RUGGED IMAGES
The window releases a gasp
of inside life,
of half voices and doors closing.
Delinquent sounds muddy the outside.
A car radio lips out
a samba, entertaining tapping fingers
and flowered dresses swaying.
Casual clouds, rugged images
cast to the street, sliding into alleys,
covering the homeless.
Café tables stream with words
As they flip over condiments, ice water
and pretentious menus.
Dreams are made from day,
dripping into night without sound.
- Roger G. Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 03.21.13)
editor's note: Yes, yes! Our daily drenchings in fortitudes, fears, frustrations and fancies are sopped up by our tired minds to be wrung out in our dreams. Thanks, Roger! - mh
THE LONG AND SHORT
A naked night, void of stars,
opens a canvas of black
where a moon, in the corner of space
lays captured.
It is a black and white night,
a photo with shades and shadows
with cool skin
and eyes like diamonds.
The shape of a voyage pulls at
the thread of me; the black of my indecision.
the white of my dreams.
I quit with death, leaving it to itself,
the labors and the pain,
the long and short of a story we all know.
- Roger G. Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 09.19.12)
editor's note: We are constantly pulled between indecision and dreams. For all that black and white, death stands in the grey. - mh
RESTLESS
A face on a flag, the wind
gives it voice.
Steam from the day retires
nights grasp.
Horns and lights, the blood
of cities, pull at the weak.
People envy the closure of circles,
the place where end
is welcomed and faces are
familiar.
Lights breathe onto
crowded shorelines where
people are the high tide of waters,
pulling at the skin
of the city.
- Roger G. Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 04.06.12)
editor's note: It's a macrocosm of insomniac affliction, human corpuscles counted like sheep - still no sleep! - mh
FOOTSTEPS
It was a beautiful rain,
like grandmother fingers
massaging my face.
The mist was a gentle language;
liquid words from a gray heaven of
tumbling clouds.
My footsteps lay marked on the lawn,
a message of my passing
to a stone wall and the field
beyond.
- Roger G. Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 08.04.11)
SHE SUFFERS
A delicate heart. Magnolia soft,
scented by angels; she looks deep
with eyes into the pools of man.
Long city tendrils wrap tight her
waist; she walks secure on streets
absent of homes.
Her footsteps echo a jazzy beat while
She sings strong words into
abandoned air.
She is a symphony for those without.
Her game has no rules.
She suffers well.
- Roger G. Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 04.08.11)
THE END OF ME
The headwaters of my eyes
move hidden in muddy corners
with force.
Turbulence finds a light burning
where voices sing; a church
chorus always seems louder.
A red light stops hungry cars
built for speed; a corner smile
promises love for a price.
The canon instructs
without question, to submit the
throat of my passions to a higher place,
from my lower ground.
I’m flooded with ideas. My pockets
are empty. My fingers curious.
The end of me is far from sight.
- Roger Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 11.02.10)
MY YARD
The footprint of winter
marched strong while I slept.
A gray cloak spread hard onto
the edges of my yard;
summer and fall vanished from sight.
Familiar stones and pathways,
landmarks just outside,
were silently laid to rest from
my viewing; items hidden, not lost.
A blanket of cold, winds and drifts
we accept like relatives; eventually
they leave.
- Roger G. Singer
(added 12.13.09)
WATCHING
His lips released thin words,
starving into air, pulling at the color
of morning; another day of chance.
Girls with tight skirts, hair dripping high,
snap their gum like shooting galleries
at carnivals; cotton candy was sweeter
than their talking lips.
Sandals. Sidewalks of souls.
He absorbs the streams of motion;
running, bumping, forming
flesh rivers. Moving into, pushing back
until the anchor of dusk
slows to stopping the street
in the city.
- Roger G. Singer
(added 12.13.09)
PEOPLE THOUGHTS
The power of his
give
burdened a warm
release
like blankets rich with
sleep.
He walked through
meadows
of past dreams
scattered
like newspapers
yellowed with the age of
lost.
Crumpled headlines,
pieces
of what was once
searching
like the settling of
museum dust,
sealed itself to
objects
and places
like people
thoughts
forgotten in yesterdays
wind.
- Roger G. Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 12.13.09)
BASEBALL WARS
The war of evening battle bugs
lay siege on a window screen,
like tennis balls beaten with force
they try again, undaunted and dazed.
A man inside watches a baseball game;
the sound scratches to his ears.
His face is unshaven. A cigarette burns
between yellowed fingers. A cold beer
softens his anger. Ashes tumble,
splashing onto slippers dieing of age.
Dishes rattle in the kitchen.
Lunch dishes drip dry in straight lines.
A woman hums to a song buried in
her chest.
Children run the alley below his window.
Baseball bats clink in the hurriedness
of sweaty hands. Voices of excitement,
anger, swearing, oaths of hate. Blood
spills to concrete watering the cities hard
garden.
Above in the apartment. The man smokes his
cigarette.
- Roger G. Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 09.23.09)
JACKSON SQUARE
My walking soul,
borne on the blood leather
of my shoes,
scratches its skin
on the red uneven bricks
below my curious walking.
The aroma of gardenias melts from trees
like icing on warm days running
thick and sweetly;
crooked fingered branches above
reach stiff like the dead without life.
A snappy stringed guitar speaks
a singing story with the voice
of a man whose hands
work the music.
Sunrise catches me walking about
in the company of humid air,
holding me tightly in a fat warmth
at Jackson Square.
- Roger G. Singer
(featured in the poetry forum 07.27.09) |
