10. This immigration nightmare still drags on.

9. I’m aching for it finally to be through.

8. I’m yearning for this waiting to be gone.

7. I’m champing at the bit to be with you.

6. To feel the soft embracing of your arms.

5. To sense your heartbeat synchronize with mine.

4. To melt with you, in no uncertain terms.

3. To see your eyes, and marvel how they shine!

2. I hope and pray that we’ll soon reunite,

1. And salvage daylight from this endless night!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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10. A Valentine that finds us far apart.

9. Though distance can’t dilute your brilliant Light.

8. I Love you very much, with all my heart.

7. And soon we two will finally reunite.

6. And nevermore will I be far from you.

5. And pleasing you will be my only aim.

4. Then nevermore shall we be rent in two,

3. United in the all-consuming flame!

2. Our path was fated since before Creation:

1. A Love forged in a Twin Flame Conflagration!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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1. Because it’s called “Top ten favorite lines for a Valentine’s Day poem” and tomorrow, somehow, just seems more appropriate.
 

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10. A sonnet mailed while we two are apart,

9. Just like the first one that I sent to you!

8. Professing all the Love within my heart,

7. And all my sadness you are out of view!

6. Not soon enough, we’ll finally reunite:

5. A blaze of glory as we become One!

4. With Heaven’s guidance, we will see the Light!

3. And gaze into a face just like the sun!

2. Some things must be believed before they’re seen,

1. As I believe in you, Beloved Maureen!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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10. I hope and pray to see The Light again,

9. To see the Heaven lurking in our eyes!

8. I’m looking forward to the moment when

7. We share a blinding rapturous surprise!

6. But if we’ve got to wait, then we shall wait!

5. And if it never comes, I say at least

4. I got to spend each day with my soulmate,

3. Amazed at how each day our Love’s increased!

2. I’ve waited for you ever since my birth!

1. To wait with you is Heaven here on Earth!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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10. I pray your Valentine’s Day is the best.

9. I know mine will be, if I am with you.

8. Since first we met, I know that I’ve been blessed!

7. And all the Love I felt then only grew

6. Up through today, when it is all-consuming!

5. So great, I sense that we are on the verge

4. Of something “wholly new” suddenly blooming!

3. As we two merge in an electric surge!

2. We’ll fire up, and burst on through the roof!

1. And as for Heaven, we’ll be living proof!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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#91

Look long enough and Seurat’s pointillism
Seems letters and punctuation, not dots,
Becomes a narrative, a verbal prism,
Written in a language that can’t be taught.
The hook of cane, umbrella, monkey’s tail,
A stone with a white and orange bonnet,
The pinch of waists and a billowing sail,
All forestall the waning of the day.
Only a running girl, a blown trumpet,
A leaping pup, having anything to say.
The rest is stillness, and while the shadows
Avoid the giantess, elsewhere they grow.
Emotion is atoms frozen and bound,
Letters to paper, and can’t make a sound.

Note: This is one of more than 125 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#111

They moved the river to build the water wheel,
Then built a wooden race to divert the current.
Sluice opened, stones ground raw grain into meal
For a hundred years, until the old mill was spent.
River turning wheel turning gears turning stone,
A devolution of mechanics all to crush a seed.
The sun burns for years to dry an animal’s bones,
And countless gallons of water won’t break a reed.
I’m reluctant to approach the mill too closely
(Its ancient timbers are desiccated, ghostly),
Hear its stoppage rasped by the river’s relentless
Passage over the shattered race’s detritus.
Away from the wreck, a little waterfall churns
Spray, wrack, and spume, and, like time, it burns.

Note: This is one of more than 125 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#40

I am not the amalgam of my parts.
Not the knuckles, the joints, the palms.
These are merely the hands of my heart.
I am always hot. I’ve never been calm.
Sometimes I am nothing but an eye.
Seen through the circle of sight,
The darkness is all I need to know why.
My grinning makes my knuckles white.
My thoughts are like wiggling fingers
And my emotions are clenched fists.
I am my own twisted harbinger.
Look at me. You can’t resist.
But we’re all skin, sinew and bone,
Running from each other, alone.

Note: This is one of more than 125 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#48

For Ruth

Is there just one universe?
There the stars and here the cafe.
Hidden lights illuminate the tables.
The various darknesses immerse
Men and stars in dissolving clay.
Are both god and science fables?
The universes are infinite,
They say, and time does not exist.
But here we are and there the stars.
The air is full of perfume and wit,
And a wine too ancient to resist.
All else is beyond, late and far.
Let’s nibble galaxies and swallow suns.
I’ll count my hours with you by ones.

Note: This is one of more than 120 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#113

Each moon the damned gray sea monster abducts our wives,
Then releases them to us as speechless as fish.
Not one has revealed what happens beneath the waves;
So we wonder, do they endure terrors or bliss?
He has antlers and a merman’s scales, and a shield
Of tortuga shell, and eyes that say, “Ye shall yield.”
Only Annalee, my perfect wife, fought the beast,
Calling to me as I stood helpless on the beach.
After she slapped his bearded face and yanked his mane,
He ripped off her dress and drowned her in shame.
Of all the women taken, only she has not returned,
Those taken since scoff at the possibility
(Each petulant and stiff, like a woman scorned)
That Annalee’s alive, with him, beneath the sea.

