Embracing the Collision
Misery touches personal pain and madness feels loss.
I’m stranded in summer moonlight near an empty field.
Red hawks sleeping till dawn.
Water flowing from a nearby creek.
You’ve lit out for Oklahoma City to see your grandmother,
Looking for Cherokee superstitions.
I’m left behind with a laminated map of Mississippi,
A state we agreed that they’d hang us first,
Before we’d ever get there.
South of Oaxaca
“We can’t make it here anymore”
James McMurtry
South of Oaxaca
Near Puerto Escondido
Vince’s uncle, a Vietnam veteran,
Offers his Mexican villa
For soul repair.
After waiting for over a year
He finally gets his VA disability check.
Packs up his old van.
Fixes a bagged lunch for his two kids.
Heads for Oregon instead
Where he can afford
A three bedroom apartment.
His ex-wife in California
leaves him hung out to dry
like the prevailing drought.
He enrolls
At Oregon State University.
Sets his sights on a telecommunications degree.
Wants to write his war memoir,
Perhaps make a documentary film.
Discovers he’s been a fall guy, a fool, a patsy
In a colossal corporatist’s take over.
Regrets he’d enlisted
In Bush’s Iraq war.
Starts categorizing his notes
Into files of unspeakable truths.
Man Leaning Against the Sky
A man leaning against the sky
Stumbles fool heartedly forward
Into the shallow abyss of his mind.
Lost in memory’s lament.
He hears the desperate cry of his heart.
Fading fast from a lack of light,
Becoming a muted muffle
In the cold, dark night,
His black hole, his soul lost.
He has nothing left to offer the world.
His hands crippled in age
Have less to hold on to now.
His love for her, in the absence of her,
A still life memory.
Victor Henry's poetry and prose poems have appeared in small press magazines, anthologies, and e-zines, such as Slipstream, The Paterson Literary Review, Nobody Gets Off The Bus: The Viet Nam Generation Big Book, Vietnam War Poetry, The Homestead Review, Red River Review, Dead Snakes, Misfitmagazine, I am not a Silent Poet, Your one Phone Call, and In Between Hangovers, among others. His book What They Wanted was published by Future Cycle Press in 2015.
Misery touches personal pain and madness feels loss.
I’m stranded in summer moonlight near an empty field.
Red hawks sleeping till dawn.
Water flowing from a nearby creek.
You’ve lit out for Oklahoma City to see your grandmother,
Looking for Cherokee superstitions.
I’m left behind with a laminated map of Mississippi,
A state we agreed that they’d hang us first,
Before we’d ever get there.
South of Oaxaca
“We can’t make it here anymore”
James McMurtry
South of Oaxaca
Near Puerto Escondido
Vince’s uncle, a Vietnam veteran,
Offers his Mexican villa
For soul repair.
After waiting for over a year
He finally gets his VA disability check.
Packs up his old van.
Fixes a bagged lunch for his two kids.
Heads for Oregon instead
Where he can afford
A three bedroom apartment.
His ex-wife in California
leaves him hung out to dry
like the prevailing drought.
He enrolls
At Oregon State University.
Sets his sights on a telecommunications degree.
Wants to write his war memoir,
Perhaps make a documentary film.
Discovers he’s been a fall guy, a fool, a patsy
In a colossal corporatist’s take over.
Regrets he’d enlisted
In Bush’s Iraq war.
Starts categorizing his notes
Into files of unspeakable truths.
Man Leaning Against the Sky
A man leaning against the sky
Stumbles fool heartedly forward
Into the shallow abyss of his mind.
Lost in memory’s lament.
He hears the desperate cry of his heart.
Fading fast from a lack of light,
Becoming a muted muffle
In the cold, dark night,
His black hole, his soul lost.
He has nothing left to offer the world.
His hands crippled in age
Have less to hold on to now.
His love for her, in the absence of her,
A still life memory.
Victor Henry's poetry and prose poems have appeared in small press magazines, anthologies, and e-zines, such as Slipstream, The Paterson Literary Review, Nobody Gets Off The Bus: The Viet Nam Generation Big Book, Vietnam War Poetry, The Homestead Review, Red River Review, Dead Snakes, Misfitmagazine, I am not a Silent Poet, Your one Phone Call, and In Between Hangovers, among others. His book What They Wanted was published by Future Cycle Press in 2015.
