unpublished

so many poets

many more unread words

in notebooks

Word documents

on printer paper

who would read

a loose stack

of papers

hardly cohesive

a spineless unbound pile

unglued pages

some caught under

a weight of polished marble

corners blowing

clicking like playing cards

clothes-pinned to metal bike spokes

then luffing in the window’s breeze

who would tighten phrases

shuffle papers

fold them into a manuscript

a volume of verse

seventy poems perfectly bound

placed on a bookstore shelf

title on the spine

to wait for buyers and

readers uncommon

Barry DeCarli

August 27-28, 2015

On Hammond Pond, Goshen MA

©2015 Barry DeCarli

Draft #2

no teaser

called out

for teasing with my words

a faker fashioning phrases

to lure a trusting mind

into my poetic snare

I’d rather be

a magician pulling a thesaurus

out of a hat

a dreamer catching a falling star

holding its rhyme

in a Mason jar

a lamplighter reaching

up to light a circle

of night air

a patch of dark ground

a way home

but not a teaser

keeping a secret

or trying to deceive

with my images that anyone may see

my metaphors as deep as a mirror…

Barry DeCarli

August 15-21, 2015

On Hammond Pond

©2015 Barry DeCarli

draft #4

kaleidoscope

better obscurity

than the scrutiny

of examining eyes

this kaleidoscope of our own

broken pieces held

up to the light

some will see beauty

some pain and waste

from the rainbow of color

and jagged edges

tumbling as we turn

to the next catastrophe

or epiphany

the mirrored hall of scattered

dreams, tattered triumphs

the spare glory days

conjured with the turn

of a hand illuminating

the bits and beads

the shards of yesterday

the loose ends

the arbitrary patterns

of bliss and blunder roll

to reflect our tunnel vision until

the fractured light shows us

the mismatched fragments

wedded and welded
by shade and color
our sharp edges salt water sanded
to a sea glass satin
visible
yet ever-changing

to those who look into this lens to find the light

Barry DeCarli

August 13, 2015*
Revised August 25, 2017 On South Street Easthampton

*On Hammond Pond, Goshen MA

©2015 Barry DeCarli

despair

sometimes

hope leads us on

teases us with

its shiny baubles

its stunning horizons

it can carry us over

the roiling turmoil

the raging storm

then as easily

with its cornucopia of lies

spill us into the waves

to flounder against its loss

Barry DeCarli

July 31, 2015

On Hammond Pond

©2015 Barry DeCarli