A Vanishing Act (Three Poems)

Text:

© billybluej
A Vanishing Act

We exist in ruins, in the dust.
An eye blinks
and the world goes black.

What once could be recovered has now vanished.
Gaza is a prison camp, an open hole beneath the stars.
Children play in the rubble.

Isis bulldozes the ancient city of Nimrud;
its stone panels
have been defaced,

the walls of its ancient palace crushed
(a human head is severed from the body
of a winged bull).

The ocean fills with plastic bottles
that some day will return to us;
their labels gone, the messages inside lost.

A Country of Snow

A cardinal flaps its wings in a country of snow.
Its blood will not freeze.
Its red feathers are a revelation when all is white.

Nightmares exist only in the dark.
I must face the truth when the sun is high,
when the world is luminous and open.

I rummage around in a closet that is not my own.
I take a notebook and write these poems.
I must give them back. I must let them go.


The Black Madonna


The candles burn all night, the fumes from the flames
darken her face, her eyes and skin.
The living see her in flashes of light but it is rare.

The dead are often surprised by her power,
her gravitational pull.
More will come, more will rise from their beds,

riding on ocean waves,
riding on clouds blown from the other side
of the known world.

Many are startled by her love.
She was once just a rumor, a fairy tale
told to children in nursery school.

The candles burn all night, the fumes from the flames
darken her face, her eyes and skin.
More will come, more will rise from their beds.