Note: This is one of more than 120 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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this moment this moment this moment this moment

Dragons on graph paper and images of beasts
March to assembly, an army at war within.
A propped mirror is the instant when time is rent,
What’s done from what’s about to be released,
That instant we neither recall nor contemplate a sin,
(The mirror internally, eternally lit),
Since we’re in the act of committing it.
We are those silver, faceless, and unmoving orbs,
Who, before and after, our reflection absorbs,
While the dragons, a danger, but oblivious,
Circle us endlessly, meshing, silent terrors,
The jailers of the placid, dim, and unconscious.

the mirror mirrors the moment this moment mirrors

Note: This is one of more than 120 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#65

The wan shock, not that rare, when the face
Is strange to us, the look of a mirror race,
Lasts only a moment and then dissolves;
Not memory, but confusion soon resolves.
We know the mask of lips and framing hair,
The skin stretched tight from ear to ear.
What startles is that persistent stare
We cannot blink away, but do not fear.
We feel foolish and fooled when it’s over,
Both slightly empty and totally alone,
As though the soul has flown its cover,
Uncertain it will ever find another one.
Even that passes. We’re ourselves again.
A mirror is mere glass with silver stain.

Note: This is one of more than 120 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#57

The man’s greatest weapon is patience.
He can stand and wait, perfectly still,
As long as the elements don’t interfere.
He doesn’t believe in anything but chance.
Though he cannot eat what he cannot kill,
An empty net is not his deepest fear.
The boy is still healthy, but he worries Aimee
Has become pale and her milk is gone.
She gathers useless flowers and sings,
“They are not for me, but for my family.”
He thinks the same of the sea and sun.
At times, when the bay is full of nothing,
Exhausted by his empty regrets,
He dreams himself diving into the net.

Note: This is one of more than 120 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#69

This desert’s a blanket of earth’s exhaustion,
Where all that remains of life is on the surface.
Each creature, like the sun, is a dying furnace,
Slowly fusing bone, sinew, muscle, intestine.
The old structures melt away into essence,
Bypassing decay, desiccation, and putrescence,
Stopping short of the irreducibility of sand.
New life emerges, sparked by a decaying sun,
Ectoplasmic shapes a god wouldn’t understand,
Creatures without breath or senses or reason.
If all worlds are possible, billions like this exist,
Simply because you or I can always imagine it.
We think, therefore, perhaps, we should resist
Creating a world we would never wish to visit.

Note: This is one of more than 115 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#108

The circus train cars abandoned decades ago,
The circuit of America now belongs to vultures,
Who once followed the elephants and clowns
Like starved, yearning runaways, an exiled sideshow.
Now, as then, they only eat the unclean, if pure,
Scraps of disease or murder on the edge of town.
It exasperates them, winging round and round,
With only frowning little girls and unplanted
Trees, shrubs, and ancient sawdust on the ground.
We know that of all fowl we’re the most unwanted,
But those tiny birdbaths are simply insulting.
Tattered flesh, the strength of decay, our putrid breath —
From a vulture’s field of view nothing can be revolting.
We soar, bubbles of gold, spiraling death.

Note: This is one of more than 115 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#78

I once stood staring down a long staircase,
Then stood up having fallen all the way down.
The time between appeared to have erased
Both itself and the memory of what I’d done.
Unhurt, staring up at the staircase, terrified
Of forms and forces I now understood, I cried.
There are many steps, floors, and bannisters
In this ant people world, but only one sun.
Yet all depends on the attitude of the stairs,
Which share the simultaneity of the boson.
Every direction ends in a shift of perspective,
Hinting that the fifth dimension may be us,
Each riser a mere extension of consciousness,
Until, falling down the stairs, we no longer live.

Note: This is one of more than 115 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#68

The jack-in-the-box dictator dominates,
Green scowl squeezing envy into hate.
Sinners pray to Jesus in the store window.
Draped in gold chains, clutching His scepter,
He laughs at their ruler’s show of temper.
Henchmen wait for new orders from below.
Eternal cities outlive their architecture.
Columns collapse, statuary crumbles,
“Return my youth,” a lame crone mumbles.
Speeches, even sermons, become lectures,
Endless repetitions, what everybody knows.
When the militia gathers, the catacombs
Fill with refuges and would-be deserters.
No murderers here, we are only torturers.

Note: This is one of more than 115 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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#81

Is the sky to fish what the celestial is to men?
Do their eyes, being lidless, see more clearly
The dimming when moon eclipses the sun?
Do they wish as they die to swim above the sea?
Bonefish, flounder, barracuda, and drum,
Chaunt spells and curses from within a cauldron,
To tauten the cord and raise the draped muslin
Unveiling the face of the ancient clock tower,
While a three-eyed girl grabs at potted flowers,
And in a corner a boy in a dunce cap cowers.
The gods send down chum and baited hooks,
Dangling constellations and spiral galaxies,
Daring us to hope, to aspire, daring us to look
Past transparent and unfathomable seas.

Note: This is one of more than 115 poems after paintings or images, which can be viewed at the blog, Zealotry of Guerin.

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