Author: Bob Jude Ferrante

exclusive to bobjudeferrante.com

To my heart came a
guest, who knocked.
Surprised, I received him.

He hung rags in the closet and
banged mud from his boots
in the fireplace.

I offered him dinner.
He ate my favorite dish.
Two portions. Left me none.
I offered my bed and
slept by the hearth.

All night I stared at the
mud, hard pieces. I slept
poorly, the sun rose too soon.

A thousand mornings passed. Yesterday
he pushed me into a corner
and sent me to sleep in the yard, saying,
“You no longer please me.”

It was still early Spring chill.
I shivered until daybreak.

Now he is buried under the
onion garden.

(the onions come in poorly.)

published in poems for peace, about.com

We have our own concept of who we
are. I had to suppress worry.
I smiled; somehow came words:

We live on the eye of god.

The eye moves rough in its course of vision;
the oceans only shifting tears on its surface.

Granite cities, deep and proud,
are bits of dust. They float, too
small to be felt.

If someday the dust gets too big,
god will blink.

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We sinned together, but
when the bill came, I let
her pay.

How can I give back what I
have eaten in greed? It is
gone, gone.

How can I say thank you when
I have spit in her face? I
cannot.

Now our life together is dead;
the flowers we shared have
dried wrong.

Around the house in the
dust balls are faded past-due slips,
faint, milky dreams.

The eyes close; I am
buried with shovels full of
my own promises.

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City smells
are urine sting
and acid bite
as old garbage leaks
yellow, dung floats,
cars, buses belch.
Sour city.

You go home,
pull off skin,
drop in sink.
Scrub in soap,
soak ‘til fresh.
Later, your skin hangs,
drips dry.

from the new life

O, this mornin that my heart shut down
switches clickd a steel song.
Closin in line, in a line they form.

Hot lights burnin miles on
rising cry of sad red sun
givin voice to mornin, the burnin morn.

A fire threadline joins and burns.
A mornin air that shakes the firs.
First points of mornin, of morning dew.

Give us this day a dark descent
A red track, thousan of red light presents,
reach somewhere where to go to.

She left him dead laid in the groun,
and slip away without no soun
Jus a white flower layin on the box.

O this mornin and my heart shut down,
switches sang that steel song
closin in a line, in a circuits locks.

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Not the Mts. again
please I have seen the
green illusions with umber
edges falling long.

Rip away my eyes, they
bleed, too much seen.
A thousand rags
wet with it.

Not the beautiful Mts. I
crawl into the dark and
tunnel down deep to close
forever the wounds.

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I am a soft man, so they say.
Night drives fear up too easily.
Unable to give without thought, kneeling
lax and flaccid at the foot of a god
in whom I no longer believe.
Too soft a man. This morning,
this arrived, postage-due:

Greetings, =first= =middle= =last=
We are hereby proud to announce
both the power you see
and the power you do not see
are ours;
and your job, life, heart
belong to us,
if you care or not.
Next time you are followed
by tiny brownsuit men
with cases and ‘staches;
while smoke comes a-sifting under the
bedroom door.
soundless;
the voices and footsteps upstairs
when you turn off TV;
you know
that
is
us.
No need to reply
with heaven forbid poetry.
Do you want to know you?
Ask us.
We creep in and hear what
you say asleep.
We read your sentiments
exactly.

—The management.

Tip tap tiptip tap tip tap
amazed how tears make
perfect taps on the paper.
Steady and regular,
perfect, like a
wind-up metronome.

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Beautiful things?
How can you ignore
ugliness to find beautiful
things?

I cry, rake a pillow
with brittle nails, the
sound of cloth ripping—
feathers everywhere!—like
a cold winter.

Now I sleep in a flat bed
and, restless, fall out.
The cracks in the ceiling,
like roots spreading.
Is it Spring already?

Hot damn!

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“You know, son, life is a business.”
—T.L.

Now I know why
owners think we are ants
like numbers
like percentages.
Take a long look
from the thirty-fourth floor
down at the street.

What do you see?
Ants,
about their daily breadcrumbs.

If you were an owner,
locked in an airless cell
as your yellow window stared
at flat black streets,
and every day,
you saw those ants
bustling
wouldn’t you believe that too?

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“Shake out carols!
Solitary here, the night’s carols!”
—Walt Whitman Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Begin round,
green and speckled brown.
Twist in amber veins.
Weave in lucent skeins, bore
toward the dark middle, that hide
spinning wights, tangled nights.
In sleep.
Wrapped, bodies gathered,
tingling slow,
time groans, cells divide.
Within the bud,
under night mud,
something yawns,
stretches,
thrusts tendril fingers up from beneath
and listens, feeling the breeze breathe.