Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonReading Chair
Winter, 2017. I trudge through a white crystal crust to feed the birds black sunflower seeds and suet. My reading chair in the garden by the rosebush and hibiscus is soft with snow. Last summer when I read there, the roses were in full blood bloom. The hibiscus in...
Repair
The house is in disrepair. There are termites in the attic which explains water in the basement. Let us decorate with pictures of sound houses, pasting blueprints and architectural renderings over cracked plaster. The nails pound in easily. Think of wood as damp...
Underway
I. We are born into a world that is underway. Procedures have been established. Methods. Techniques. Protocols. Modus operandi. Therefore, start with a stop. Linger and assess. II. If you take the way of computation, you get a numbered life. In this numeric version of...
Kristallnacht November 9-10, 1938
Windows, once transparent, now splintered glass. Night’s supple, fluid dark hardened to stone. The virus of hate was deliberately released. A plague of permission broke out, a moral cholera, weakening a resistant ‘no’, favoring an infectious ‘yes.’ As the disease...
Timeline
Yesterday the future arrived a day early. Tomorrow the past will arrive a day late. That puts me today in an awkward and untimely situation.
The Busy Greats
I wanted to hang out with the greats, the shakers, the breakers, the ones who would beat me toward better; So I called L. Beethoven, but he was occupied writing sounds he heard we couldn’t hear, So I called van Gogh, but he warned me saying if I got too close I would...
Hard
To be born is hard and to be hard born is to be thrown into a hardening world. All is congealing, little flex, less flow, the water - frozen, the air - frozen, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen icy to the touch. Ideas, once fluid, are steel, cold ruby rivers frigid and...
Nothing
Some poems say nothing comprehensible at all and the poet is exactly right to direct us to this vacancy. Is this the vacuum nature abhors or is it something - this emptiness, a void not to be avoided? Is nothing a gift, something in and of itself, an opening – a...
Celebrating my Father
Genesis I saw my father's house in the country, Adams County, Ohio. He was born there in his parents' bed after the harvest. written in 1973 _________________________________________________________________________ Today is my father Rev. Fred Taylor Gaston's...