Author: Don Morgan

My mother is at the kitchen sink in a beige quilt housecoat,
“Oh, the hummingbirds.” She says eating a peach and struggling with the juice,
“They fight.”
Burning bright,
eucalyptus half wing into the bushes.

at this time of the morning the downtown streets and alleys are
hung with curtains of darkness, lonely sounds probe their depths

outside the window, this diner’s relentless fluorescents chafe the walls, sidewalks outside with a bloodless methamphetamine heat that chars everything but I haven’t the time to look

I race to finish my work on this giant pad of gridded paper
a matrix of time I search for the correction
factors realized during these
long empty
nights

sleeplessness is evaporating my life
my eyes burn but I can not close them and I hurt

the night this damn night fills the streets outside this window with toxic black and it will not go away
the correction factors will let me see the sun again bring you back to me
but they are so complex

but there is no escape for me unless I solve this abominable enigma

and I must get out of this eternal bitter coffee black night it is the only way
no bluing morning come to save me no sweet breeze no birds to rend the weak light no cicada to chatter start the day

no hope

Listen to Katya
hear her words hover near her heart
cup sorrow to her breast
falter, stagger, hint at an anguish and despair
that is far more than one can bear

she stumbles through her message losing her balance
thoughts teeter on the back of a chair and tumble to the floor
picking them up she hesitates, embarrassed what can she say
the timid advance, the final hopeless offering
it is all there
listen to her,

she is saying something

I watched the battles,
Heard its sorrows.
Now,
my eyes sear,
I have come to see as the wind feels.

My friends speak to me
Using words bent,
Screwed and
Wound through
Steel forming machines.

I answer with
Doorknobs,
Tire nuts and
Spaghetti ladles;
It is all the same to me.

Buildings,
Walls angrily
Ripped away leaving the raw
Skin so close to blood
Tender and vulnerable 
Now, facing the wind sun
Rain.

The poet moans in loud, sometimes angry,
Doldrums
Blindly dropping each word, like sweat,
Refuse. His voice, a
Monotone of sorrow.

Broken bones,
Walls, machine gray
Mortars of old replicas, old fortifications, old lies
Now stand visible and repulsive. A Day,
A simple day gone past.

And I cannot see beyond
The bitter, bitter sun persimmon.
Just another whisky and off it is to the woods
Where I had been the night before and
The night before that.

But all that is left is the campfire,
That burnt out campfire and peat moss.
A damp forest and
A figure where once a woman lay.
She carried a lantern,
A bouncing light in the distant wood.

O free me from this expansion of time
That holds, in a single breath, my body floating
Above the complex doom of Hades’
Stars and scars, infinite remorse and pain.
Give me the peace to lie down at last and be free.

Lost Coast Review Summer 2014

In my dream,
snow hangs
beneath the streetlight
unmoving, while
white haired Banshees
ride the whorls
scream in silence.

Run, Red Dress, run
Run to him

Down the hall,
‘Round the corner,

Through the door
To his bed.

Let your tongue dance
On his cheek and lips

Dance slow wind
Speak hot breath

Bear him away on waves of kisses and
Deliver him again and again.

Lost Coast Review Fall 2014

Her smile and those stars.
If one could only sit amid these many lights without feeling cold.
If one could only do this.

(Lost Coast Review Fall 2014)

With my eyes, I do not see everything.
There is so much in the time between isn’t
And is that I will never know.

Wondrous times of becoming,
Inchoate and virgin,
Mysterious and energetic.

But among us, I know there are those that do participate
In the birth of dawn, rising in the breath between heartbeats,
Each marvelous morning.

And witness the shift of winter to spring
In the way light changes focus in the
Prism of the sky.

As for me,

Last night it snowed,
This morning it rained,
This afternoon while my bedroom window burned
With the sun’s brilliant metallic fire
The trees out back unfolded their first green buds.

In hours, there will be more.
Tomorrow there will be leaves
And in a few days I will not be able to see through

The trees at all.

A version of this poem appeared in Lost Coast Review Fall 2014

winter come
spring come
summer come fall
moments pass with no name
when comes love?
when comes birth?
death?

It is not a secret, she whispers
whispers in, whispers out
secrets in, secrets out
when do we begin to cry?
when do we begin to know?
when do we begin to love?
move closer,
she whispers
But you are next to me
and yet so far away, how
do I reach you, touch you?
create
fold upon fold
petal upon petal
leaf upon leaf, infinite and
forever
But are there not dangers?
Will we not be
handed off in the darkness to
mysterious rivers that
carry us in, carry us out?

unwrap
the changing tides
each changing, each changing each
today becomes tomorrow
to reveal the
moments
breathing in, breathing out
in each others arms
in each others love
magic in, magic out
rapt in love
wrapped in sex
flowing in, flowing out
creating tides that swell the universe
pulling us together, pulling us apart,

she whispers
like flowers blooming, petals unfolding
swelling the tides,
we unfold petal by petal
complete as we were in the
beginning

you touch me
my thoughts
my dreams
slip from my fingers
it is not a secret, she whispers
holding me in her arms
breathing the words in, breathing the
words out
in that perfect moment.