USA

FOREVER SPRING 

Heading home,
under snow-bound skies,
with thoughts of you
to warm me.
The barren trees
cry icicle tears,
dagger-tips dripping
like poison
into the scars
that autumn
leaves behind.
My frozen fingers
will soon be thawed
by the tenderness
of your touch,
and in your lips
lie the promise
of summer,
and in your arms
I’ll find
forever spring.

HOLLYWOOD AND VINE 

Hollywood holds
these truths to be self-evident:
all the stars in the universe are
merely players,
pawns rooked and raked
over the coals,
clay figurines
ready for their close-ups.
Heaven holds
a heavy load,
rains down starlets
onto  Hollywood Boulevard,
who stare at the footprints
in front of Mann’s Theater,
mankind’s unkind legacy
on the street of dreams:
50 grand for a kiss,
50 cents for your soul.

EPISTLES AND REVELATIONS 

God gave me the words,
turned a prophet
into a poet
a voice crying
in the wilderness
handed me the twin tablets,
blue-lined and college-ruled.
And I stared blankly
at blank pages,
paused for thoughts
of Genesis and apocalypse;
then drank from the special cup,
the Holy Grail of inspiration,
then loaded two of every kind
of phrase
onto the sinking ark,
wept in the garden of my own Gethsemane,
watched as the
bearded Judas
hung himself
as the sky rained
silver similes
on squiggly lines
of betrayal.

© All Copyright, Paul Juszcyk.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.