God, Grandfather, and Father

God, Grandfather, and Father
A Sestina By Sean Roper
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Watching the paint run up the wall like fresh blood,
I’m Laying on my back staring upside down just to clarify.
Bored watching paint dry and all the sudden my grandfather spoke
I didn’t quite catch it something about the rain is to the sea, as love is to God.
Recycling love for god and hate for the devil or some kind of bullshit; I will discover
soon enough I’m sure. There is no point I don’t care what happens when I die.
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My grandfather told me he wished all other races should die.
I hate that, I just walk away, stubbornness runs in the blood.
I won’t fight him, one day, something will happen and he will discover
he’s wrong on his own. I can’t tell him why or how. We all must clarify
our beliefs day by day changing with or without a God.
My grandfather, he is an ex-priest and spoke
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to god. He lost his Faith but never spoke
Why, and for that I Fear he may die
Without coming to terms with it or God.
Whether he is real or not it is in human blood.
Sitting in a old rusted chair outside he likes to clarify
his thoughts with Alcohol and Cigarettes waiting to discover
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the hummingbirds playing outside looking to discover
their Honeysuckles, and my Grandmother spoke
to my Grandfather. I couldn’t quite clarify
Something about what’s life if you don’t die
My Grandfather makes a smart remark and coughs blood.
I think that’s why my father started to talk to God
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Again. My father he was supposed to be a priest under God
Too. He was forced to read the bible day and night only to discover
that all he knows are words next to words, and blood
on his back from his father’s belt because he had spoke
against the bible in front of him. When you die
why do you need God to clarify
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What you are? My poor father just asked his own father to clarify,
but there were no questions in that house when it came to God.
I dare not ask my grandfather either or I would die
in a lecture, involving something about how he will discover
The secret of life and get rich. He spoke
of many weird things, but that is what happens in our tree of blood,
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It happens in old age; but I hope we learn to discover
More than just a book. My father once spoke
something about Grey being as black is to white and as Life is to Blood.

I Don’t Know How She Keeps Going/I Don’t know Why We Keep Going

I Don’t Know How She Keeps Going

By Sean Roper

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1.

legs are sore

covered in bruises

all the way down through the bone

Even with the help of shin pads.

My opponent he feels the

same way yet we still kick away.

Where you feel your ribs could break

and your shins split, you kick away.

Because you don’t know why

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2

She is my hero running day and night.

her hair long and blonde she is

Happy, she works all day to

take the day with her shoes.

She gets home calms the baby

kisses her husband puts her hair

up in a ponytail. Washes away

the make-up, fills her walk man

with a cassette of nirvana and begins

to run. A car comes

from behind. It stops but it is too late.

She bleeds, she breaks, she cries, she fears.

In the end after she heals she

gets back up and runs.

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3.

Spinning in circles my feet blisters

kicking at bags my toenails fall off

punching sometimes makes my knuckles Split

running and my knees Sprain

and my ankles crack.

In the end I heal and I am stronger

faster, but mostly more graceful,

More focused to study, focused

to quit drugs, to stop drinking,

stop fucking strangers, stop being

afraid of him, stop watching tv,

stop playing videogames,

I stopped because I needed to,

because I wanted to.

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I Don’t know Why We Keep Going

By. Sean Roper

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1.

Lost Winter, Arkansas is plain, a mother

her blond hair floats in a light draft,

and the leaves underneath her, move aside.

Her hands hold on tight on the young blob

that plops and glomps through the path.

The sky is white she looks up and

with a her soft smile a snowflake falls

then another and another and another.

She picks up her child, as if to save him.

She did just because she loved to hold him

she didn’t stop to think why

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2.

My Master asks for a pair of shoes

he starts his story of the man on a train.

This man lost a shoe out the train

he asked the conductor to stop

and of course he said no

so the man threw the other pair

off the train. The conductor questioned

this act. The man replied saying that

no one can use one shoe, you need

two.

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3.

High since 12, Drunk since 16

Shrooms, Acid, Pot, Cocaine, Salvia,

Ecstasy, Jack and coke, Mojito,

Vodka, Vodka, Vodka.

Kiss trees, fly naked from land to

sea, the sea, the sea.

Shout names, grasp my face.

Cry in the day when angles meditate

crying, crying, crying,

crying in my dreams when devils play.

Cry when they touch me, they touch me.

It breaks me so I dance, so I scream.

Flames fill my lungs with raw Euphoria

Me and Chaos we are the same we are

Burning.

Burning.

Burning.

Married to Chaos

Married to Chaos.

By Sean Roper

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Drunk and high so I don’t care if

you touch me there. Off the dance floor She is

pushing me on the couch in her room she

stares, her eyes a shade off coal

black. Her name

unknown. Black hair of

curls and waves. Fuck and

a condom later we

don’t care.

