Category: Uncategorized

It’s 100 degrees outside and humid
Sitting in an air conditioned lobby is flimsy relief
I know the hot wet breath of the concrete city
Is waiting for me beyond the doors
Waiting to blow in my face and rob my breath

Leaving the table I wander further into the building
Picking my way through a plexiglass forest
Lions lunge after a wildebeest
A reclining otter and stern orangutan match my gaze

I scale across the branches of this grand family tree
My closest cousins stare back through blank black marble eyes
Heavy brows and wide smiles betray snickers
They’re laughing at us from the other side of the punchline
Not that we think we’re the first
Their laughing because we think we’re at the top of something

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Old Ireland”)

Way up here from this balcony I see more buildings
Rows of brick and granite monuments
Talisman of permanence and importance
Gifting validity to the lines of beautiful people below
On their way to that new Raman place
Viscous humidity draws sweat on their foreheads
Beyond them sits the center of the universe
With its manicured lawn and whitewashed facade
But when I try to take a picture
It is just a small white building in a dark city night

-T. Weeks
(A response to “There Was a Child Went Forth”)

Here lies the Prince of Nevermore
His bed a pool of vomit and cobblestone
Evermore his meter to climb the brick
Macabre vines twining the city in the night
When infamy and immortality were not enough
When he died anyway
And The Horse inked the epilogue
Or so says this sign here

-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Return of the Heroes”)

Life and pulse and plasma
Iron cores sweep into the exchange
Alien oxygen stows away
Carried crimson into the extremities
A galaxy of synapses to explore
Yawning, the cosmos are unaware

-T. Weeks
(A response to “As Consequent, Etc.”)

Look at that century
Antique and contemporary
Relevant and obsolete

Civil savages emerging
From growing urban heights
Staring at the horizon and wanting that too

Desert theocracies blooming
In soil fertilized
By ancient peoples moved aside

Science and fairytales
Colonizing the zeitgeist
Of a dissonant nation rising

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Reversals”)

Some poems arrive bubble wrapped on the porch
Light assembly required but fully charged
Some poems must be peeled from the walls
Delicate edges tearing under thumbnails picking

-T. Weeks
(A response to “BOOK XXIII: By Blue Ontario’s Shore”)

Idle instruments lounge in deep recline
Where musicians left them moments ago
The last riff still humming through our feet

Resolute vessels of cheap summer fare
Styrofoam plates lie scattered on flattened grass
Under cold fries or smeared tzatziki

Screens flash on only to check the time
But little red circles intercept the attention
Reminders that someone else is still working

Cool shaded breezes carry away stale heat
Emails get checked again just in case
The band rests but we don’t

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865]”)

Hoaried daytime moon
Holds its post
Just a few hours beyond its watch
Crows line the extinguished lamppost
Seats below filling one at a time
At the stirring café
Stretching dappled green limbs
Trees inhale deeply
Into a gentle blue sunrise
The crows the moon and shadows
Stay to watch
Their fresh triumph animate

-T. Weeks
(A response to “O Captain! My Captain!”)

Restless shapes hover
Colored haze dips
Rises and returns
I pretend a meaning
In the obscure pantomime
The mystery
Beyond the fogged glass

-T. Weeks
(A response to “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”)