Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonBird Brain
A bird sitting on the bird bath suddenly flies fifty feet away to a tree branch. I want to know, in what form of thought did the bird make up his mind to fly? What form of thought guided his flight until he got to where he wanted to go?
Night’s Question
The night wants to know, what are you going to do with its gift of darkness?
The Buddhist’s Dilemma
To want nothing more than to want nothing more.
At the Museum
At the railroad crossing we stop for a train. Box cars, hoppers, tankers, flat cars fly by. The train is no nonsense, practical as a hen. In a railyard, a vandal with an eye for color, the need for surfaces and cans of spray paint has transformed them into graffiti ...
My Father’s Boxes
Time in five boxes, my father’s life, photos, flags, postcards from far places letters to and from home, some I wrote to him, some he wrote to me, moments, not mementos, memories timed out now retimed.
Now and Then
I am looking at a family photo album , pictures of me as a child among the dead. My parents are dead, my grandparents are dead, my aunt and uncle are dead, my boyhood dog Frisky is dead. They were alive when the pictures were taken. I am alive but older now than they...
Military Weapons
Automatic rifles were not invented for accuracy. Ask the Russian Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov. Ask the American Eugene Morrison Stoner. Automatic weapons were invented for efficiency. Military efficiency. Mass killing on the battlefield. In civilian hands, they...
Gun Violence
Gun violence is a tautology Violence is the purpose of gun. Gun violence is equivalent to food nutrition. Nutrition is the chief purpose of food. Violence is the chief purpose of guns. A gun incapable of violence is a toy gun. The rationale for guns is killing....
Unfolding
We met as folded strangers letters addressed to each other’s names tightly enveloped eased open creased paper smoothed flat stories read then written on our unfolding lives