Apostrophe to Rene

A poem by Rodney Richards


You wrote in Meditations

you are a human of substance

So am I Rene, and I am so

And I think, Rene,

and even if I didn’t

I may be human form also

containing more

than just a wandering thought

My components like

yours, body including all twelve systems

and Soul system as you pointed out

interwoven like Persian tapestry

yet unique

First the Rational Soul

or Mind and its powers:

Imagination

Thought

Comprehension

Memory and

Common Faculty

that unites and unties all our others

The five most cited or ten or twenty-one

senses of the body like

Sight, and Hearing and Touch and Smell

and the like

inseparably linked in living beings

Each intertwined with the Lodestones

of our Hearts,

the Seats of Power

and Energy unlimited

for the whole to partake

The Heart feeling,

touching,

thinking,

smelling

et al

The commonest faculty

of life itself

It’s motive power

But It is not a power

to be objectified

and sung about or sung to

or eulogized

No, No, much, much more

Its beat beats all the rest

A City of thrumming in and of Thyself

The god within

perhaps with capital G

Alive and thriving

inter-spliced

interwoven

intertwined

as streets and avenues

laid upon a barescape

And He has said

“I hath chosen from the whole world

the Cities of men’s hearts”


Rodney Richards lives with his wife in a rancher in the “very center of the Great State of New Jersey”.

He loves writing, and is the author of the memoir Episodes (ABLiA Media), available from Amazon.

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Night over Lower Manhattan

A poem by V. St. Clare


The paved beige stretched over, beneath

The careless sky, didn’t you see the street

Ran with cheap beer and perennial philosophy?

 

When that poor sod couldn’t even shuffle his way to work

Amid the signs and sights of this cold city

 

Nero’s circus wasn’t always round, and when it was there was far more blood.

I knew. I know. A thief in the night

The uncarved Wall stands between me and the street

He’s pocketing here and there, this and that, beast and birthright

 

But nobody told you he could climb; everyone at this open-air party

Sulks and skulks and trudges the timid notion that even Heaven plays

 

In tune with those double-dealers that straddle the sidewalks, selling

Souls and organic salads and plastic-wrapped theodicies.

 

Ninety-eight ways to go out with a bang in the televised jungle,

But you’ve stuck it to him, haven’t ya?

 

Our supple bodies stuck to the storm drains

A trillion lives and miles disgraced by everything under Heaven,

 

And among toils and boiling Heads that roll and rage below the quiet stars,

I’ve cast my vote to the thoughtless wide,

 

the careless Sky and the barren streets