POEMS
NYC
Mad-hattan. Black’n’whide.
Be-bop hitchhikers and
The train that killed me in 1960.
Still. AM/FM Morning. Cream no sugar “Aye, sir”
Love being in this forest?
One more year, and the family of seven will South.
10-second rush hour counter-clockwise.
Save the Lord from highways.
A couple of blocks straight until you hit the desert, then make it left. Right?
Welcome to the Harbor, Pearl.
Enjoy the sunset between two Wests.
At 120 hours per mile.
New York City high below above away across around.
I don’t feel lonely.
September 10, 2001
A portrait of a valley while thinking of Nothing
Pulchritude of pain
Drive no kids insane
Edge of town. Danger!
Town lacks you, Stranger
Freeways hate the east
Dope with a lime twist
Powder and no gun
Me? No one.
Desperados invaded the outskirts of wilderness
And hung every les miserables hope inside of us
Next to the border where “far away” becomes “eternity”
There’s raining palisades
There’s hyena-fur mountains
There’s views from windows
There’s lives spent down in a valley
which resembles two palms of a child from a distance.
2001
California is blowing fall behind the sateen curtains
In this time of year streets are opening their eyes after long summer traffic,
Juned and Julied
Another neighborhood fell prey to the siren of police
From afar the city looks like hands of a drowning man
in Fast-Forward
One day I think I’m gonna climb on the top of this big brown sky-scrapper
And hypnotize the moon.
1998
Limelight down the hill
Fires burn the mill
Watermarked are lands
Crossroads or cross-hands?
Here a word decays
Before it’s air-borne from lips
It’s here, only here
That every roadpost is Kansas
And every syllable
Is nothing but a bird on empty canvas
2001
Midnight freckled with distant sparkles
(Dedicated To M.)
Midnight freckled with distant sparkles
Occupies the vacant premises behind the bush. Sleeps
In a void ravine underneath the yawning rivers
Beneath the arch of firmament ten light years deep
Wayfarer dreaming of walking on the clouds
(The world aligns itself to his lonely face)
Instead stands halfway dipped into the daylight
(Will find a way inside his perfect maze)
Lifespan of a daydream is a moment. Did you know?
(or so they claim. Perhaps a little shorter: an eternity)
Waterfall says it belongs to the sky, and yet
It keeps knocking on the walls begging for humanity
Midnight
A timid introverted bride
Coy smile through her quilted gown
Stepping softly aside
Underneath the crown
Of a walnut tree
With that stray cat called the moon
Stuck between two branches
Like a funny air balloon.
Whenever 2002
The charlatan tree growing in the far East
Just across the border from the Near South
Branching through to the Unthinkable North
Where flocks of birds escape to die in wintertime
January 3, 2003
My army of nomad crickets
Celebrates another victory -
Twilight.
Pond is rippled with nostalgia for the river
A rebellious ferryboat is about to find out the meaning of solitude
Then roadsigns roadsigns leading one to another
A little secret leeway floats from the secret garden
downpours through that torrential lilac and lavender aroma
and sails down to the old oak tree
Where long ago
I did not carve your name
July 2002
In the year of black beaver,
As the May time arrives,
Kings are leaving their kingdoms
For the land of sunrise.
Horses torture the ground,
Crowning wormwood with breath,
Pipers trumpet the anthems,
Blowing sorrow instead.
There, behind, seven oceans,
Sages say, there's a land,
Golden fluff in the air
Spreads along golden sand.
Luscious mermaids are singing
Lullabies to the seas,
And mysterious creatures
Dwell in gold of sun-trees.
This is where winds will mire,
Mingling dreams of expanse,
And the kings follow roads,
Leaving past in a trance
We are looking and waving
To the dust of their ghosts,
Women blowing last kisses
Till they melt into frost.
There the last spangle flashes,
And the last echo dies,
Shall we wait for the masters
From the land of sunrise?
Shall we squint at horizons
Every day of our lives,
Killing silence of sadness
With the music of fifes?
And the time spends us slowly,
Teasing tulips with springs,
As we watch our children
Grow into newborn kings.
And the sheen of the sceptres
Once again will be cast
In the year of black beaver,
Gluing future to past.
"Gold! The Kings are returning!
There it shines! Strain your eyes!"
Someone grinned and retorted:
"It was just a sunrise..."
1994
Don't let your silence grow
And turn into missilence.
It's when you've had enough
Of words said yesterday.
And the word "silence" means
That no infant's crying,
That nobody was killed
By stray deaths on a field.
That no star fell down
Behind the chiliad hedges,
And no childbed death
Was scored in our minds.
And silence also means
That no false Messiahs
Descended, dared change
The laws of wolverines
No limners scribble lines
In search for crazy rhyming
But doesn’t silence rhyme
With everything they heed?
With silence of a scream
The silent fear grows
To feed the silent kids
With silent meals of Gods.
And silent human hands
Are making silent weapons
To keep the silence in
The silent city crowd.
You noticed… rain has stopped
And rivers ceased the spinning
You were awakened by
The silence of windmills
Put hands away from lips
And make a beat in your heart.
That's when missilence grows
And conquers all around.
1993
Coming from the coasts across the Mighty River,
Highway 70 awoke me every night,
And with dreaming pines all around my window,
I would stare at it and stare
... At the lights rushing by
From the East, from the West...
Does the highway realize that someplace it ends?
Or it's just like us -
Roaming and never knowing of tomorrow...
1996
Fantasy. Unreal. Words in vain.
Trees craving for snowflakes, but getting only angry looks and rain
Shapes of a January steam
Swim.
Down the horizon where freeway freedom lies
Or so they say at least. Where stomachs live for butterflies.
Not here though. Round here perfection strikes your eye
And caves exist for cavemen
and rooms exist for madmen
And autumn is just another passerby along the way to final summer
Where I belong.
2001
A portrait of inevitable summer
Tapestry of seasons
Knocks at the windshield
Roll down, and let the civilization of dandelions inside
Porch is filled with non-useful necessities
Associations of a cloud with her face
No time for tea. Only wine is capable of intoxicating the 24-Karat sunshine
Hordes of vagabond ants besieged the first watermelon fortress
Dust on the road leading to the pond is craving for children’s feet
Life is an actor. Life is a troubadour. Life is a minstrel walking door to
door.
Every drop dreams to be the last one.
Drink up!
Wine is mindless.
Time is timeless.
Hello, grasshopper summer!
2001
September avenue
A stairway to the roof
An oak leaf’s a pamphlet of another failed freedom
With clouds gallowing closer to the river
bend.
Sweeptember
Rain in flesh of a hunchback
Is roaming town to town
Winds rolling down the hillside
Then hopping all over the bubbled fence
My arms
That were meant to be around you
are occupied with someone else.
2003
| Acknowledgements: |
 |
|
| Published by the permission of the author. © by Simon Simonian. No copying or redistribution allowed without the written permission of the author. |
| See also: |
 |
|