

as a “meet cute” one night stand

 

They got stronger, louder

Everyday 4^th of July

Exploding love. Bang! 

 

But it was in the quietness

when it felt most real

 

The summer clinging

to their tan bodies 

Sparking kisses

glistening in the sun

Dripping down merging

into hot blockbusters bursting

numbered summer days

 

The summer heat dissipates

into the crispness of fall

Bringing the end to it all

 

She didn’t remember surrendering 

Leaves falling into 

winter’s snow globe blurring 

all the promises made

 

Memory refrains 

Popsicles purple puddles

she can’t seem to get clean

no matter how many times she scrubs

 

Ice cream truck’s music jolts her heart

Parades of kids racing towards a future of

First Spring kisses

 

Beverly M. Collins

Midday Sky

I often carried my emotions like a folder

under my arm. A bit of feeling I could open

at will. I sometimes gazed out of my window

at the blue skies dabbed with clouds on a

soft journey. They looked down and wondered

Why I stood still when life offered much

to travel to. All the bottled blue inside to leave

behind.

Like the time I traded glances with a

quiet man seated on the bus stop bench.

The corners of his mouth pointed downward.

Oh! The blue in his heart appeared to have

flooded the color of his eyes.

Our stare was broken by the hover of a

hummingbird…A surprise that elevated

both of our expressions into a duet of

smiles.

(First published in "Indigomania" by Truth Serum Press/Bequem Publishing collective-Australia)

Caterpillars

 

Unmolded consumer/builders

tethered to the underside of 

dreams suspended…

 

The quiet state of pre-adorned

can appear to roll on forever.

Spiky and driven (bite after tiny bite)

into early flutter of everything

that represents unfoldment.

 

Incarnations!

As the surface changes, a

fountain-of-evolution can layer

over a single soul.

 

Formidable mankind.

Purposeful, focused masters of self

reinvention…Like caterpillars who

also seek their set of wings.

Moss

 

Walls covered in a green growth that moves

Slow and clings due to code. Land barnacles,

much like those found in the ocean,

alive and holding on. Present but fearful that

to float or sail would spell a sure end.

What is the human expression of fear/cling?

Does it show itself only in intention?

Is it quietness when there is much to express, or

laughter in moments that are without humor?

Is it to be tender yet secretly ashamed of

one’s own tenderness or an impulse to cling

to ideas that may render us undone?

Hold-on, be quiet-green-mush until smeared.

Then, get mashed over sustained silliness.

 

 (First published by Academy of the Heart and Mind)

 

Emil E Schultz Jr

 Solution

 

Who is that magical being

professing to have all the answers

that will cure each of our cancers.

Can it be our new director

busy reinventing the wheel

or the woman in the corner

rocking on her heel?

 

What is the magic formula

we hope to find that will fix it all

be it very large or very small?

Is there that certain path

that turns effort into success.

 

Where do I get that special blend

of a mystical tablet or soothing elixir

that will make me feel well and merry

perhaps it will be in the apothecary?

 

When will I find the right one

to tell me what I should do

and how it should feel?

Possibly the woman down the street

with all her wise old wives tales

all starting with mother said.

 

How will I know unless

I look in the mirror and ask

“Am I part of the problem

or part of the solution.”

Mirjana N Mataric

 Yellow

Clover filled grass covered with delicate yellow flowers

Soft yellow-green leaves populate the crepe myrtle

Baby lemons not quite yellow fall from the tree

Yellow ducklings waddle to a shallow pond

Fluffy yellow chicks break from their shells

Baby songbirds fill a flaxen yellow straw nest

Bright yellow daffodils spring up all in a row

and the white-hot yellow sun of Spring

brings a warm new life

out of the harsh

cold winter

Lori Wall-Holloway

Bridge of Time

 

As winter slowly disappears

into dark nights with past days

never to be lived again

a newness is on the horizon

 

Spring begins to peek

from beneath the dawn

building a bridge

into the present

 

Crossing over into

a summer of hope

fresh dreams are created

for tomorrow

Shih-Fang Wang

Spring in My Memory

 

Coldness diminished

Rumbling of water

From far to near

Broke the quietness

Soon it filled the ditches

Then drained into dry fields

 

