by Arcassin Burnham


I still forgive through the trees of what is relevant,
life's a game,
the air is polluted,
your world leaders are evil,
Trying to forget the past but noticed I already did,
some humans tell tales,
poverty goes higher,
the gas prices increase,
Delusional people maybe your parents in a heartbeat,
racist kind emerges,
kids get flu shots,
we are all in a mans world of corruption.

Believe me , don't believe me, only heed me.

By Arcassin Burnham

I wonder here from this seat with dimensions on my mind like I got a one track road , ain't no way to go,
But I smile again.

I wonder how someone could ever love a person when they really lied and told them that they'll be there forever, yeah whatever,
I smile again.

I wonder how many times could take when your parents always say that you will make a mistake in their eyes,
I hope you smile again.

I wonder will I ever see the hands of God in front of me on a new plane of actuality,
Heaven will make me smile again.

On the country roads,
Angels come to life,
Is it time to spend,
What to sacrifice?
Finding happiness,
While thinking too much,
Trying to make a mends,
But you ain't had enough,
Instead you smile again.

Could you love a poetess
Who hangs on every word
and scribbles down the nuances
of all she's ever heard

Could you love a poetess
Who stumbles into black
then begs you for a candle
to guide her slowly back

Could you love a poetess
if someone clipped her wings
and wonder at her silence
when she no longer sings

Could you love this poetess
with all her broken parts
For she could love so fiercely
should someone touch her heart.

Can I tell you how seriously I take this poem!
_
Could the sun be
    just
    a hole up there—
    that if I could leap
    would enter that breach of light

Someone!
   Throw me a line!
   Give me a reason
   There’s never enough
   in this life of breathing!

Someone!
   Explain why dreams roll a soul
   toward the cliffs of day
   Wakes to ache
   then stuffs its mouth
   with necessary same
  
Inhale—
   button shirt—brush hair
Exhale—
   necessary glance in the mirror
   (yes, still there)    

A lifetime!
   in a shallow instant’s stiff clear water
   (Yeah— still there)  
   in endless caverns of tired eyes
   above mouth still trying
   to say SOMETHING!  
   from ever smaller eternities
   in the glass-flat empty....

Please! Someone explain!
   this draw of breath
   one forcing itself upon another's
   life
   of beating —
   Violence in my chest!

Why hearts don’t sleep—

and I wind up watching
again and again—till
I am the ******...

...Morning lies
   in the mists of a humid *****
   who moans and sweats
   and boils her hips—
   and I wind up watching!?

“Will someone please…!"

   ...and I wind up watching
   bedspread, bed sore, death bed
   till you’re breathing easy
   when she sits and picks
   her collapsed bouffant
   damning the makeup
   that got crushed in the sheets

…Morning
Lies--

   with no expectancy
   both tired of knowing...

   ...The Devil lost his balance
   in my presence one night

...tired of knowing—

THE WILL!  
THAT WILL!

  ...walk away
   or continue to play

   I could open this screen!
   watch the world STEP BACK!
                                 SLAP FLAT!
   as trees and dwellings flush like quail
   to prop their tottering panic
   against the blue—

You—assume composure...
   compose assumptions
   Await my next—

Move like a spy


1990


Take careful note:  

Why I don’t play chess or any other game
for that matter.    
    
“...and when you're really out there
the windows all have opened onto nothing...
Death having long since-- left the scene.
When you get really out there
it's all--
and nothing…”

Next to her silks petticoats
my mother’s  brown stocking lay there
on the bed: on the iron board was her
Crispy iron Sunday dress,
on the dresser was her favorite perfume
and talcum powder. And this meant only thing
it was Sunday morning service:

This morning I remember her routine,
I never got into the habit of the military habits
My free will soul would never allow it:

I remember passing the Police exams
As I was about to go for my training
My mother discourage me from going
She based it all on my small petite figure

Her exact words: you think you can fight
Off those big men: Those criminals out there
In the big streets.. I never got to prove her wrong
So, I turn down the police academy recruit training:

And trade in a trip to South America in nineteen eighty three:
I remember that last night before I got on America Airline

My last old year’s night party at the Hilton Hotel,
The loud music, the co-workers, and there I was with
Mixed emotions of being Happy and Sad:

I wish they had a word for being happy and sad
at the same time because that's what I feel every time I was with him:
my other true love< E.B
I still have that **** gold and black spaghetti straps dress
I wore that night, each time I fallen back
To my old habits.. I would take it out and take
One more look at it…and whisper my past
And ask myself why I am holding on to this
Dress for so long: we didn’t had the internet or the Bajan tube
To look back on:  but by seeing that dress. I saw the younger me
With vivid  moments of happiness, and bad decisions:

Today I lay here in my bed with my memories
As I divided them in happiness and sadness sections
Have I proceed with my plans in law enforcement
Would I be alive today to write this poem
Have I not attended the office party
Would the scars of that night still frets me
At each place, in time some of us stop
To picked a rose, or even smell a rose
That why I love this quote:

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: ‘It is the time you have wasted for
your rose that makes your rose so important.’, Anne B...

because, it have seem like I have made some loser that was in my life seem important:
Did I do it for him or for me? Now that is the question..

And i don't own a piano to blame for my drinking
But there's something about an Irish summer sky
That smiles like Luke Kelly with a tear in his eye
Ballads of clouds float over a burning blue desire
You could travel the world having never got higher  
A slab of Polish cans cobbled from a cities loose change
This place is our kingdom, this place is a cage
Never feeling so trapped, never living so free
As when I set you down at our favored midday tree
Where a charm of magpies promise silver and gold
And us two more, with secrets long since told
Effing and blinding for all that we've missed
Soon to forget how long its been since we've kissed
And i swear to you darling, we'll never see the dark
This here sun, stay true to us beggars of Arthur's Quay Park

The space I have
needs someone to fill up
and found none so far.

I cursed the man for invading
into the May notes of casuarinas
on a space all my own
before the sun was alluringly soft
on the tender hearts by the sea
finding love in whispered notes
sheltered by the swaying trees.

Found many and none
and their vacuous echoes
question where I failed
or was there precious silence
speaking it wasn't a void
that I ravaged into sands
of futile recollections and laments.

The mercury was falling
over the man as I left him
and soon the creed of hope
would break in like evernew waves
around a vacuum of empty space.

When the world comes crashing in,
Washing over you like the tide;
When you have nothing left to win,
And want to give up on your fight.

When you can't see a spark of light,
After days of pouring rain;
When you keep on saying you're alright,
While your heart is forced to bane.

When you have no one to hold onto tight,
Because life has left on you its mark;
When you can't look on the bright side,
I will sit with you in the dark.

she sees it in the laughter of children
feels the vibrations of a song
hears it in the silence of the darkest night.
always a blue sky
a sunny day
the sails of her ship
billowing in a west wind

she is a shotgun and a prayer
would like 3 cats
a dog
the cabin in the woods with cable tv

she dreams of the open field where
the white horse always waits
ready to make the run
to a meadow high in the distance


daughter

The air suffused
with warm sweat
traced in humors  
blood-stuffed vapor
at body temp
leaking, aching
engorged clouds
drop
lop
lap at back, my shoulders, neck
No wind, no thunder
drives them, harsh
Just sopped
they plop into cotton creases  
Pumped
out
into love's still hungry
art
– eries

Cover deck chairs
Reel in the line

Clothes stick to skin and wanting in
so filled and touching
everywhere
ever-so saturated

I want it sated

I want it raining