silence

by wiggly jones, "the little hippie boy"

last night i had the strangest dream i was a guy named moe being chased through the streets of chicago on a drifting ice floe chased by a jaguar named jerry and a junkman named joe and they were out to get me because i was in the know i was just an innocent bystander who overheard their plans but i had to be silenced i knew the truth about the man o oligarchs in your towers hear my humble plea you are the masters of reality and i am only me or look upon your face i know if you fall from heaven you will only be replaced call off your hounds and tigers your jailers with guns and chains i will crawl into my cardboard box and in silence there remain my cries went all unheeded and they closed upon my trail o where was noah with his ark or jonah with his whale? o where was sinbad the sailor blackbeard, ahab, or captain kidd? they all could have saved me but none of them did i have never been to chicago and my name it is not moe but when they knock upon my door where am i to go?

3 more poems

by horace p sternwall

ode to sinners o come all you sinners with guilt fit to burst lets go down to the river and see who is the worst let us stand up and testify and write a message across the sky about all our evil schemes and tricks and how we wanted to get our kicks kicks, man, that's all there is not fame or money or show biz or christmas dinner or apple pie or scratching your head and wondering why we're riding through the endless night not even putting up a fight tossing here a nickel and there a dime in the tin cup of borrowed time

slow i was not wild and free i was never meant to be and walked silent on the earth to death from birth my fellow humans stopped to look as my weary steps i took for the very mark of cain on my face was written plain but when i turned around no trace of me was found on the earth's unyielding crust i left no footprints in the dust i took it slow for where was there to go? i looked up at the gray sky and it said goodbye

musings why does a dictionary weigh ten pounds? because humans are filled with a million sounds they twist them and stretch them and play the game but in the end they all sound the same

a letter

by horace p sternwall

a kitty kat has whiskers a puppy dog has a tail i wrote a letter to the president and put it in the mail i told him he was an idiot i told him he was a fool i asked him what he ever learned when he was a child in school he never sent an answer he never sent a reply i wonder if he goes for walks and looks up at the sky and if he sees the hand of fate pointing at his face and showing him the sands of time in which he will leave no trace he goes back to the white house and climbs the white house stair to find inside his office a visitor in his chair who is this importunate stranger who sits there with a smile with no sense of decorum and no sense of style everybody has a stranger who follows them through their days and shows their face when the time has come so do not be amazed

3 poems

by horace p sternwall

desert island sometimes i feel floppy sometimes i do sag sometimes i put my head in a box sometimes i put it in a bag i don't like the human race or the world that it has made i want to find a desert island and lie in the palm tree shade let the coconuts fall on my head and pound it into mush and lie there drooling in the sand in the glowing sunset hush

everybody can't be a hero to be in a book but not be the hero that does not sound like fun but when the hero dies his heroic death you can still sit in the sun reading a book about the hero in lively vivid prose sipping iced tea or lemonade and wiggling your toes the hero lives forever at least the book says so “in glorious memory” but how do they know? when the hero goes to the gallows protesting his innocence you can laugh or cry or close the book and wonder where the time went

float this is a poem i wrote in the water it would not float in the air it would not fly in the rain it would not stay dry in it i confess my pathetic helplessness swallowed without a trace by a void without a face words may be blessings or curses in expanding universes they may be slow or fast but never last o bubbles in the stream! o disappearing dream! one last moment i beg of you one last word - or maybe two -

a strange dream

by horace p sternwall

i dreamed of a place last night the strangest dream I ever had where all the bad people were good and all the good people were bad I dreamed I was in a courtroom of shiny paneled wood i was tied to an old oak tree accused of doing good the judge sat high above me with horns upon his head adolf hitler was my lawyer and all the jurors were dead the judge asked me how i pleaded to trying to do right and as i opened my mouth to speak i beheld a terrible sight the gallery was filled with angels with burnt and blackened wings their golden harps were melted and they could not pluck the strings a witness then was summoned to give evidence to my fate ’twas none other than st peter who had abandoned heaven’s gate what say you, saintly wise man asked satan from the bench as he waved a ten pound hammer which in his fist he clenched his eyebrows fairly sizzled and his lip was sneering curled what say you of this specimen who wished to save the world? what say you to this sorry cuss who challenged my dominion who thought eternal damnation was just someone’s opinion? have pity, lord of darkness the sad eyed sage appealed and his white beard it did flutter as before the fiend he kneeled he is only a poor human incapable of thought and the lessons life has taught him i guess he just forgot the demon roared wth laughter as he brought his hammer down a noose was placed around my neck and on my head a crown and on the crown was set a stage on which a play was playing my old dog ran across a field to join my poor old mother praying a serpent slithered through the grass king arthur raised his sword jesse james threw me a lousy dime it was all he could afford william mckinley and wyatt earp raised their voices in a hymn and i thought i saw abe lincoln but it was only railroad slim i awoke upon a green park bench with rain upon my face and all the players in the dream were gone without a trace

country ways

by horace p sternwall

the lamp burned in my little room above the silent stable i looked out in the winter gloom as well as i was able no bird disturbed the brooding night or horses hoofed the road no angel at the window offered to share my load * in an icy wintry blast as the snow was falling fast i went out to milk the cow and tripped over the plow that the lazy hired man who since the world began had been sleeping on his feet without missing a beat had left there in the gloom to hasten me to doom and he laughed in his dream floating down a shady stream where an apple cheeked lass winked at him as he went past and i lay in the mud in the mud, in the cold mud * silas martin picked an apple but didn't feel like eating it sarah jenkins shook a rug but didn't feel like beating it everything that moves moves at its own pace sometimes nothing moves at all upon the earth's dark face