Are you listening out there

my beautiful Gypsy Queen,

my muse, my poetry lover?

Do I have your perfectly lobed ear?

Are you out there?  Out there…

My echo crosses over a vacant stand of land.

All the countries have been broken down to counties,

the principalities  and municipalities, all dying amidst the storm.

The fields are filled with crops turned under,

the cows buckets are spilling over,

the supply chain we once knew is no longer there.

The grim statistics haunt the land,

tallying up death, an unsettling count of souls

with no place to go as the days seem to flow so slow.

The last snow blankets the land with a kind of sweet lace

as we fall from our place of grace.

The riverside is filled with old carpet remnants

and discarded tires as unlikely tenants.

There, where the muck and leaves huddle together,

little fish are breathing, no matter.

Not the infamous Treasure Island in mid-river chatters

with the voice of baby birds while

squirrels strip buds off trees in an alarming manner

as they fend for another generation.

The world changes once again.

A trance upon the thought

that all this might be just chance,

or has God brought a plague at hand

for we have not done our job

to be guardians of the land?

I’m led down a dream of open drawers

that act like steps, then slip away

like accordion folding doors,

wondering if anyone is out there?

Are we just one more clock that is out of time?

We’re only given a gift of lies.

In a fantasy of a dream

I’m skiing down origami  mountains,

searching for a sanctuary city,

for I am part criminal in my mind,

somehow I helped create all of this,

and I must be blamed.

I’m given to all the noise in a poet’s mind.

A feverish brow filled with birdlike fish,

fishlike birds, and a lot of strife,

but just one nod makes everything right.

Standing amidst a furrowed landscape,

shocked by life, as if In Munch’s painting, The Scream.

Terror is a dish served best alone

amidst the cusp of two dark roads,

and I hear a cry, is anyone out there?