Comforts of Fear Poem by Kelly Ann Malone

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Comforts of Fear

You are the murky film that coats my independence.

Baptized in dread. Left matte and damp.

Muscles of freedom stay weak from neglect.

My deep inhale of contentment is halted by apprehension.

I pick the skin around my fingernails until they are raw.

The smoke from my cigarette stings as it infiltrates the open wounds.

My jaw aches from constant clenching, in turn dwindling the stature of my teeth.

You distract me from my life. Fleecing my destiny, one layer at a time.

You run so deep in my veins, slowing the flow, consuming serenity.

Yet I fear a cleansing transfusion.

Comfortable, abundant fear. Oh, familiar anxiety.

I can feel you. I can touch you. I know you are there.

***

Thick and Thin Blues, The she never left me blues lyrics by H.E. Hasben

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she never left me
so I never wrote
that she left me song
If she had left me I’d be rich
by singing that song all night long
if I had them
she done left me blues
I’d buy me some new shoes
to walk around the town singin’ those
she done left me blues
But I got them she stayed through thick and thin blues
there was no shakin’ her love and then some blues
I got them she stayed through thick and thin blues
what’s a man to do
oh what’s a man to do
so I never wrote
that she left me song
If she had left me I’d be rich
by singing that song all night long
if I had them
she done left me blues
I’d buy me some new shoes
to walk around the town singin’ those
she done left me blues

Oh she never left me
I’ve got them
she never left me
them thick and thin blues

***

CHILD OF THE ROMANS poem by Carl Sandburg

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CHILD OF THE ROMANS

THE dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,
Eat steaks running with brown gravy,
Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee.
The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,
Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,
And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day’s work
Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils
Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases
Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.

CLARK STREET BRIDGE POEM BY CARL SANDBURG

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CLARK STREET BRIDGE

DUST of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.

Now. . .
. . Only stars and mist
A lonely policeman,
Two cabaret dancers,
Stars and mist again,
No more feet or wheels,
No more dust and wagons.

Voices of dollars
And drops of blood
. . . . .
Voices of broken hearts,
. . Voices singing, singing,
. . Silver voices, singing,
Softer than the stars,
Softer than the mist.