posting in ghost towns

i drive many hours

through ghost towns, abandoned

poetry groups, planting words

with pants and images

with wings to flutter

inside hearts like butterflies

decorating the walls

hosts have left behind

for guests passing

through zombie towns to post

their songs; but the brainless

seldom see music

leaving me to dance alone

with not even a single applause

testing my inner mettle

to roam the towns

bereft of taste and depth

of rational, observable substance

henry victor           11.12.2018

the scarecrow

you were hardly seven

amusing me with heaven

with your success in tricking

me with a hilarious scarecrow

that Tina, our pet dog

mistook for a prowler

in our garden of shoe-flower

barking loud with fear

at a scarecrow with shoulders straight

wearing your torn frock for dress

and a curd-pot for head with face

chalked on it, your first artistic creation

henry victor     09.09.2002

my faith

how big should be my canvas

to paint a splendid painting

satisfying my soul, or the Source

the Soul that paints my soul

if it is small as my thumb nail

will it be pushed away

and dismissed as narrowly

moralistic, unduly silly

and what if it is wide, wide

as the world beyond my window!

will this be sacked as political

a revolt against the Heaven!

what if i make it my palm size

connecting dots and lines therein!

will such an art be brushed aside

as too mathematical, merely cerebral!

© henry victor

look at my scribble

i look at my poems

and my face yields a smile

constantly i look at past promises

and tears instantly heap inside

i know this plaque, these assurances

not lived to flower in my garden

constantly kills my cellular life

that sullenly slows my flow

hence i turn to watch justin

my grandson scribble my scrapbook

constantly looking into my face

grinning, bulldozing my moments

to sculpt a funny image

to permanently install in my heart

constantly with no consciousness

carving a memoir with my jotting

© henry victor     10.04.2011

last noon and last night

last noon i bent my inflexible frame to sit

down on my driveway with my grandson

the little boy, to draw with sidewalk chalk
flowers that never droop, bees that never suck

adding the easy crocodile beside the baby

and endlessly much more that he scribbled
until the energy within tempted him to spill
beyond the safety of my patience, my control

and last night you sent your heavy dark clouds

to completely wipe out our creative expressions
as if getting rid of the monstrous dinosaurs, bad
land creatures, to give space for prickly cacti bed!
 
29.06.2014    

making a poem

you keep pushing me from my depth

within my soul, my body, heart and mind
me to will a life of creating lines
breaking, at my own will, those lines

that others like me call it a poem

just like my mother, long ago
put her bigger hand on top of mine
gently, overriding my will, to script mine
 
that in school they called alphabet
thus seeing with her intuitive mind
she liaised with the master poet
submitting her will, in making a poet

31.12.2011