Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonMissing a Dead Friend
There is something I want to say, and someone specifically I want to say it to. You. Of the 7.9 billion current sets of ears, none of them will do. None of them are you. The words to speak are here. Your ears to hear are not. Unpicked fruit hanging from a tree....
Fascist*
Railroad trains are fascist. Locomotives have no steering wheel. The train’s direction is determined by the one who laid the track, from despot to depot. No swerving. Nonconformity forbidden. The wheels constricted to roll straight, no deviation from the stated norm....
Days & Seasons
We are snow, women and men, made of water fallen from high through weak sun and cold sky. Vegetation forms facial features, sticks for arms, ice for bones, dense carbon forms an eye. The earth turns and tilts, turns and tilts. The turn gives us a day. The tilt carries...
Watching Cards Being Played
I know little about cards or their games, how to shuffle a deck in preparation for play, preventing prearrangements, aka cheating. The cards in a muddled mess, just like life. The game won or lost fairly, just like life. I once called a 4 of clubs a 4 of clovers....
Poet’s Notebook
Poetry removes the Do Not Disturb sign from the door of our imagination.
The Spoon
There’s a war raging in the Ukraine and I, enjoying the safety of my tomato soup lunch, notice the odd shape of a seldom used spoon, the bowl narrower and deeper than other spoons annoys my lips as it reaches and rests on my tongue. Embarrassing. What kind of man...
Galaxias Kyklos
Sitting on the beach just ahead of my wife and me, a young mother organizes her breasts for nursing. In a carrier, a baby, all mouth and appetite, waits wailing for the guarded ritual of release and relief, when the secreted nipple, heavy with milk, appears,, like our...
Sobbing
My friend told me she sobs watching the 6:30 news. From this I learned I am a man. I do not sob. A tank crushes an old man in a car. I do not sob. Bombs blast against babies. I do not sob. Millions flee home. I do not sob. A family dies on a street before cameras. I...
Journey to Kazakhstan
Yesterday I was in my favorite bookstore, Half Price Books looking shelf by shelf at the poetry section hoping something new had come in since my last visit. My eyes landed on a hard bound book, Contemporary Kazakh Literature: Poetry commissioned by the Ministry of...