Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonWittgenstein’s Silence
I am looking for a word that speaks what cannot be spoken.
Found in Translation
I learn from past centuries. And why not? They knew a lot. I am not bigoted, not against the dead, not against quickless bodies, not against minds soaked with unfamiliar alphabets. The long gone teachers still teach; Ovid - things are and are not what they seem,...
Baptism
I was ten and new, out with town boys, my knowledgeable friends, singing exquisitely lewd songs, under the echoing Wolf Creek bridge, songs about girls and beer, things we knew little about but didn’t know we knew little and wanted to know more. We were comrades in...
By the Numbers
When does so much and so many become too much and too many?
Grief
The flowers of grief are bitter and sweet. They taste of storms, marigold pollen, fire, home, and distances. The bee flies far from the hive on its twofold task of nectar and pollination. The flower blooms its spring-long sigh then shrivels in summer’s heat. The honey...
A CATALOG OF SILENCES
It’s quiet in the library, few decibels among Dewey’s decimals. Bone insulated brains with holes allowing smell, sound and light willingly concede to facts and refined opinions. We read in agreement with rules that create a culture of hush, promoting an enrichment of...
beLIEVE by beHAVING
All day long I g*d, attempting good, I g*d, attempting love, I g*d, righting wrongs, I g*d, my wrongs, our wrongs, mending and amending harms, insults, offences, recovering damages, I g*d. Sometimes repairs work. Sometimes repairs impair. I’m not that good at good. At...
The Moons
There are moons, most yellow, some blue, slivered, half, and whole, all lit with another light, the sun, which is down, still shines, loaning light to night
Dream
I fell asleep and remembered my mother's dying. She lay head high in the tilted bed a sled for the long slow slide into sleep. The sheets, white, a field of snow drifting and silencing. Deer thin as arrows hungry on the hill that was my mother's body their ribs a...