Patrick L Kalahar

There is a man sitting in a room
Writing with a black pen on white paper
The room is drowning in books
The man sits on the only chair
...

Aimlessly I walk
through the town's empty streets
weeds defy the pavement
in cracks and fissures
...

Early spring rains have overwhelmed the fields
Barren grounds—still frozen—have become
Shallow seas in my imagination
The sunset, with its myriad hues
...

Death looks down on the walled city
where the rich sleep in little white houses
and the poor sleep in ovens. Small boxes
with iron doors which will bake a master
...

It was an old Indiana road, but one
we had not travelled before.
On a summer-like day
even before the spring, the sky
...

The pale sun (its watery light filtering
Through albino clouds)objecting to
Planetary transgressions,
Rains salt tears, waterspouted from an angry sea
...

The terrible screeching of parakeets
Beaks scraping on bars
The sad flutter of clipped wings
That pound the stale air
...

Your characters dance & leap across the page
Loudly proclaiming their personal independence of the paper
Like all great souls you could not be confined.
The known earth was not large enough for you
...

Birds fill the freshly leafed trees.
Leaves and feathers vibrate
in unison with the wind.
...

I look at Old Master drawings
So mathematical, so precise
So defined, so carefully delineated
Creating a visual vocabulary
...

About one month ago a bug
Slithered into my ear and vanished
I know
Because I saw it first on my pillow
...

Floating down the Ganges
On my way toward Benares
I came around a bend in the river
...

In sleeping there are dreams
And we speak darkness
Out of a closed mouth
Forbidden thoughts cut from of an abandoned corpse
...

On this day of dark and dismal storms
Of lightning, silent but still speaking portents
And frissons of dark humors burning in the blood
I inscribe my dream or night terror:
...