VELVETILLUSION LITERARY MAGAZINE
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MINE BITCOIN NOW

 

 

POETRY BY ANTHONY LICCIONE

 

all you can eat buffet

 

half n half, whole

wheat bread whale

of a time, split

in two buttermilk

biscuits, staring

down my throat

no matter, where

I am is is am I

happy to eat, what

others leave behind

in a napkin, folded

to take home to

mother nature, famish

needing nurture because

a poor shoe, holes

is not a way to walk

around in life, children

laugh no matter what

deprived or full

------------------

Surrender to Myself

 

A child is at my window,

pale and frail, a mouth straight

and crossed as a pin-

with see-through eyes

he pierces at me with his past,

stitching it on into my future.

And there I see his father,

putting him down in the crib

for the night, and closing his

bedroom door then walking away,

a way he never came back and

opened the door again.

 

Now ill-fated it is for me

to watch this child standing

outside the fire, I want to draw

the blinds and pull down the shades

to the scales under his eyes,

and as I do, shutting out this someone

casting his gaze like black coals

glowing reddish from an after burn.

 

A coerce nudges at me to tell him

that I know his walk where shallow

steps fall on hard concrete, the street

I identified with long ago,

that could end if went unwary.

 

And our faces become transparent

in the three-dimensional window,

with the ghost of me oppositely

haunt with his image, as a seasoned

leaf cuffing against a green leaf,

I saw that child crying at night

on his pillowcase. I saw a moon

that wouldn’t let go until the break

of dawn. I wondered if when it

rained in Baltimore, it rained

in New York the same time.

I wondered if tears fell in heaven.

 

After I curtained the contained

face immersed in the window,

I went up the dark staircase

washed my hands and face,

and went to his bedroom, echoing

beside the unfinished B-9 model

airplane with detached wings-

where I peeked through the blinds,

to find him gone, leaving remnants

in parallel of no one on the sidewalk.

-----------------

Spoon and Fork

While yet married to a dish,
the spoon ran off with the fork
to elope into a knife
cut-throat marriage-
going feeding porkishly
at Las Vegas buffets
and drinking glass
after glass martinis and wine-
gambling the night away.

It wasn't until the cow
jumped over the plate perfect
moon, that spoon thought of his
dish back home,
probably by now dirtied
with tears and peas, as
the big dipper
above the brightly lit strip,
and small dipper below
his belt, somewhat aroused-

where the little dog laughed
to see such sport,
when the spoon and fork
slipped between the sheets
of a napkin.

--------------

 

A Window to See Through

 

A window to see through,

is as the stroke of a painting

where a river of oil runs through

pastel floras and faunas, to the

rush of a paintbrush on crevice.

 

A window to see through,

gives a poet the muse for words,

letters of the alphabet dangling

from the tangled branches of stars

as picking grapes off vines and

serving on the white moon plate.

 

How we all want many windows

when looking for a house,

a brightly lit home with sunlight

stretching from room to room

bouncing off clean, clear glass

looking into a blossomed blood

flowers bed

and blue, where seagulls fly over

the ocean and polished grass,

figure eight in-ground whirlpool

and tinfoil roofs,

this is living we say...

 

but what good are windows,

when the mood is lived low-

to the woman that always sits

drowned for the storm to come.

The thunder roaring in head,

and rain thrashing against

the windows of her soul-

blinds pulling out the light

and binding,

 

to a four walled room

sounding as a tired drum-

windowless and widowed,

with peeling and twin fruit bowl

wallpaper, a ceiling of plaster

cigarette stained smoke,

 

the four walls of a heart

this is first where that light

must enter, through the open

eyes of windows freshly painted

 

------------------

Paranoia

 

I have taken four sleeping pills

and two shots of Tequila and

half a bottle of white wine and

still, I could see her face-

projected on the big screen

of my mind,

lights, camera and no action-

so I quickly down two ice cold

beers and get a brain-freeze,

coming back to feeling fine;

 

thinking to myself even in suicide

I could mess everything up.

By this time the crickets are

a point of view out here

in my backyard,

how they line up their

chirps against the still

night,

and when I draw myself

in to them with footsteps

they shut down,

when I back away,

they go return to mingling

under their forewings,

calling me an idiot.

 

 

Anthony Liccione is from Upstate New York and has been writing poetry for over ten years. He has recently won the 2006 LizaBeth Poetry Award and Unscrambled Eggs Poetry Contest, and was nominated Best Poem of the Year 2005 (Muses Review). He recently released a chapbook Parched and Colorless with The Moon Publishing, and a full-volume book of poems Back Words and Forward (ISBN:1424113563).