Metamorphosis Sea Poem

Morning Incomplete

Along the seashore at the cabin muffled waves through night
Embrace us in our sleep brief unhurried 'til the morning light
Upon these empty sheets reveals the stains of love imagined.
Morning doesn't give a damn for dreams of lovers parted.
Morning wakes and shakes fresh dew off all imaginings.
I can lie here, dream you lay beside me
Morning after morning after we have parted,
Turn to caress and taste your beauty,
Wake wet with tears from missing you, sigh
Like breezes born for nothing but an empty
Space to fill. Beside me you my emptiness must fill.
I will miss you, simple meters, reasoned rhyming,
Closure certain as the morning. Unwise, but I will
Miss you near to sunrise every morning,
At first light and in the darkness
Of my bedroom lonely; lacking kisses,
Shallow breathing become the slightest breezes
Laughing at me when I've risen, falsely risen early
Ready waiting for your eyes to open gently.
I will miss you in the morning.
Morning doesn't give a damn for dreams of lovers parted.
You think that you are going someplace certain--so untrue:
You simply return unto that place where alone you started,
Where daily daylight stains you bleach away, half-hearted
Try recapture simple dreaming. Embrace the dreaming: hold
Off certainty of someplace solid nine-to-five and evenings lonely;
Doze 'til bedclothes cover over eyes that close, then come to me.
I shall take you with me, darling, to the dreamscape where we started--
It's only morning that doesn't give a damn for dreams of lovers parted.
Our dreams are conquests over limits,
together time and space in sleep are bested.

Pagan Interlude

Subliminal messages over the megaphone
There is a Dan handler in aisle ThreeB:
The gay grocer has a hard-on stacking cucumbers
is a clich© for the 'nineties at the end of millennium
and Goddamn him Ginsburg's still dead
How we could use his immoral word
in this titpasties pastiche of a world
that passes postmodern
in this postmedieval life
I love the cool fresh breath of Spring's kiss
in the midst of winter's foul blasts
That was Sarah said that
remember her
she was the woman I might have married
or had married couldn't remember which
who haunts my daydreams
or the mother who never was
lost mother of a generation.
Ginsburg-- described in one obit
as "that small gay jewish poet"--
would not be the kind
to leave his beloved behind.
And, folks, the special today is poets and puns, at sixth sense a pound
Cheaper than pastrami-- somewhat Italian, dark eyes, almond skin.
The who-picks-this-shit-linoleum manager
is on the loudspeaker in his gray tweed jacket
and deck-shoe best speaking of his desk job life
unraveling as he speaks
He is reading HOWL
amid the gasps and shrieks
of little suburbanite ladies
pissing their Depends as he reads
He is thinking this his last act before AK
bursts while he rampages through the Saturday
morning Parking Lot where I heft bags into the Volvo
Chips and Dips for Superbowl Sunday
All of us playing that gig
lined up against the others
pushing toward goalposts
pigskins of our sons and our daughters
inflated past recognition
The universe of poetry is a goddamn
wormhole without Ginsburg who's still
very much dead
Though middleclass kids
and suburban punks
can still read.

Bio: Chicagoan, educated in the American South (PhD), John Horvath Jr has been a steel mill mechanic, soldier, street poet, and professor of literature and criticism. His most recent books include Illiana Region Poems: Harboring the Enemy (from Zebooks http://www.blquanbeck.com/zebookcompany/) and CONUS: the First Tour Chapbook, new and collected poetry of war . Disabled in a parachute accident, Horvath edits Mississippi's PoetryRepairShop - Contemporary International Poetry (since 1997) and writes.

Links: Interview [ http://www. motherbird. com/wardjohn. html ]; PoetryRepairShop [ http://www. poetryrepairs. com/ ]; Bibliography [ http://www. horvath. ws ]; Contact: PRSeditor@aol. com
Recent Poetry:
Illiana Region Poems: Harboring the Enemy. Zebooks [http://www.blquanbeck.com/zebookcompany/]
CONUS: the First Tour Chapbook, new and collected poetry of war and individually in Seeker, Of(f)course, The Odeum, San Francisco Salvo, Audax, MAGezine, EWG Presents, Artvilla, Ygdrasil, Duct Tape, RedCoral, Animist, Ascent, StarkRavingSanity, Bonfire, Ixion,

On writing: Mine is from †œinside the sinner† (the biographical, not autobiographical) where a poet's empathy and sympathy render the observed more open to discussion, more human, and †“ perhaps - more dignified. Having spent my life trying to get inside others, I write a social narrative about purpose and drama in daily, †˜meaningless' acts. My technique is 'sprung rhythm': I pen ideas; revise into traditional metrics/rhymes (not necessarily English); then, revise into a narrative, free verse/lyric. Thus, I explore and distance myself from the subject because, as Plato noted, "Poetry endangers the established order of the soul. † Poetry must endanger; so, a poet must use care.

ARTVILLA Back One©John Horvath Jr.

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