Read a Poem
Street Ghazal
by Chuck Carlise
There was music in the stillness, white noise from the street.
Our whole lives condensed: boulders pressed to gravel in the street.
From my bed, the winter of no heat, waking under small
mountains of patchwork blankets, shivering at the buses on the street.
She sends me a line from Kundera: “Road: A strip of ground over which
one walks.” Adds, “not a location, a starting point, your house, my street?”
At dusk, cicadas sing loud as air-raid sirens. Puddles gather orange light
from street lamps, then scatter it, like tongues of flame in the street.
I don’t remember the day I stopped saying her name. Below the window:
leaf-rustle underfoot, a screen door rattling shut, quiet in the street.
Sometimes I’m aware how the past accumulates – dead versions of the self,
like a ticket line behind you, thru the house, to the porch, into the street.
Too many people. Too much rain. I cough coal-dust all week. She
is absent already. It will not be okay. London is a cab in the street.
Street Ghazal by Chuck Carlise from In One Version of the Story. New Issues Poetry and Prose. 2016. Used by permission of the author.
About the Author
Chuck Carlise was born in Canton, Ohio, on the first Flag Day of the Carter Administration, and has lived in 14 states and two continents since. He is author of the collection In One Version of the Story and the chapbooks A Broken Escalator Still Isn't the Stairs and Casual Insomniac. His poems and essays appear in Pleiades, Diagram, Southern Review, Verse Daily, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. He lives in Cleveland and teaches at Ashland University, where he directs the Ashland Poetry Press. He can be found @chuckcarlise on the various social media empires.
Write a Poem
Write a poem about something in your life that started small, maybe invisibly, and mushroomed to huge proportions—a hobby, a relationship, an idea, a disease.
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Title: First T
My sandals slipped off. I felt blistering sand between my hurting toes
I saw salt crystallize in the air.
The sun was high in the sky on that Saturday in July. Around me sat smiling faces and I just saw the ocean and no more pain.
The waves were high and current strong, they both drug me under. My eyes blurred and head spun dizzily as I was pulled up and sat on the sand.
i can feel the warmth of the sun and easing pain. nice imagery!
The Cough
The cough seems buried deep within.
I cough.
Awe the rare
Cough.
The cough that loosens strands of goop,
Like nylon fishing line
Permanently affixed,
Intricate nylon webs stretched across
My lungs.
I feel the pull of them,
They loosen
The goop coughed up.
Relief and pain co-mingle.
Weight lifted, pain where pulled away.
I had a small cough
That became a rare condition
Only given to a few in a million.
I among the few
My only notoriety comes
When my doctor says, I'm one of a kind.
I am the privileged one
Who loses the use of my lungs
A fraction at a time.
Deborah Taddeo
I had to cough after reading this. full of successful images!
The Cough
The cough seems buried deep within.
I cough.
Awe the rare
Cough.
The cough that loosens strands of goop,
Like nylon fishing line
Permanently affixed,
Intricate nylon webs stretched across
My lungs.
I feel the pull of them,
They loosen
The goop coughed up.
Relief and pain co-mingle.
Weight lifted, pain where pulled away.
I had a small cough
That became a rare condition
Only given to a few in a million.
I among the few
My only notoriety comes
When my doctor says, I'm one of a kind.
I am the privileged one
Who loses the use of my lungs
A fraction at a time.
Deborah Taddeo
Day 2
Write a poem about something in your life that started small, maybe invisibly, and mushroomed to huge proportionsa hobby, a relationship, an idea, a disease.
The Clouds Became Stones
It should take time.
Then again. Who argues?
The eyes have darkened,
splintering from deep, inside the core.
Nothing stops darkness. Just pay the bill
and leave, gracefully. You know the way.
Eyes are the sun.
The poet touches an eyelash
against the caves flesh then writes. Its a cure.
The poem lights a match.
The journal is too full to catch fire.
Morning stalls while crossing the bridge.
Or so you thought.
Clouds became stones you learn to look beyond.
They take your drivers license.
They give you a complementary RTD pass.
The poet steals the light from the street lamp
and pretends to see. Nothing has changed.
At the corner, the horizon bends.
