Poets Online Archive

The Sound of

March 2016

SILENCE
I stop in the path
by the lake, early
fog fusing earth
& sky and only
the sound of a
Whip-poor-will
off in the woods.

For a moment
not a sound.

N O T H I N G

Robert Miller



THE SOUNDS OF BRAZEN DREAMING

I hear the sounds of brazen dreaming, the gods have sent harpies to wake and break our eardrums! Angry Birds caw, creeping cats screech, doleful dogs wail, ugly oaf ogres trumpet, and there’s nary a strumpet to kiss and soothe our aching cochleas, yikes almighty, there’s bugs in the sugar, police on the corner, mortgage on the car! And those damnable prose-like earwigs burrowing past the sense and solitude in our minds! When what we need is poetry! I hear America singing but in 2016 it’s not Walt’s song, it’s the stinging dissonance of Realpolitik drowning out the whispers of wisdom, and if we don’t wake up soon from this brazen dream we’re in for a somnambulism of cackles and squawks and blood oozing and snot dripping and vomit dribbling in a disgraceful mockery of this, the greatest society the world has seen!

R. Bremner



THE GREEN GROTTO

In Jamaica’s St. Ann’s Parish,
There’s a suite of limestone caves
That serves as a tourist attraction.
Half way in, our guide points out a black niche and tells us,
That during sugar plantation days,
Runaway slaves would lie face down in the dark,
Listening to the screech of bats,
Waiting for the searchers and their snarling dogs.

Centuries later, an entrepreneur
Turned these same caves into a disco,
Where young tourists could drink and dance the night away,
Chipping off pieces of stalagmites
As keepsakes of the quick sex they had
In the same shadowy recess
Where the slaves once hid.

Near the exit, he points to a low rock ledge
That when struck with the palm of a hand,
Sends a sound like a beating heart,
Reverberating through the caves and tunnels,
With all the possible sadness that entails.

Ron Yazinski



SOUNDS

The waves crash near the coconut clump
where the ocean comes up to kiss the sands
of the beach secluded from touristy feet
and talk to the matted brown kid about
long boats, fishing, laughter, boisterous dad.
the young kid gets lulled by these sounds and
dreams of a shack, a coughing mother and siblings
eaten by a hungry typhoon one horrible day.
Sounds!
They often remind of things that will not be
otherwise remembered!
Waves---crashing, hissing, singing
Their own symphony that resurrects the dead
For the sad orphan and others orphaned of many
sweet possessions.
Sounds
both sweet
And bitter
Comforting
Terrifying
For a mind on a rewind mode.

Sunil Sharma



SPEECHLESS

A bluesy, rock musician
plays his guitar under the
blazing august sun.

Between the chords.
I hear the beads of
sweat forming on his brow.

The sigh in his frown
echoes off the blue purple
backdrop of mountains.

I wait, I watch, I listen. but
the music swallows him whole.
No words escape him and

all I can hear is the
soft rusting of a breeze
bending the willow.

Marie A. Mennuto-Rovello



​PIANO SONATA NO. 14 IN C SHARP MINOR, OPUS 27, NO. 2

Almost a fantasy
but
really emotion from sitting bedside
at a friend's untimely death.
Then,
after the composer's death,
a critic compares it
the effect of moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne.
Listening tonight,
one year since,
and a New Moon that is no moon at all,
the sound is dark.
Stillness in the black water.
For you, I hear what he must have heard.
Almost a fantasy
but


Pamela Milne



DOWN THE LINE

It’s a boy thing
this clickety-clack, clickety-clack
all sorts ’a boys
right down the line
and back again
from diapered toddler
to arthritic codger
from suited gent
to aproned cook
all feel the sound
in that special place that sparks a smile
and when there is a head of steam
and that whistle blows
they all just know
that this clickety-clack, clickety-clack
pulses and echoes
just for them.

