By Ken Gosse
My Heart Skips a Beat
With resources replete but reserved for the young
we would touch the ground just for a moment’s rebound,
then zoom upward, inhaling the sky as our tongue
at its zenith would taste every star to be found.
Never bound by directions displayed on a map,
in our flow we would go where the next leap would lead
without stopping, except for a well-needed nap
or a break for a snack to restore us to speed.
But the world added burdens, like backpacks and schools,
and our paths became tangled by worries and doubts.
Obligations demanded obeying more rules
as we crisscrossed our highways’ circuitous routes.
Even so, though we’re older, joints stiffer and colder,
we still find a ploy to recover that joy
where it rests in the daydreams of every beholder
whose heart leaps within its own young girl or boy.
The Blurry Day After
The past thirty years on this date,
a photo I still contemplate;
snapped from a room
for a bride and groom—
unoccupied, by turn of fate.
Asleep in a pool-side lounge chair,
then suddenly tossed in the air.
I surfaced—my friend
sunk beneath the deep end.
Drunk groomsmen had taken a dare.
Police tape was taken away;
lounge chairs afloat through the day.
An unkind reminder
for memory’s grinder.
Worst plans of friends gang agley.
Meant to be celebratory,
starting their trip into glory;
the beautiful bride,
her mate at her side,
instead was the end of their story.
A Dark, Stormy Night in a Greyhound Station
What place is this to spend a night?
A traveler, without delight.
None must see her stopping here,
shivering with cold and fright.
A giant dog runs overhead
(“That ain’t a boy,” her father’d said),
between a tavern and motel,
her mournful eyes are full of dread.
She glanced back once, a fearful look,
recalling those who overtook
her once before upon the floor,
a fate she can no longer brook.
The night is damp, the cold is deep,
Until the dawn, this place her keep.
A hidden place where she can sleep.
A lonely place—but she can sleep.
Stems Without Petals
Suppose that prose,
when torn apart,
is yet another
form of art,
its reconnecting ampersands
all giving in to its demands,
connecting dots & filling spaces
of its many formless graces,
sometimes using dot dot dot
to fill a space where words have not …
Yet don’t consider them a blot,
but thorns (by which a rose is not
best known), though where it’s known they’ve grown
wise fingers will leave stems alone
since where they’re @, much like a c@,
they’ll leave a tiny, painful t@.
Ken Gosse usually writes short, rhymed verse using whimsy and humor in traditional meters. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, since then in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, Home Planet News Online, Sparks of Calliope and others. Raised in the Chicago, Illinois, suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 