Verdad Magazine Volume 4
Spring 2008, Volume 4
Poetry by Jerry Garcia
Lexicon
My dream of words
At war in the cerebral forest
idioms explode into shrapnel,
words clash with branches,
small-legged animals dodge punctuation
and break ranks as the ground opens
to swallow the ashes of my wounded rhyme.
I stand naked at the window,
watch letters build
into well-dressed phrases
and attack like arrows.
I have not the muscle
to counter this assault.
I have become an old man
curled over rough hewn tables,
scratching rambling nonsense onto yellow tablets,
each stroke chafing wits
like abrasions in my mind.
In the cold, my speech freezes,
my blue winter skin jackets the forest trees,
I wrinkle and harden with the bark.
On Persephone's Travel Day
When I awoke this morning
my eyes opened freely
The rising sun had evaporated
the gray swirl of shipwreck dreams
I whistled into the shaving mirror
the shower stayed hot through my ablutions
City traffic had been dismissed
I did not spill coffee on my shirt
The phones did not ring
My heart did not stop
Oh Gods due praise and Gods who damn
preserve this day in the Bullfinch of my life.
For surely the hell that froze over today
will have thawed by the time I wake tomorrow.
BIO: Jerry Garcia is a poet, photographer, filmmaker and native of Los Angeles. His poetry and photography have been seen in Andwerve, Lily: Literary Review, poeticdiversity, Lounge Lit Anthology, and The November 3rd Club. He has read in the Newer Poets/ALOUD Series at the Los Angeles Public Library and has also been a featured writer at Beyond Baroque, The World Stage, Rhapsodomancy and Skylight Books. He serves as a co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets and art editor for www.poeticdiversity.org.