Haiku for a Pandemic:

​​​Rapturous thunder,

​​​​Magnificent Audience,

​​​​Mighty ovation.

Moored Airship

I cannot go.

I cannot go

With you,

Oh no.

I am an airship moored

By bands of steel

You cannot cut.

You cannot cut.

You cannot cut and set me free

To swim like a great blue whale

In the sea blue sky.

If you try

I shall fly

Like the Hindenberg

And so,

I cannot go.

Godspeed, my heart

Goes with you.

©️Edie Miller Angelo

A maimed starfish stares

At the sky.

It’s solitary eye

Takes in

The vast smooth space,

Cloudless, so blue.

The seawater washes over it’s wound, a limb

Cruelly torn away

By a thoughtless, suntanned child:

A helpless plaything, dangled, then dropped

Into a sandcastle moat.

Gritty sand grates beneath it’s body

While sunlight burns from above

And tiny waves lap against it

Like so many kittens’ tongues

Gently teasing a phantom limb

That pulses with fancied pain.

It waits

And watches

The sky,

So blue.

It waits

And watches.

The sky turn dark, grey and churning with storm.

Waves, in…

The Politician

( This poem applies to 95% of politicians; GLOBALLY )

The Politician:

He fancies he’s a diplomat

And that his two faced flattery

Is a gift

of tongues.

His credence relies upon the faith

Of the followers, he feeds

Refined sugars and de-germed grains,

Poisons the fields with his gifts.

Emptied by famine, they welcome his favors

With smiles, never knowing

Their counterfeit companion

Has kept the sprouts for himself

In an endless attempt to make something grow

In his barren heart,

Where all life withers, burned

By the laser of tinsel sunlight,

Paste diamonds.

He falters at his frayed edges,

Embroidering worn threads

With pious exaggerations.

The cunning fabrications

That color his palms, instead of calluses,

Have shielded him so well

That even he is ignorant

Of his private masquerade.

2009: in the seventh year after the fall,

Going through old emails, I came across this story someone sent me in July of 2009; it seemed fitting to share this, in this time of a pandemic

In the Seventh Year

By ROGER COHEN

And in the seventh year after the fall, the dust and debris of the towers cleared. And it became plain at last what had been wrought.

For the wreckage begat greed; and it came to pass that while America’s young men and women fought, other Americans enriched themselves. Beguiling the innocent, they did backdate options, and they…

Red as a stained

Wooden Indian,

But soft,

Yielding,

They lay you in my throbbing lap,

Bare and bewildered.

Me too, baby.

Your black eyes search

For a dark retreat.

You suck my arm, the side

Of my breast,

It’s brown nipple bursting

Crayon-yellow goo.

My full breast covers

Your entire face.

Like first night lovers,

We grope in warm, confused flesh,

Our secretions oozing into paper wrappings

That separate

Our skins.

You grasp my finger, cling.

For your life. Our life.

You are as much a part of me as my arm.

I am an amputee.

I will name you Michael,

My first angel,

And we will cling together

As long as your hunger

Allows it.

©️Edie Miller Angelo

I began to suspect my son was gay when he was around 12 years old and, I guess, so did his Macho Italian father because when My son dressed up for Halloween as a little old lady with a gray wig and ferret stole, his father spit out vehemently, ‘goddam faggot’ and those words still ring in my ears today. I don’t remember if my ex waited until our son was out of earshot to say that. I hoped he didn’t hear that. When my kids were small ( actually, still to this day and they are in their thirties…

FULL MOON; MIDNIGHT WALK

Midnight walks reveal the mind’s lies.

Cat sized slugs lie in the street, twisting,

So much like new-born hairless hamsters,

Hugely grotesque.

I approach them, hesitantly.

They rustle, like silken shirts,

But crisp.

They are only brown paper bags

In moonlight.

I step on them to prove they do not live.

The mockingbird sings.

He does not repeat his lies.

He is as great a liar as I,

Singing his imitation lives into the night.

A flicker in the corner of my eye.

A neighbor says, “Hello.”

He did not approach.

He materialized

Out of darkness.

We have all

Materialized

Out of darkness.

Copyright 2007 Edith Angelo