Cartoon – Royal Issues
Tag: castleberry
Poem – It Sounds Dramatic (By R.T. Castleberry)
In this small, blue room— overheated, clenched by melancholy, I sit the night, guarding carnival goods, blood potions, the knife thrower’s serrated blades. Two buskers beach-walk a tune, harmonies muffled by wave’s insistence. A mathematical conceit of stars burning to earth enriches water’s lap against pier beams, a night sailor’s crossing. Taken on as apprentice, the alchemist insists […]
Read morePoem – January Binds The Days (By R.T. Castleberry)
Driving into a storm graying a cloud-mottled sky, mist climbs the building towers, umbrellas shudder below. A broken water line arcs an icy sidewalk, stoplights fail, freezing the intersections. The side street crosswalk cop spins and whistles, pauses cars as he passes the ladies on. Buses bounce a pothole lane, side panels milky with engine-melted ice. Street breezes worry […]
Read morePoem – Late, The Beauty (By R.T. Castleberry)
I stayed late in the street tonight, felt the breeze chill come up, saw the ice sky form, fog-dense. Shirt tail out, I rock back in my boots, scan the silhouette corners for bar room stagger, a skater’s weave. From a rooftop nest, long minutes of a heron’s call are quieted as a diesel Mercedes, a Fat Boy Harley […]
Read morePoem – All I Had Was Gone (By R.T. Castleberry)
I take a 12 month chip, a copy of The Iceman Cometh, drape myself in Union blue, cultivate a salesman’s grinning grip. A Valley trip lies ahead, road miles registered in a company car. Spring becoming summer, there’s a ghost in the garden, a feral cat, sensuous in the drying grass. I light a Tiparillo, block walk the […]
Read morePoem – Triptych (By R.T. Castleberry)
I. As suspicious of the morning as I am thankful for the night, I no longer follow bird flight, the sinking of the violated sun. Mouthing a dialect of short checks and charity wards, I stare at a wasting life, unhappy, aging, unhealthy. Sympathies have been trained out of me. The elegance in a sniper’s logic is what remains. […]
Read morePoem – Salvation Days (By R.T. Castleberry)
In the turn from wide to narrow streets seams in the street shudder my tires, loosed leaves flutter through the fog. Police on patrol secure the corner the five-columned church commands. Blocked by brush-wide blurs of contrails, the sun settles behind the storm. There’s a death in my house, a dearth of charity, a chastened child unwrapping his […]
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