pris campbell | 3 (more) poems

Randy old men

watch fresh young flesh toasting
on towels at Lake Worth Beach.
They remember when their songs
rose like the waves lapping
at frosted pink toenails, at perfectly
oiled legs rising to meet at the crotch
of barely there, wannabe bathing suits.

Old women wait for them now,
women with breasts swinging like metronomes,
bodies stretch-scarred by merciless years.
They forget old women dream, too,
miss lustful glances, flesh pressed
against theirs, moonlit nights when kisses
still held the demons at bay.

Sunday Means Forty-Second Street

Kneeling in the Forty-Second street alley,
cord tight above elbow bend,
vein swollen and ready,

Mother, on his arm,
watches, patiently waits.

Sundays it’s always the Square,
flashing sign drawing his eyes
briefly towards heaven.

His church.
She always told him to go.

Hard to remember her clearly now.
Life eats his childhood daily,
fogging memories of a figure in blue,
scent of gardenias in damp air,
heels clattering over hardwood floor.

She would like it that he comes here.
Everybody needs remembrance
of a mother’s cool hand.

Until Darkness Takes Us

Over the smoggy horizon, Atlas quits,
hands in his walking papers.
His shoulders throb from shoring up
too many sidewalks, highways,
cloned houses and condos,
pressing the guts from earth’s belly.

His ears ring from the screams
of newborns in foodless deserts
and cheap housing developments;
from the sighs of the homeless
camped over heat vents or
laid out on park benches;
from the wails of penned cattle
and hormone plump chicken
who no longer know what it’s like
to run free.

Bewildered, we sink through the cracks
in this abandoned balloon.
Our hearts thrum distress signals
into the blackness. We send out search parties,
offer a hefty raise, still hold out hope
for one more Olympian reprieve
before the last spin is spun.

Much more on Pris Campbell can be found on her web site by clicking here…

0 Replies to “pris campbell | 3 (more) poems”

  1. Pris,
    These three poems are fantastic!
    You know me well enough to know my favorites were the last two. Especially “Until Darkness Takes Us”.
    All three of them struck chords deep inside me. I think it’s the best stuff I’ve read of yours. You know how my mind works.

  2. Hi Philip
    Yes, I knew those would appeal to you with your concern for the environment and the homeless. Thanks for taking time to comment.

  3. Pris, Your poems have a way of reaching into a soul, pulling out a chunk of it, so that one can hold it, examine it, and come through having learned something new about themselves. Wonderful writing.

  4. I used to LOVE the 42 nd street automat

    when in late 40’s-through 50’s

    nothing like The Hayden Planetrarium and the

    over to those little windows…

    a glass of REAL chocolate milk and a piece of Bostton Cream Pie!

  5. Mouse, thank you.

    Ed, someone once said that if you stood at Times Square eventually everyone you knew would pass by. I wonder if you were there when I was, when ‘he’ was…

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