Wayne Russell
Transitions
Bossa Nova night
desert skies basking
in peyote moon
saccharine stars
phosphorous
clinging to roof of
naked
existence.
Can you hear the winds
of change?
Can you see the blood flow
through society crimson,
at its downfall?
The wolf howls and the rodents
scampering paws scrape insatiably
in a world, in its terminus point.
We were always destined to be
creatures of our own demise,
drowning in the rabid quagmire
of greed, floating upon the ticking
time bomb, of our very own annihilation.
Blue Sunday
The little white saviors never arrived,
so round, so perfect, they never galloped
upon their heroic iron steed, across the
manicured, grassy knoll.
From my window sill, I never heard the
hooves of the postal worker, clop-clop
clopping.
I never heard the lifting of the metal veil,
the small plastic package being dropped,
indifferently into its dark painted womb.
That sharp clank, that bark of rebuke,
would've been so welcomed today,
the closing of the veil, cold on a blue
Sunday.
You never came to hoist this lost silence
from my empty soul, you so cool and
white and round, within its indifference,
that dead white pill, lifeless on pink tongue.
I am now lost without you and once again
alone, and once again the photos staring
from emotionless walls, so pale and deathly
quiet.
I can't sleep, I can only roll with the
tormented waves of today and
the "what ifs" that tomorrow may bring.
Bonita Lee Penn is a Pittsburgh poet, editor, literary curator, creative writing facilitator, and author of the chapbook, Every Morning A Foot Is Looking for My Neck (Central Square Press 2019). Her work has appeared in joINT. Literary Magazine, Hot Metal Bridge Journal, The Massachusetts Review, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Women Studies Quarterly, Voices from the Attic Anthology, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, and her work is forthcoming in several anthologies. Her poem Nina’s Fire: Frantic Go-Go was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently working on a collection of poetry exploring modern-day religious practices and there connection to African spirituality.