Rory Galbraith



A GREAT WHIRRING

the sound of a train - yes
in song, in prose, in poetry -
who doesn't respond ? I do
but more than the whistle
or rumble of the iron beast
I am pawn of another
far off entreaty -
at once dumbstruck
yet set in motion when
I hear a siren. Police,
ambulance or fire truck.
I think it may come from
too much cop shop
and ER television
at a tender age.
But before you pass
a verdict of ghoulish
hint of a damaged brain
my heart also races
at the elevated chirp
of blackbird after rain

Ilona Grieland



SOUND OF SILENCE

That insistent baah-ing just at dawn –
the call of lost, of coyotes
that ceased their howling on rimrock
above the creek, and came
marauding down to steal a lamb;
or else an owl, silent
in flight, who lifted off the lamb
leaving not a trace, not even
a scent-trail for our dog to follow.
The suddenly lambless ewe
won’t cease her crying. Baah bash
baah repetitious as a clock
ticks. I’ll hear it
all morning and into afternoon,
and in my dreams at night; and then
again at dawn
until, in time, she’ll stop her bawling.
That insistent baah-ing
that turns the dawn to mourning,
its meaning is nothing
but loss, whose sound, in the end,
is silence.

Taylor Graham



THE FIRST AND LAST BEST

the first drum roll
after the three or four
tentative taps on the tin roof
of the summer kitchen

the first thundering
after the thunder
when watery footsoldiers
in the invading armies
come heavy-booted to conquer
whatever

like anything repetitious -
children whining, speakers droning
tibetan bowls - the rain battles
set me to doze as puny forces
of resistance in the mind
gear down, withdraw
head for cover

until

until

those plopping stragglers -
quasi-apologetic -
grow increasingly
almost comically -
disconnected
from one another
and overstated bombast moves
to deploy its troops
elsewhere

Timea Deinhardt



MY P.U.

Somebody, maybe Maria Callas, maybe
Sutherland, kept crooning, “Mai piu, mai piu…”
on the Welbilt radio in my grandmother’s
living room. While somebody else, maybe
me, maybe my cousin Michael, had just
farted. Never again will I hear that aria
(which was at least a hundred years old)
without hearing me and my cousin Michael
(who were at most eight and ten years old,
respectively) laughing hysterically, dying
operatically over and over on the couch,
that mortified diva confessing mournfully,
that smell rising up as thick as history.

Paul Hostovsky



MUSIC OF THE SOUL

It flows through the air,
Gliding like a lost soul,
resting with whoever may hear it.
It fills me with pleasant thoughts,
taking me to a dream of rhythm.

But it begins to accelerate,
the trickle of sound raging into a river,
unrelenting and violent.
My hair is on edge,
my anger seeping from my mind.
Everything is a blur,
the fires in my head blazing.

But then it all stops.
A single piano plays quietly into the night.
My rage is gone,
blown away in a cold breeze.
The music is over.

I'm alone with my thoughts.
They scare me, as they whisper into the depths of my soul.
Music,
sweet and innocent,
raging and fierce,
cold and desolate.
Never leave me alone.
For when I can not hear you,
the wolves of my mind tear at my soul.

Fraser Pearson



TRAIN LINES

In going to the old Stuyvesant High
There was a choice of trains
With being dropped off
At S Kleins, on the square
Union Square, a big old store,
The location a little like
London's Hyde Park corner
Where you could get into a world
Of political arguments
With well rehearsed old timers
Who pointed at you
With a folded copy
Of the Daily Worker.

Another route was the Manhattan Bridge
Where one stood next
To the motorman's cabin
Face pressed against the front glass
To see the morning sun gild
The windows of the skyscrapers
While a slow lumbering sound
Echoing from the bridges steel girders
Played out
As a train back to Brooklyn passed by.

At times I got a lift
So there I was on the Canarsie line
Populated with Hispanics
Hasidics and voluptuous Poles.
Now that train comes from hip places
Williamsburg and Bushwick.
As they whoosh through dark tunnels
On the haul below the East River,

Do I really remember the sounds
Or do I trust my eyes first and then
The other senses
With my feet feeling
Time and a train's passing.

Edward Halperin

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