Six par Tom Sheehan

 

 

Francisco Pizarro and a Brown Face 

 

On alien beach

the cabin boy

is put aside.

 

This dark-haired

catchall’s ripe

as the undertow,

 

reaches without

hands’ movement,

wears her breasts

 

slung as pennants,

her buttocks but

a journey’s end.

 

Her mouth puts

an end to treasure

hunting, old dreams

 

the sea is master of.

In the darkness

she is the puma

 

come down to drink,

brush of feathers

in the brush,

 

in his nostrils

the scaled scent

of weathered salt.

 

 

 

The Infinite Sadness of the Soul

 

The infinite sadness of the soul

is the quality that makes one whole;

to reach it is the work of poems

from we who languish over tombs,

 

and we who nourish lines of rhyme

from peaks and valleys where we climb,

or from death or calamities

find true words' solemnities.

 

In prose or metered voices sing

for a moment each a king,

each of us are princely bound

to find majesty in simple sound

 

where the soul within is scored

by an infinite weighty hoard,

where sadness in the soul is found

and lays your heart upon the ground.

 

But few times that aim's acute  -

where we fail we stand so mute,

and agree to what we cannot see,

our souls passing on to infinity.

 

 

 

Late Night Guitar

 

I hear an odd wire vibrate

against a dark red wood.

 

It ripples along, hoarse,

talks a mountain to pieces.

 

All Iberia is elaborate

in string and lath;

 

peninsula of high heels,

ribbons dancing on the mane,

 

black hats horse-parading,

friar’s lantern honing swords.

 

A later moon of Pico de Aneto

dies in the dust of olive trees.

 

A forlorn SAC bomber, tailed,

falcons its way home silently.

 

When a bull is born

the earth shakes twice,

 

and an odd wire vibrates

against a darker red wood.

 

 

 

The Municipal Subterranean

 

He comes up, goggled,

out of a manhole

in the middle of a street

in my peaceful town,

sun the sole brazier,

 

like an old Saharan

veteran, Rommel-pointing

his tank across the four

year stretch of sand,

shell holes filling up

quick as death.

 

I think of Frank Parkinson,

Tanker, Tiger of Tobruk,

now in his grass roots,

the acetyline smile

on his oil-dirty face,

the goggles still high

on his high forehead.

 

 

 

St. Basil’s School for the Blind

 

Frenchy came here

after the raceway flooring

stabbed its 200 pounds in his skull

and shook up the optic system.

 

He only fell 30 feet,

but the flooring came after him

like kids playing chase just as darkness

begins to bottle up the alleys.

 

He felt his way to lathes,

made clumsy bookends, napkin holders,

lost the thick calluses on both hands,

snuck out at night with white cane

for a few cold beers.

 

They caught a woman in his room

one night in the third week of matriculation,

an iron widow doing her thing for the schoolboys,

bringing home the lap of luxury,

catching up on time.

 

The next day Frenchy took off

two fingers with a band saw, a message

to the administration: it’s best to leave

well enough alone, total darkness

is a one-way street

 

 

 

Where the Last Star Went

(for Daryll Koolian, BSA)

 

Midnight leans over itself

nearly silent, only the sounds

old stars make passing on

their witness of once being here.

 

Today the ants were mining

an old shoe at the trash pile;

I assume they are yet plying

their colonial energies

 

in that dark dominion and seat,

that mutable territory.

Often when we listen we hear

just skeletons, mobiles in wind,

 

our lives tinkling a faint music,

faint as a dead and distant star.

This day another shadow passed

in the shadows my eyes possess.

 

It was yours, Daryll, at labor,

going down in a deadly ditch,

what you had thrown out by shovel

coming hard down on your last cry.

 

I think you a warrior, bent

under the battle of your task;

your armor, your heart and hands;

your medallion, Mother Earth.

 

I do not recall you good at knots

or making camp or trailblazing

or how many merit badges

have gone silently like the stars

 

into cluttered oblivion.

But I remember how you smiled,

how campfires leaped lightly

in your eyes, where the last star went.

 

 

 

2016 Danse Macabre Writer-in-Residence Tom Sheehan has published 27 books and multiple work in Rosebud, Linnet’s Wings, Serving House Journal, Literally Stories, Copperfield Review, Literary Orphans, Indiana Voices Journal, Frontier Tales, Western Online Magazine, Faith-Hope and Fiction, Provo Canyon Review, Eastlit, Rope & Wire Magazine, The Literary Yard, Green Silk Journal, Fiction on the Web, The Path, etc. Has 30 Pushcart nominations, 5 Best of the Net nominations (one winner). Recent publications - Swan River Daisy by KY Stories, The Cowboys by Pocol Press, and Jehrico ~ Eleven Stories of a Mexican Boy in the Old West  by Hammer & Anvil Books. Back Home in Saugus is being considered. His Author's Page, Tom Sheehan -- is on Amazon.