Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonMcDonalds
Who do you think you are, Ronald McDonald, a clown or a god? The boons you offer, burgers and fries, a heaven of convenience beneath golden arches, have lured me away from more difficult heavens, from the moral weed patch paradise with its tempting fruit and modest...
Languaging
I got up this morning and crawled out of bed, with unspoken words loose in my head. I languaged the cat who did not language back but gave me a look I deciphered as love. To my wife I languaged a word of affection, and she languaged me back with a word of correction....
Alfalfa
Inside the farm house a farmer washes up after work in the field all day. I admire the care he gives to clutch grease, the grime dug from beneath fingernails, vigorous scrubbing of his knuckles and palms, the attention paid to cracked cuticles. I would like to have a...
The Dangerous Beauty of Art
In the back seat of a Moscow cab, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko recited, Monologue of the Beatniks to what he thought was an audience of three, as they rushed through Kruschev’s drab city. Our century has often told us lies imposing them on us like tolls...
Whole Holy
How could they not, the ancient ones, standing bare foot on wet sand, the night tight around them, the blood moon rising cold fire from the sea? How could they not know in deep cellular fathoms that the whole was holy? In all my lovely science, I must believe they...
The Ladder
A man needs help climbing up. His neighbor offers a ladder. It’s not a perfect ladder, but sturdy and strong and the man begins to climb. Another neighbor, the one on the sunny side of the street, comes over. “Let me help,” he says to the climbing man. “The ladder...
Chicago Homocide/2016
The town I grew up in (Denton, Montana, 1950's, pop. 500) has been murdered in Chicago in 2016. Five hundred souls given sentences punc,tuated by the grammarians of dea.th Period. No question. No question mar?k gun.s chalk line.s erasure.s Killings, intended or...
Prayer
I pray thee, most holy, mechanical & mercantile god, take us out of our perplexing time, toward sometime else & other. “Toward the complexity advancing at you?” a booming voice from heaven wants to know. No! Back!! Yesterday! The day before yesterday! Last...
Tree
lodge pole pine column of water column of light soil scrambling skyward cellulose sun sifter riddled with rain