It was a Sunday wrecked by rain
and the howl of my neighbor’s miniature
poodle who thought he was a German shepherd.
I found a yellowed journal in the cellar.
A lost toy was dropped down forty years
ago to a grass patch in this cellar.
The blue hair mold rabbit pawed until it had
invaded Jeremiah’s cellar.
This place of grey stones encircled is Stonehenge –
they call it. Have your merry dances around
a “monument” used by sellers.
Green acacia tree’s blossoms fall down on the Shogun’s palace
in mornings of Fall. Frantic children run about
as they are freed from its cellar.
Dust trodden path baked brown
by the sun
carries carts and horse
through my master’s city.
A militant bursts in.
Finds what he needs in the cellar.
American Revolution of blue and red
smothered in smoke from guns.
I remember before, when we’d gather
to play games and drink ‘til dawn in my cellar.
This morning we run forty miles
to what were our father’s hunting grounds.
For lunch is turned milk from a hollowed bull’s horn
kept clean in the hut’s dug-out cellar.
Our clothes are stained in lead from
shooting Ruger pistols too early
this morning. Hope we didn’t wake any Semite’s
still hiding after War in the cellar.
Whatever. You picked your road
now pave it as I lock up in the rain.
Tax dollars by the million sent to reconstruct
our nest now a defunct cellar.
Avoid conquest laughed the dirty man
to my even filthier wife
preparing for sex
as I cowered helpless in a four foot by eight cellar.
Do the dance. Do it NOW!
We won’t leave until I see the twisty-Twist!
Cyclone squabbles all about my head. Nice to see you
teddy bear coiled in the cellar.
The chemo pushed follicles up
from her scalp and took the place of her
skins pigments. I closed my book
of thoughts kept sealed by vice in the cellar.
Originally written for my Creative Writing class in the Summer of 2010, this was a Ghazal style poem at first, but it has since been modified for flow.
