Knights of the Air

 —Poetry by Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA
—Public Domain Photos Courtesy of Joe Nolan

 

 

PUSHED FROM A BROKEN NEST

Grow wings,
Little bird
And fly,
Now that you’re
Pushed out
Of the nest.

Learn to fly
On your own,
Little bird.
There was trouble
Inside the nest.

No one will
Come to rescue
Those who fall
From troubled nests

And though
You might
Return to complain,
It’s often true
That broken people
Did their broken-best.

 

 

 

BLURRED BY SHADOW

Shadow murders definition,
Blurring all the edges,
Angles, depth and
Ends with rumination,
Concerning blurry blotches,
Unrefined,
Resembling fading memories
Of family-life left behind,
Especially in tragedy—
Dreams that never
Made the stage—
Grief-encounters
Wrought with rage
That never could
Clearly be sustained
In mind.

 

 

 

 

 

BEFORE A FLOOD

Who has gathered flowers
In the rain
To alleviate her pain
Before a flood arrives?

Sunken virtues
Undermine
Noblest wishes
They wash away.

We lose our kind
In the twisted virtues
Of the mind—
Reason betrayed
And worse than that
Is that
We deny
The mercy
That liberation
Would convey.

 

 

DRAGONS

One often wonders
Why dragons run amok?
Why, behind their dragon-fire,
They are thunder-struck

With flight and blight
And ruin, overnight,
Laying waste to
Farm-fields,

But dragons
Don’t listen
To reason,

They belch
And blast out
Their fire,

They fly as they will
Let out shrieking-shrill
That horrifies
In the night,

Because
Dragons are dragons—
Empowered creatures
Of Hell,
Sent to the Earth
To terrorize peasants—
Remind them of
The Devil’s vengeful worth.

 

 

 

 

A KNIGHT OF THE AIR

There’s many things
Human beings can’t do,
Like jump through hoops,
When they’ve been
Dismembered.

It’s hard to mount
A warrior-steed
To ride off
Into battle
When your skull
Is already crushed
Under the weight
Of an enemy’s mace.

The Red Baron
Crashed his plane
When he died
From an enemy’s bullet,
But his brain
Was already smashed
From a previous encounter,
So he was no longer
A Knight of the Air
That he had been before.

It’s horrible
How the best are ground down
Before they crash in flames
Into the ground.

 

 

 

 

TO ONLY DRINK RED WINE

An ice-cube
Melted
In my drink.

I did not
Drink it
Fast enough.

It was covered
In feathers
And fluff.

I’ve had enough
Of all that stuff—
Feathers, fluff and rainbows.

There were swamp-weeds
In my drink.
I must have ordered
A Mojito.

You can tell
It came from Cuba—
Someplace only
Hemingway
Could love
Or maybe from Key West—
Someplace with lots
Of forsaken derelicts
Who don’t seems to care
If there’s nondescript weeds
Floating in their drinks.

But I, for one,
Had had enough
Of all kinds of
Feathers and fluff,
Weeds on top of rainbows,
All floating in my drinks
And went home to have a beer
When I noticed
A tranny
Staring out at me
From a blue colored-can
And decided,
Then and there,
To only drink red wine.

 

 

 

GRATITUDE FOR GENEROSITY

There’s no price
To repay
Generosity.

It’s not the money
Or the effort
That was spent,

But the good intention,
Combined with all
The things that
Were conveyed.

There’s no
Monetary value
To repay—
Just your gratitude.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

True generosity is an offering; given freely and out of pure love. No strings attached. No expectations. Time and love are the most valuable possession you can share.

—Suze Orman

___________________

—Medusa, with apologies to everyone, including Joe Nolan, for today's late posting (technological difficulties), and many thanks to Joe for today’s fine poetry~!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reminder that
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
and Tim Kahl will read in Camino
today, 2pm.
For info about this and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
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LittleSnake gets his dragon on~