These Poems First Appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, No. 37, June 2020Southwest, pp. 159-60
On iron red tipped mountains high, heat and scorched earth cracked in rays, waves brought by arid death-- beams shooting through salt flats barren an age ago, cracking the range as Earth splits the crust westward through basin voids—billow currents of air as red rock and sand falls down the river beds, dry. 2 Spice and pepper, sliced chilés to garnish the dish: cumin, chipotle, jalapeño, corn, purslane, and black frijole served with the flare of rustic ranches. Piñon Pine drops the seed of coffee from green branches, simmered in the kettles, while Prickly Pear cactus reaches for sun raised long, purple flowering light-soaked edibles as red rock and sand falls down the river beds, dry. 3 Big Brown Bat, sonar silence in the night of cool relief, while Great Basin Rattle Snake slithers in waves of shimmering glass. Desert Recluse burrows deep in layers webbed, Cattle ranches in sage brushed valleys, and cowboys lasso and tie. Buffalo roaming the valleys where ancient Ute bones lie, symbol of First Nation Elder Peoples, on iron red tipped mountains high. 4 Stillness protrudes the Desert Solitaire into holes deep gorging. Arches float in mountains ancestral. Smoke reaches the sky above, while canyons gorge the earth deep and wide, painting the rainbow of time for all to see-- pride and transparency-- homes dug deep in Ancestral Puebloan sandstone and beans that fill the stomach, and the cooking pot above flamed mesa. Spiritual desert dreams the weaver of tomorrow, As Bear’s Ear rise above Grand Staircases, red rock and sand falls down the river beds, dry 5 Southwest, living lives in a places that splay life barren. Flourishing among the four corners-- Copland and settler the land reveals it secrets. Welcome horn and home eastern and first nation, love. As the Golden Spike transnational is one, the red rock and sand falls down the river beds, dry From Iron red tipped mountains, rising high. Online reference: https://adelaidemagazine.org/2020/06/20/southwest-by-daniel-cureton/ Raspberry Pie, page 160 Power surging, Body open ready to receive. The heat fired And the gun lifted The metal from the board expert hand steady gliding across my insides the thrill and fun I was unplugged For safety as you felt me up felt my parts felt me shutter as you touched me again in only the way you could You pulled me apart And it was no work But for my own good MOS 6510 Become Raspberry Pi Circuits breaking You screwed me after you finished Tempting me again Making me hot in ways only electric can Old to new, now I emulate Commodore-64 As the 8 bit world turns, I’ll always be your computer whore. The Universe Set Free, page 161 The Bekenstein-Hawking formula is given as Sbh = A/4 X kc3/Gћ Emanating from space, from the precipice of the ultimate curve The event horizon of holes in black, blackened fabric of positive density The universe of the mind, In a Nutshell seeing the beginning and the end of sun stars, moon bodies, nebulas and nurseries Euclidean math and imaginary time, evaporation spheres and negative energy The devotee of Physics and Cosmology, On The Shoulders of Giants Taught us how to peel the sky, understand the ends And find our place in the cosmos. Great brain of the ages, locked away freer than those caged in bodies of flesh Traveling on the currents of the multiverse in 11 dimensions Lucian Professor of Physics, conversing with Newton Running free and rowing home On the rivers of space-time You were here, A Brief History of Time Humanity will miss you, science will Saint you, the Bang will never forget the name Stephen Hawking Brazil National Museum Fire September 2018, pp. 162-63 The rush of hot wind on the men, hands furiously grabbing what they can hold. From a collection of 20,000,000 gems oh what can’t be retold! bombeiros spray with blasted guns fail the 92% gone. They grow limbs as beast of the realm save what can be lifted before the flicker drawn. Science legacy, 200 years of collecting, serving as the reference for the world. Exist now in journal photos, precious research items in embers hurled. The rush of hot wind on the men, hands furiously grabbing what they can hold. From a collection of 20,000,000 gems oh what can’t be retold! The flame