I didn’t care

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Drunk and bored with

parties ending or beginning

he comes up to me with

Eyes just a shade off coal black, asking

Questions but I

ignored them, except the

one that involved

Pot. Fuck and

A condom later.

I didn’t care.

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Married to chaos ever since

I was young. He touched me where I cried,

When I had a mind. Before I was endowed with

Heaven’s hate. I want to straddle his lap. Stare

at his shade off coal black eyes and

run my finger through his black hair, kiss

him gently. Then shoot him in the

Head. Softly, tongue the bullet

Wound, get drunk and high, count

to ten and fill my drugs with posies until

My nose bleed. Say I love

him, then tell him he introduced

me to Rage and

for that

I don’t care.

The Summer of Dreams

I hear a sudden shatter as I awake.

My family’s portrait had fallen on the floor in my sleep.

My window opens, reveling the summer.

What nightmare had I lived in my slumber?

Pain of love, the joy in hate, how can I contemplate?

I couldn’t stand those feelings,

those horrible thoughts.

I sit at my window

to look upon the beach. This is a wonderful place.

I am saved from the heat by a cool breeze on my face.

I close my eyes to feel the rush of the wind.

But my dreams come back,

but just for a second.

The cries of the hungry, the rage of the hating;

A war and fear they are all twirling.

I hear a fearful voice crying over machines and beeps.

“Wake up! Oh please wake! Please come back to me!”

Louder and louder I kept trying to open my eyes

To come back to reality and look at the summer sky

I heard a shatter and I was able to open my eyes

My best friend’s portrait had fallen from my Arms.

I looked back out to the beach

a single seagull above

so calm

so peaceful.

I stare across the white sand onto the sea.

I set my eyes on the sea unmoving,

undisturbed.

I felt like I stared out for almost all of time.

I hear the light waves on the shore

and I am without pain.

I felt free

yet I knew nervously something was wrong.

I felt tired all the sudden

but afraid to close my eyes.

I went to the bed to rest awhile but not allow myself to dream.

I thought I heard others crying as I looked upon the sky.

Then everything went black

all numb

as I started to fly.

Snake Portrait

Arkansas summer, honeysuckle, hummingbirds, brush off the dirt.

Heat beats, water rush, snakes slink, lizards strategically retreat.

Lack of shiver, lack of care, spending all day in the sun of Arkansas.

Grandparent’s house, grandfather’s beer, grandmother’s red hair.

Scorpion, black widow, tarantula, brown recluse

up the walls, under the sink, in my parents bed, on the couch.

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, hidden copperhead.

Rattle, violin [Learn], hour glass, red on yellow [Learn]

Water Moccasin; black as space, she is face to face with me.

Her darkness runs across the surface of the creek, fast like hot lead through skin.

Water Moccasin; magnificent artist of motion, she is face to face with him,

Grandpa and his Ithaca double-barreled shotgun and it shattering the wind.

Sisters, they panic at the scorpions in the dresser drawer, their black stillness.

Mother, she fears the copperhead in the path, she hates it’s deceitful kin.

Father, he respects his own servitude to the brown recluse.

Grandfather, he fears for me, for being incautious, for being young.

I fear a loss of the trees, the creek, A Change. I fear not what they bring.

I cry at the moccasin’s blood in the creek, I’m naïve.

I laugh at everyone’s screams when a tarantula crawls up the wall

And now a gaze of a snake reminds me of me.

Reader’s Record: Poets Companion: “Voice and Style” 1-28-10

pg 115. “When we listen to a person speaking, we hear a particular music unlike any other. The stamp of someone’s voice is as individual as a fingerprint; if we know someone well, we instantly recognize the tone, pitch, resonance of that voice whenever we encounter it.”

pg 116. “When we fail to produce this voice, the poem fails. The reader laughs when we want her to cry, or turns away disinterestedly when we passionately was his attention. The poem doesn’t communicate what we meant; the voice is garbled, confused, talking to itself”

pg118 “Doing a close analysis of any writer is a useful exercise that can teach you a lot about why you may like or dislike the poems-why they appeal to you, why they move you or make you cringe. Of course, there’s a mysterious element in poetry that seems to resist intellectual analysis, and this is good.”

pg118 “..,there’s an organic and irreducible energy in a good poem that can’t be logically accounted for. Call it the spark, the ‘blood-jet,’ as Sylvia Plath did, or whatever you will; you can take the poem apart and you won’t find it.”

pg 121 “Usually, image and statement combine in a poem (through there are memorable exceptions). Notice what balance is, and see if you need to strengthen one or the other.”