Farmers came with buffalos

To plow their fields

From sunrise to sunset

Rice seedlings planted

Arid land turned verdant

 

Soon tadpoles swam

In the rice paddies

They grew faster than the rice plants

Then turned into frogs

That teamed up with grasshoppers

In chorus of spring songs

 

 

R A Ruadh

Mshuge cat vs Musca domestica

he sits on the kitchen floor
tail tip twitching
examines the spot
where wall meets ceiling
above the cabinets

from time to time
his head moves to follow
the route his mind is mapping
his proposed solution
to the fly question

suddenly his body tenses
tail whipping
gathering his feet tightly
a bundle of energy
ready to spring

a resounding thwack
he makes it to the top
from which the flies have flown
he turns to stare at me
because it is all my fault

Thom Garzone

A CRUCIAL LOOK BACK

 

I do not hold you accountable for that October morning in 1981 when I was

subdued and thrown in a Santa Cruz psych ward raging in mindless inferno.

I mislaid a manuscript, and having not exhibited harm to myself or others,

what you called therapy inflicted my condition, deceiving me to stay on

a three-day hold, which lasted two and a half weeks.

My manuscript wanders eternity in search of solutions to my psychosis.

I only condemn the society you symbolize, or such pressures from higher

authorities who had instructed to squash the insipid creature I was, writhing from

lethargy, hunger, sleeplessness, and the hypergraphic ramblings

of a despondent bard. The moronic decision to inject me with

the very ignorance that caused me to tremble and seize and question

why my stressed-out academic brain appeared distinctly abnormal or insane.

But instead I thank you for opening a passage for more journeys into other

regions, learning to face even more bizarre responses to my illness.

 

JOHNNY ONE O'CLOCK

 

With a beard does his reality distance him.

When I notice his perpetual sojourn to the dope man

cold shrouds his capacious figure.

He rides the same old blue bicycle,

produces whimsical reflections of his being,

pictures I still long to use as covers for my books.

Drugs puncture his soul,

form dependent images on wicked avenues

to his mind that mold only emptiness.

I see his aging bitch, belly speckled

and with white hair that wavers. Then

our eyes meet at the church after a meeting

where God's compassion and recovery prevail.

He acknowledges me, yet rejects my purpose

as if manifesting my inability

to counsel other addicts.

Then he turns away from me, farther

away from a solution.

SPRING FRAGMENT

 

A rock opera in my mind plays

a concert to my senses,

cities permeated by storm

wane in remembrance,

solos buried beneath soul,

Beings crouched, dreaming in forests

balance on towers to vanish

in coffee house jazz where lulls

of patrons harmonize with survival.

The universe drowns in defeat, silent.

Visions question when will these rains cease,

or the skies fill with light

to glint down on us in verdant seasons.

Rick Leddy

Spring Song

 

A girl in the swirling mist

Wearing a weather-inappropriate

Yellow cotton dress

And heavy brown wing-tip shoes

Sings silent blissful karaoke

To the weeping sky

Her eyes closed

Her lips moving to

The chorus of youth

The vibration of it

Surrounds her with sunshine

A beacon burning

Through the bleak morning

I wonder what she hears in the

White earphones

What moves her to ecstatic reverie

It is a song I heard once

But no more

The lyrics lost as the years erased the notes

She sways like a sapling

Unafraid of the wind

She is music

Her every movement a counterpoint

To my forgotten youth

She is a hymn to spring

So lovely in the rain

Singing silently

 

 

Spring has sprung

Yet another cycle recycled
The equinox has opened up
to the expression of flowers and weeds —
verdant bandits of every imaginable size and color
Chlorophyll fountains spawning unbeckoned and unwanted
in cracks and crevices
Spring is wild and against my will
A willful child demanding its own way
Its never-ending tantrums of sheer stubbornness
unfolding in unscripted explosions
So I sigh
With grudging admiration at the tenacity
of our world
Where life demands to be heard
whether we like the words or not
It is everywhere and everything
And we are part of it
So I will be a weed whisperer
Speaking to my fellow travelers in muted tones
I may not like you
And I will pull you from the soil
uprooting your will to be in untold sweaty hours
I love what you represent
But, I would love you more
If only you looked and smelled more
like a rose