Sample Poems by James Whitley
Memento Mori
October is intent on having its way with us:
haughty glabrous moon glaring down,
bitter wind bossing us around like twigs,
your cancer still spreading like an oil spill
in the once-pristine waters of your body.
At the window, a gypsy moth is negotiating
between two compelling choices—
the path of blue moonlight versus the frail
glow from the lamp next to your bed.
Of course, the moth knows nothing of nature’s
cruel jokes, nothing of technology’s artifice
and its flimsy veneer of resolution, salvation.
Back inside the room, everyone hovers in
quandary, each pair of confused eyes soaring
to and fro, hoping to land on something painless
to talk about, something perhaps lost in a corner
or encoded in the scuff marks on the floor.
None of us has been given any directions.
No one knows exactly which way to turn next.
Pop
When a cell screams
no one hears it, which,
although it may reek of
deception, might be
an indication that we were
meant to be spared the full
drama of the body’s
inevitable mutinies.
We are shown so few mercies
in our lives, it seems only
appropriate to acknowledge
them where we can.
Still, truth reigns supreme in
the dark halls of our bodies—
these little engines of grief,
these fading ledgers of experience—
where some ritual is always
ending and another is
always beginning
to the muted cannon fire
of balloons rupturing
all along the cavern walls,
corks bursting in the recesses
of our sacred temples.
If Not Purple, Then Blue
And if not blue, then bluer still,
the bruise of mood here.
And if not in situ,
then fatal.
And if night becomes a thicket
of thorns, burrs, serrated blades
of past transgressions,
then so be it.
Just avoid inhaling
the dour air too deeply.
Take short,
then shorter breaths
to mimic how time grinds to a halt.
Yeah, that’s it.
Pace yourself.
All the world’s a big bowl of grieving
and there’s a lifetime left to eat.
The Unraveling
No one’s summer should end like this:
the lawn in a perpetual state of dishabille,
the surly clouds overhead like blotches
on the sky’s otherwise flawless blue skin.
Though once cherished, evening
has become a flood of morphine to blur
the truth: you are dying.
The jaundiced eyes of stars glare down
through night’s dark curtain as you lie there,
uncharacteristically speechless, wondering
how much further you have to travel before
reaching the soul’s meniscus, until you can
finally touch the canyon bottom and rest.
Crunch
Listen closely to this sound
recalling the crisp resistance of
Granny Smith apples to the teeth,
the fresh guarantee of snow peas
or torn lettuce.
But beware,
this is something darker,
the macabre music of bone
yielding to decay, overpowered
by the onslaught of errant cells
enraged by the integrity
of the skeleton, its brittle
promise of reliability,
just one of a million examples of
the body’s eventual treacheries.