Lost like the sins in confession that I didn’t remember committing like the clothes left in closets whenever I moved and all the high school boys I said ‘no’ to It looked so much like the day before that I didn’t notice I had lost it My gold wedding ring that slipped off in the […]
Left, right Left, right We’re marching in file to the edge of a cliff Left, right Left, right It’s an artificial construct to widen the gulf between either or But the innocents are the cause we rise to stand for The conscience is the drum worthy to follow the beat of Right, wrong Right, wrong […]
It’s all bumper cars hitting and running and the same old merry-go-round we can’t get off It’s all about the photo-op the selfie, the selfie smoke and mirror fun house and the dizzy spin of news I’m wearing a bandana now like Def Leppard in the 1980s when Michael Jackson told us bad was good […]
From an undressed flush of morning sky the moon’s half slip hangs without regret in a pastel shade of blushed sunrise _________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United
-The following was written by the Little River Poetry Festival co-founder Jack Callan and first appeared in The Floyd Press on June 4, 2020. The Festival will take place June 12-14, 2020 at On the Water in Floyd. What if you were out with your dog an’ it run off with no, “May I go?”, […]
Injustice is a pig pile bearing down on our backs a suffocating weight that tests the limits of what we can take Our collective knees are bruised from the wear of prayer and protest Sometimes we are called to stand to shake off the onslaught of insult to injury to drown out false power with […]
Leave it to a poet to have his last words upon leaving this world be: “My ride showed up.” – John Trudell February 15, 1946 – December 8, 2015 There’s an urge to contract that brings waves of panic the kind my sister had when she started chemo for the cancer she knew would likely […]
– A Tibetan term for an “intermediate state,” either in the afterlife or in this life when something interrupts our normal sense of certainty and our old sense of reality isn’t available to us. – Pema Khandro Rinpoche We dissolve like salt overwhelmed by water fade like a photograph overexposed by air Every death is […]
Aka What to Wear to a Dream The thought has to drop like a pin to the floor In a bottomless dream it stakes a claim With a prick of interest that doesn’t draw blood and won’t wake you up until morning You struggle to stitch what a bookmark keeps separate You wait for the […]
My Poem “Slow Burn” was recently published in Floyd County Moonshine, a regional publication “over ten years in production, brewing up smooth home distilled literature,” their website reads. HERE is the 2008 review I wrote for The Floyd Press about the publication’s inaugural issue. I also have three photographs in the new issue. The one […]
Dreams are like movies of untrue stories that are based on real life But the locations where they’re set are places that exist in dimensions only accessed through deep sleep I’ve seen them more than once Some are loved and missed Some details have been changed but the ground remains the same There are no […]
She writes only four and five star poems that give me goosebumps and make me laugh out loud She takes me places that are new but feel familiar Sometimes my eyes fill with salty water and I miss my hometown peninsula While she flits through fiddleheads on the sides of mountains and washes her feet […]
The moon’s star rose to a standing ovation of bright constellation in symbiotic play The moon bowed low at the last curtain call The lights went out on cue and it slipped backstage _________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United
I’m turning into that woman in Norwood Massachusetts who lived in the apartment next to my friend Eugene She cooked garlic in the skillet every day at lunchtime It wafted through the neighborhood and smelled like Little Italy And we wondered why she didn’t have something better to do or something different to cook I […]
Living your true life is like waiting for a bus without a schedule or a designated stop You bought a ticket but don’t know to where You hope you’ll know it when you see it Sometimes you have to run for it or take one to get to another Once you’re on board you have […]
Slight of light Ray of fate embraces the pale glow of the moon’s dark weight __________Colleen Redman / Poets United and Storytellers United
Our hands are not concealed weapons passing the cooties we feared as children Let smiles be the contagion Be touched by love Spread goodwill and let it go viral __________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United
People, places and things of the past ring silently true in the present They glow like the ghosts of an afterlife and float wherever they will They’re as real as the ground that I walk on with nothing to hold as it spins They echo and ripple and shift out of place in the background […]
