Sketchbook  Wayne Ray, CA

 

* Joge Ute Poems  The Juke Box music blares and in the restaurant a blind boy I see you now do you see my sounds my vibration's my music quarter in the slot play me music plays me plays you my music box mouth has no eyes I feel your smile feel mine dark sounds penetrate dark spaces inside smile     Right To Life vs Freedom of Choice woman with a dead womb he had no name is the right to life in a woman's womb (warped by drugs and malnourished strife, torn by teenage guilt, fatherless welfare guilt), up to her or bureaucracy or is it the right of the child to live or die the clinic on Harbord Street childhood's end   *Two haiku on either side of a twelve line non rhyming poem of the same theme

 

Free Verse Letter Home From A Body Bag Poets For Peace This is my last letter home, just enough time to say goodbye to dad and mom, all my friends, roses in the hedge, the street corner poet selling words, the street corner church selling words, the street walker selling words. This is to be my last letter home, to Tom, Dick, Sally, Fred, Spot and Sue. If I could only be there to see the looks on their faces but I’m going to war and they wouldn't recognize me or my street corner face. My camouflaged face. This should be my last letter home, where in my old bedroom sat my trunk filled with old letters, old dreams, uniform and ammo case, journals. No one will read them because I never sparked a magic fire in their hearts strong enough to melt the stones and ice in their illiterate minds Is this my last letter home, where, when I was there, the light was on, the day I ran away to join the war. Reach out and read me. Read my books, plays, poetry, never more those false smiles when I call. This is to be my last letter home, one copy to you, one to her and one to each friend who greeted me first, smiled, saved a life, shared my feelings for peace. Anyone who is better now than when they started, one to the clubs I belong to and the ones I wanted to, and maybe one to some of your friends. This should be my last letter home, to ask for love, world of freedom. Can you say luck? No, to you a soldier is a distant thing, to me it's duty at all cost, people, death, dogs, acid rain, diamonds in the rough. Is this my last letter home? You're damn right it is and you know it! I've been hiding my feelings on paper, writing between the lines of all my poems, stories, plays, trying to reach only you. Wanting you to say, I understand... I know I understand you... really I do. YOU'LL COME TO MY GRAVE STONE WHERE I WILL FOREVER BE ALONE HOLDING THIS LETTER BROUGHT FROM HOME STILL THINKING IT'S ONLY ANOTHER POEM       Vietnam War Memorial Tonight I found something I thought I had lost; along the Black Wall my fingers felt the souls of time, passed over strangers, old friends, fifteen years of unnecessary bloodshed, checked through forty or fifty names in the Book of The Black Wall, holding back the tears, lest I should find one name I knew having known them before adolescence. I could not visualize them maimed or missing in action or dead. I could not see them clothed in khaki, gun in hand, forgetting the one thing they and I had lost, our childhood.

 

 

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