With the Curtains Drawn

Because of incessant visions
I allow myself the dignity of reprieve.
It’s a makeup exam
a month after the semester
when what was to be learned
either is or isn’t.

When the dogma strikes
during midnight paranoid vigils,
the doubts dissuade all passion
in a ruthless sense of escape.
My legs have no feeling,
but they can see.
My arms have turned to wings.

In the final hour of night
I never really know sleep.
Can’t find the netherworld
of holy intrinsic satoris.
Can’t feel the numbness
or the aura created by same.

Carter Monroe © 2005


Experiential Belief

The short and long of it is
that I’ve seen both
in some weird reflective, tortured vein.
Yesterday pops up too often
with a switchblade that made it through
airport security to terrorize me with memory.

It’s not that things were that bad.
I just couldn’t see the good
until midlife hit me on the bridge of the nose
with the weight of an old time skillet
being swung by some person of authority
who had finally had enough.

Strange how we pass through it all
with nothing in common.
Growing less in number,
but somehow unifying and forgetting the differences
that labeled us for decades
in someone’s concept of caste.

The daily scan of the obituaries
is preeminent to the future crossword puzzles
and the little things we missed
will soon be all that is.
We’ll be thankful for really great pimento cheese
and six hours of good, hard sleep.

At most stops, it’s easiest to forget.
Nothing to do about it now.
The time when grabbing life
with teeth in grit to change the course
was something that went in and out
like the nocturnal blinking at an airport.

Peace of mind was yesterday.
A thing that happened before the back burner
became the front.
It’s all about healing bruises now
and knowing that the only Bodhisattva
is the one you see in the mirror.

Carter Monroe © 2005

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    Carter Monroe lives, works, and writes in the provinces. His poetry contains vivid imagery that often delves into the subconscious. His novel, Journey, was published in January 2001. He participated in a conspiratorial effort with Robert Canipe and Tim Peeler entitled Writers on the Storm. Both of these books can be purchased at most major book chains as well as the traditional internet outlets. Recent poems and stories have appeared in Poems Niederngasse, Poethia, Third Lung Review, Thunder Sandwich, The Americana Poetry Consortium, Lost and Found Times, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. He has a new collection titled THE NEW LOST BLUES - Selected poems 1999-2005 coming forth in the next couple of months from Thunder Sandwich Publishing.

• Sitting in With the Sun review by Jim Chandler Thunder Reviews •
"Sitting in with the Sun" available at Rank Stranger Press

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