Poetry: John C. Mannone

Water Cycle: John C. Mannone

When hope evaporates

from the ocean, and lofts

high into cold dry stratus,

a canopy of clouds hovering

over land like sadness

draping the heart, the sea

will also give up its prayers

to the sky.

There’s always a gathering

of storms before the deluge

of pain, but a fresh rain also

from the same place comes

to wash it away—

at first in trickles and rivulets,

then the swelling into creeks,

the flowing as mighty rivers

from the watershed.

Eventually, all things return

to the sea, tears dissolving

into prayers.

After the Fight

then comes forgiveness. We kissed

while rolling in wild grass, dirt on our lips,

smiles cracking through our solemn

faces, but it would never be the same.

We camped near the rhododendron

above the red clay banks of the swift river,

leaves from sycamore and willow shed

as beautiful tears, fell curled, catching

wind like the sails before drifting

into the autumn-dark waters below—

once clear as spring runoff that lushed

our verdant garden.

The waters whispered regret. But sought

the gold and pearl shimmers of the sun

sparkling the water crests fragranced

with spices of the fall.

We will have to learn how to trust

again. When she gave me the apple-

sweetness of the lie, I should not have

eaten it. I should have listened

to the voice inside when it whispered

Do not even touch it.

Pretty Things

My friend said to write

about beautiful things

         like nature or history

because it upset him when

I wrote something disturbing

            about perversity

in the men’s bathroom—a drug

deal gone bad, and dirty sex.

I thought about it long and

well, until I went soft with doubt.

            Nature is serene,

like history, full of wonderful

ingenuity and invention,

            honey sunlight, gentle rain,

glorious rainbows, the sweet green

smell of grass, the beautiful

hatred and murder and war

and everything good

            and bad about mankind.

My friend said to write

about beautiful things. I cannot

            therefore end this poem yet.

The Bible speaks of pretty things

and not to dwell on the ugly, only

on the lovely. So I focus

on the rough-cut cross

            of locust wood:

there is no better instrument

of extravagant love.

Colors of Your Voice

Is a quiet black hiss opposite

of white noise? Are there gray

shades to silence? I can’t hear

the dark shimmer, only feel it

pulse through my ears.

            I am deaf

to the colors of your voice

but sense your heart speak,

I see your hands move air

and moments earlier my breath

            as you sign.

There is no purple in the way

you fold your two fingers

into the palm of your hand,

the other three left erect

pointing at me. Those words

are pure red—the color of

            silence is loud.

All the Starlight in the Universe

New Calculation Adds Up All the Starlight in the Universe: “That’s the total number of photons that have successfully escaped from stars and the dust that surrounds them into space over the history of the universe” by Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer November 29, 2018

As far as I’m concerned, all the starlight

in my universe emanates from your eyes.

Perhaps as a physicist I could do better

than to describe you with such clichés

but do not be deceived or even slightly

confused, sometimes the best way to say

something profound is with the simplest

words, well-worn, but whose meaning

doesn’t change on either end of the cosmos.

To say you’re ‘out of this world’ makes you

a stranger in a strange land, but you are

no stranger to me, you’re no alien

despite the sparkle in your bewitching

eyes. That stardust strewn in your irises

is the maker of fires, new seething suns

at the very core of my emblazoned heart

whenever I am held in captive gaze,

whenever there is passionate fusion

of our lips, whenever that critical mass

is exceeded by the mere touch of your

light.

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John C. Mannone has poetry in Artemis Journal, Poetry South, Blue Fifth Review, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, Peacock Journal, Gyroscope Review, Baltimore Review, Pedestal, Pirene’s Fountain, and others. He’s a Jean Ritchie Fellowship winner in Appalachian literature (2017) and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). He has three poetry collections, including Flux Lines (forthcoming in 2019). He’s been nominated for Pushcart and other awards. He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex, Silver Blade, and Liquid Imagination. He’s a retired physics professor living between Knoxville and Chattanooga, TN. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com

Setu, May 2019