creeps along the wall-- Baking, breaking, bashing, burning. Cooking dead knowledge consumed, stomachs full—churning. The insects pinned to posts so carefully recorded and displayed. Brilliant colors, shining as the light dances, fly away in the sweeping winds unbraid. Art woven by indigenous hands, feathers float on the waves. Adorned with delicate history greedy heat stealing down-caves. Masks hide their faces no more, exposed in the cold heat. Melting, cracking, splitting, caving embers on memory beat. Mollusks, 40,000 specimens slow to move, stuck in the shell of time. Gazing death in fire’s eye, succumbed not through, the saving hands of curators’ line. Continents joined—village planes beyond the Amazon rivers, the twist and rounds of throats that rose from the twangled jungled roads. Egyptian and Latin, wrapped in linen preserved, corpses entombed an epoch ago explode. Civilizations out of time-- Crackling sounds, drowning rhythms of drums. Wars, plague, politics forgotten-- Bones rattle their hums. Museum cured of the forever backlog, reels shrink, bubble, and pour. Exu consumed with delight, voices crinkle and crackle—ash tapes of analog speak no more. The rush of hot wind on the men, hands furiously grabbing what they can hold. From a collection of 20,000,000 gems oh what can’t be retold! The flame kisses and the roof falls, the tongue—forked—speaks. Higher it rose, deeper into history, all-consuming death, bleak. Fresco of Popei, buried and removed from the eruption of Vesuvius. Escaping time, heat, ash, dust, and dirt, 2,000 years late, swept into the bin by consuming flame at Rio, lugubrious. Pages fly past on hot current, blackened as the Earth, return from whence they came. Manuscripts so delicate, disintegration’s famished spark to blame Bubbled brain, the lobotomized Brazil. Mourn for the loss, and living unknowable countless millions still. Specimens sent around the world, gone from the drawers of tomorrow. Labels charred—files smashed—cases crushed, Science forever blind, hands full of sorrow. The rush of hot wind on the men Hands furiously grabbing what they can hold From a collection of 20,000,000 gems oh what can’t be retold! Cabinets of potential covered in the wake of collapse, heat tempered to survive. Offering hope to us where there was no sprinkler No insurance-Nature may revive. Dearest Luzia, we thought you gone, 12,000 years born, your skull tells of life. Unborn to Europeans and the Far East, You cut through Nature’s crematorium as the carbon-steeled knife Bendegó stands tall, symbol of hope, among collections that lye dead there. Meteor fallen so long ago, you withstood the bend, will, and crack, Pedestaled you remain—dispel our despair! References
America the Vile, page 164 When did we forget what it means to be American? How cold did our hearts turn to other's situation, not like our own? When did we ignore the flailing dreams of those seeking better, and chill ourselves on the ice of greed? We dream the dreams of today for a better tomorrow, but we leave those who are most vulnerable behind. We seek to further our own money, letting the elderly die unattended. We pass children lying in the streets, starved of futures. We cast the poor asunder, saying they are lazy workers. We call the youth insouciant, labeling them as entitled millennials. We accost the minority, profiling them as thugs and illegals. We close our doors to the immigrants escaping wars, marking them as radicals. We let the Corporation fill our bellies with swill and our minds with hate, placating us so that even Nazis march in our streets. Yet we call ourselves, American. Liberty stands hollow in the East, face shrouded in shame, torch snuffed by narcissists. Our Lady invites the poor, the tired, those yearning to be free, to pass by not the America of dreams, but of condescension and tyranny. The lands of the Earth shake, blackened with living dead, corpses on the tit of capitalism, stained by the blood of soldiers in Uncle Sam’s’ forever wars, thickened like the paint of doom by the talon of the Eagle moving slowly toward the abyss as the bison in the plains. Hope is but a memory, and freedom a passing lark. Columbia dies on the doorstep of the nationalism, calling us to remember “We are a nation of immigrants”
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