..................................................................................................................................................
The Poetry Of.
Al Ferber...........................................
Some Nameless War
She came to Vienna with her
dog eared copies of Darwin,
Engles & Einstein,
parked her bike in a rusted rack
outside the ivied
medical studies building,
apart from the place
where her friends built their
own part of the city,
apart from this place
where she walked beneath
stained glass cathedrals
and viewed rioting masses
on cobblestone streets.
In her room, she ate meals
of dark coffee, apples, & toast,
with her belief that the best thing for
the common good
came into direct odds
with anything
that would be any good,
realizing that reasonable men
will disagree
and kill to prove their point.
She felt always on the way,
always unsure of her destination,
always held hostage, always a prisoner
of some nameless war
in the Gulag of collective insanity,
in the parade of lunatic ideologues.
The burn marks and scars,
always bandaged incorrectly,
always confronted by the harsh winters
of the Russian front far beyond
the reach and comfort
of Parisian cafes.
The front ices up
even against the diminishing light
of a fading sun
like the distance between
father and son,
husband and wife,
like her odd dream
of a whiskey bottle
next to cut onions
on a kitchen table
and the mesmerizing rote
of surf against the shore.
The star upstaged in every scene
by an unknown character actor
the strumming of the balalaika
the burning of the shish kabob
the warming of cognac
by the hands of the daughter
of the Maltese Falcon.
Stranded on Elephant Island
in the endless ice floe
of the North,
on another failed expedition
condemned to this asylum
with incurable mind,
just when a woman reaches
that perfect time of life.
Just Another Night
the moon was bright
and full and unnoticed
while he smoked crack
with his crack whore
in one room, getting
a blow job -
while she, his wife,
was curled in the fetal
position, indifferent
to his lack of fidelity,
foaming slightly
at the mouth, in another
room, amidst
a heroine convulsion
Appearances
The doors are always closed
the windows open
to let the weather, fresh or
stale inside, with me
locked, in my way, without the
courage to put my
foot upon the sill and make a
less than elegant escape.