Nothing will end. Nothing begins.
The morning stays put; the night stalls out.
Whats there to worry about?
Just count your steps.
Open the door to the coffee-shop.
Just like yesterday.
Order the same little espresso.
Admire the porcelain demitasse-cup.
Take a long time to drink whatever's left inside.
Tovli 2024
Tovil,
All your lines so beautiful. The poem that lights a match, the journal too heavy to catch fire
Awe but the last line could certainly stand alone to describe our final years,"Take a long time to drink whatever's left inside."
thank you!
When I'm kissed by the sun my skin thank me and I began to smile the Naturale patterns of life delivers so much joy smile it doesn't hurt let the good energy flow I've been kissed by the Sun!
Pillar of Purple Fire
Disease is a mushroom cloud of debris,
a mutually exclusive detonation of hydrogen
stunningly deadly and beautiful.
In 79 AD, Vesuvius sent up 21-mile cloud
of tephra and gas blanketing people
and animals embracing in their beds.
The entire history of man is atomic,
nothing more than smoke and destruction
a fireball of contradictory fission and fusion.
This volcano was 100,000 times the thermal energy
of Nagasaki and Hiroshima but only 16,000
died compared with what humans are capable of:
200,000 in Japan, billions of blood cells
in the human body. All we can do is imagine
a plaster cast in the void left by decomposed bodies.
an epoch full of imagery--intellectually vibrant.
Thanks for reading and commenting
Love is a Fickle Thing
Each in our own way we did what we could
Sustaining, loving helping
And then death comes... the end of the service...
the beginning of hate...
Families torn
Accusations made
Where is the love - that elusive thing that binds us together
Cleaved, broken, at war
Where is the honor in memory?
small and mighty
as my lie went
time to be fighty
as I tried to try
toastmasters my savior
learning new ways
control the voice
speaking with pay
starting small
communication to leading
no time to fall
gaining my feeding
confidence I show
speaking up
voice now flows
telling the story
how I gained success
shortness of height
brought on by my voice
so quiet , my fight
getting out to grow
from college to work
opportunities to try
slowly to lurk
trying my hand
joined toastmasters to learn
ways to act
gained confidence to burn
gaining facts
from being
shortness of height
brought on by my voice
so quiet , my fight
getting out to grow
from college to work
opportunities to try
slowly to lurk
trying my hand
joined toastmasters to learn
ways to act
gained confidence to burn
gaining facts
from being
It was a tiny thought,
formed at the back of my mind.
Should I say it, to you?
It seemed like such a big deal.
From the depths of my heart,
I wanted to speak to you.
With my message of Love,
and hope we last forever.
When it's all said and done.
The white dress hits the floor.
The tux is laid across the chair.
No more lights on.
Just me and you.
The rings stay on for the first night.
I think to myself wow, it's here.
You look deep in my eyes.
Forever.
The kids begin to cry.
The phone won't stop ringing.
The job is over bearing.
But we have each other.
Years go by.
The kids are now into their own.
We've survived it all.
The dress hits the floor.
The suit across the chair.
Deep breaths.
We've made it to forever.
what a fickle thing,
this disc of charge, a plugged metal donut or pie
cupped beneath the lid of this 25priced watch
from a digital forest arriving by human pigeon or eagle
carrying it as carrion
as it sits on my work bench
waiting patiently to kiss copper lips
for clasped arrest for months and longer
empowered heart beats of tick and ticK and tACk
and TocK and tOcK and taCK
cheapness croaks for witness and whispers loudly when the tv dies down
delaying slumber, gossiping in otherwise silent moments
so the pursed lips remains waiting
AnD YeT CuRiouS EyEs SeE wHaT wE dO NoT
how did a 1 year old so quickly become 1 and a half
and 1 inch become... well we are a metric family,
3 odd centimeters rise to 6 centimeter digits or so
reaching and gathering a kiss as a wolf a scent
and rhodopsin jewels light
tasting swallowing what a child should not
the ride to the ER is loud and in my mind painfully silent
a random night has become an unwanted adventure
nice ending...
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What comment?
small beginnings...
a few words turn
into haiku
~Nancy Brady, 2024
succinct!
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