Free
Verse
No One
People hear but do not
listen
Perhaps they listen but do not hear
Is there a difference
The result is confusion
The result is ignorance
The result is forgotten
Wars happen because
No one listens, no one hears
The warnings
No one hears death
No one listens to death
Even when it enters
Brother
I have no brother
yet if I did I
would weep tears
for the one who
does not exist
His face may have been
on every card sent
sailing across a
room to land face
up or against a wall
Yet there is no face to
remember or to mourn
no smile to return
no lip to split with
a well placed fist
The brother who does not
exist is the shadow that
follows in the streets
or the rooms I enter
he never cries for me
Hometown
The old hometown is a small
town where nothing has changed
The buildings are where
they have always been
The streets look the same
only the people have changed
The old folks have died
the young have grown older
Living in the same houses with fresh
coats of paint and brown grass
White fences and the red fire hydrants
are still there for a new generation of dogs to sniff
Cars are new – mostly imported
skirts are shorter, hair is longer
Friends have left for bigger cities
where they lead smaller lives
Those who stayed think their lives are big
the children grow bigger
Hometown smells are still there
fresh mowed grass, cakes baking in open windows
Hamburgers grilling in back yards
the aroma of the past is delicious
La Brea
An angry wind shakes leaves
off trees—they
fall like Napoleon's army
into a newly cemented sidewalk
where they will be seen for fifty or more years
unlike La Brea where mammoth and water flea,
predator and prey, fossilized, appear 38,000 years
later black as the day they died, now a licorice
remnant of a sour pit when leaves shaken by an
angry wind showing who was in charge fell from trees
to cover the tar pits
The Kiss
You kissed the brain with
ideas
and the mouth with an east wind
There! A sculpture of David, a
painting of the Madonna
Somewhere an empty room
searches for you, an empty bed waits
The sky at night has no boundary
the stars appear in your smile
The world cannot contain your joy
the house empty without you
Bright eyes light the way
the inner forces bring happiness
About Zvi
A. Sesling
Zvi A. Sesling has
published poems in Midstream, Saranac Review, New
Delta Review, Voices Israel Anthology, Cyclamens & Swords,
Ship of Fools, The Chaffin Journal, Poetica, Ibbetson
Street, Istanbul Literary Review, Illya’s Honey,
Wavelength, Asphodel, Main Channel Voices and Hazmat
Review, and many others. Additional poems are due
to be published in 2009. In 2004 he was awarded Third
Place in the Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition
and in 2007 he received First Prize in the Reuben Rose
International Poetry Competition. He was selected to read
his poetry at New England/Pen “Discovery” in 2008 by
Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish.
