Our A.D.

by Carmen Eichman

We pick out gravel,
past pieces of guilt that grate
against our bare feet.

As if ordered to woodsheds,
our Moses’ deserts,
by vituperous verdicts handed down
miles apart, we were targeted for our kind fair,
entrailed in hand-made, man-made,
manic messes until
our recent redemptions reigned.
Our bowed heads
no longer clustered with disasters’ tattered, dusty wings.

Sunlight divine slings lovers,
you and I, around sliver moons made for two.
Yet lingering clouds trail our fragile wisdom,
sift our sensual flesh restored,
through starlit moments that mark
our A.D., its blessed beginnings

of this, our tilled, stilled, quiet
of belief.  Our soft shadows shimmer
into autumn’s warm, coffee-kissed mornings,
our limbs moored to present time,
perfectly pinned upon fragrant sheets,
tacked against our dawn’s whiteboard of hope.

Sin-Swirl

by Carmen Eichman

Tear touched leaf
tips beneath
weight
of faith,
fathomless,
ineffable,
at times
ineffectual
in occasional
sin-swirled
sweetness,
angels ignored,
fecund flesh
feasts until
late hour
heralds
raucous ghosts
circling,
dipping,
diving,
determined
to deaden delicious
dawn divine.

Hope Tumbles

by Carmen Eichman

Winter strikes September.
Landscape empties,
lists as aged hollowed wood.
Hallowed vows erupt vitriolic roots.
She claws desperation,
egregious emptiness digs into quick.
She sucks frigid air, but love's lungs collapse.
Hope tumultuously tumbles
to a soft lichen floor of failure,
raven black despair.
Bowed head,futile prayer.
Taut white neck aligns
along absent angel wings
as bowed head and branches bend
in an ice laden loss.

Dark Determinism

by Carmen Eichman

What happens when I crash into that gray slap of sunlight draped across
this road clogged, my own thoughts congested,
this typical work-day morning? Weekend joy disappears
with that occasional, black feral cat outside my window,
beneath the vine covered fence,
vanishes, the two of them, onto the dry, vacant lot on the other side.

Logic and emotion combat, drip a caustic, yet confectionery clarity
I know too well, like an insult tossed carelessly, noisily as keys
on a corner table, its dark determinism directs my day.
Where can I lay these thoughts, spread them out, foreign and familiar,
push away gently their creases, step back to examine their freakish, existential
patterns? If only I could sling them into the wash of what’s past, slam the lid,
grab my purse, leave them in my apartment.

But like the sunlight, the cat, the keys, my patterns, their cerebral combat ,
connect to and tick behind my hazel eyes, a collaborating continuum,
exquisite in its perfunctory timing and
pestilent punctuation.

Real Ghost

by Carmen Eichman

Yes.
I want the wild wind to return,
to sear this sterile landscape sorrowfully sanitized
in my sophomoric rationality only bleak-hearted birds
are foolish enough to believe, my explosive expatiation on
a silent fall no one heard, no one saw, my deceased
passion-pitched platform where my real ghost now rests.

Yes.
Bring back my maniacal misery that set fire to my chest,
slung hate and love and reckless joy within the daily darts of a thousand words,
hands that gripped my hair, gripped great gulping gallons of our hurricanic breaths
that spun poetic sirens plunging into the blood-filled pillars, molten heather
moors of our hearts where now only winter’s weary existence, its war-stripped sails,
sifts sordidly across, sequesters and petrifies, our silent, sepulchral plain.

Dreaming

by Carmen Eichman

Grey lid dusk shuts. Train whistle blows
in quintessential quiet
coagulating thickly upon their flight
from a fevered Gestapo guard. It was a cracked egg
existence when chancellors challenged logic
while gorilla gulping champagne.
Run like you’ve never run
she hisses at her daughter,
horrific fear heralding within
their hated hearts. They segue , ferret,
hungering hope, through crooked hallowed halls,
their lungs list along dark walls. Into a black room
they hide. A silent hack racks
their ribs; he follows, fallow, soul as dry
as his tongue, spies the silent sisters,
grabs one, rakes, hooks
Hauptmann nails into saintly skin until
she grips his neck, bends him, breaks him
in two, a miracle, he mashes in her hands,
mangled, sociopathic, ideological shrine…

until the next run.

Surveillance

by Carmen Eichman

Surveillance, steady censors,
safeties snapped, despite my perseverance
in slipping past command posts
after a glass of wine or two or three.
The tower and spot light of conscience
require obscurity, safety reasons cited.
Often I stand before the tall fence, my eyes traveling
slowly, slyly, up the tall length of its
streaming rolls of concertina wire
as tangled as my legs; they belie my limpish
attempts at escape. Oh, it’s happened,
when I busted through the gates,
slipped seamlessly to the other side, breathed the air
of self
until
the lights of guilt
splashing through my window of joy,
illuminate my ribs,
heat my bones, the warden of shame,
its burning reflection defeats my defiant glare,
locks my heart in its dark compartment
of solitary confinement. I now have
plenty of time to think
before busting out again….

My Black Pearl

by Carmen Eichman

I can breathe at the bottom
where bubbles burst from boiling surfaces
blacker, deeper places where I have not reached.
Sun light moves, sways me, above me,
people walk, sometimes hurried, sometimes languid
from this angle, but I hear nothing
as I watch from underneath, holding
my breath, waiting, waiting, waiting
for the dream, the black pearl, I swallowed
long ago, won’t digest, safe keeping in
the oyster of my guts, without it I die, again
and again, and again. Down here I gulp hope,
settle into a mechanical movement along
sandy bottoms, my blink a salute to the dry stars,
slip among the ordinary pearls
that just won’t do.