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| Photograph by Tony Walton https://twitter.com/caymanchess http://www.flickr.com/photos/15939419@N03/ |
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Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Port-au-Prince, Haitian Market Stall 7:56 AM
Monday, 26 August 2013
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Indentations in the Female Psyche
There has been an empty space to the
left of her for some time.
All that remains is an
indentation.
Those who slept on that side were
kind,
some she will not forget,
others are
forgotten.
Some stayed for just one night
faithless arms and legs entwined,
others for years and years.
Once
a wanting voice flailed against his
gated silence, until exhausted and left there
in the empty spaces between words,
for the less loving one was
rarely her.
The corners of her disobedient
dreams flash images
in which the empty space grows,
like a stain and
she is awakened
drenched in silence, her breath pooling
around her. Some time ago there was
a lamp on the left side, mens fitness magazines,
and a watch of some rugged wear,
now the leaves of the trees tremble on
windless days and their circling rings
advance into evening. We must ask:
What will become of this left side?
Ah! But stop!- and not overanalyze!
Rationally there is a tantalizing thing that
she declines to see:
Through those curtained windows
under these same stars that we sleep
down winding streets
humming with air conditioners
behind the manicured lawns with
cool sprinklers,
each night,
there are many such
indentations.
(Boston Poetry Magazine)
http://bostonpoetry.wordpress.com/?s=tony+Walton
Tony Walton
caymanchess@yahoo.com
1 345 927 2359
Po box 30439
Grand Cayman,
Ky1-1202
Cayman Islands
(please respond by email or telephone)
Saturday, 10 August 2013
Coloring inside the Lines
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
Coco Chanel
Childrens's crayons, a clustered
pack,
little desks in tidy rows,
conforming to the lines.
Lines drawn for them
by others - don't they know?
"He followed orders to a Tee,"
is no Epitaph for me.
The jacket of convention-
avoiding this fate is quite
the art.
So:
You of dewy bloom! Of aesthetics! Of
Imagination!
Silence the mourners,
muffle the bagpipes,
push back the coffin out for sail,
inhale back that sigh!
Blast through the lines
like Pollock into a
hard driving rain, for
what they think of you -
does not come from thought.
Tony Walton
(Boston Poetry Magazine August edition )
Punching the Moon
There are delving days when the ink blue sea whispers to me
in a sexy voice, "Come over here boy, and give me a kiss."
"Hell no girl! I am not easy like that! Anyway, I have
too much to do."
I want to get cashy and swagger with America,
drunk with England on cool draft lager,
dine with France on her clean white linens with shining silver,
then turn to Italy, her eyes of tawny pools, and say,
"You and I are going dancing with Brazil.
We'll splash across the Atlantic and
samba all night!"
Some days I feel like punching the moon out of sight,
swatting down the stars,
pouring the oceans down the drain,
and switching off the sun.
There are nights when the skies thunder with revelry and streak
with disco lightening and the rain drinks champagne
and mother nature, with her thousand Arabic pleasures,
sways over to me slow thighed...
But before I explode across this page-
I've got to finish the laundry- I've got a ton of it to do.
Tony Walton
http://bostonpoetry.wordpress.com/?s=tony+walton
in a sexy voice, "Come over here boy, and give me a kiss."
"Hell no girl! I am not easy like that! Anyway, I have
too much to do."
I want to get cashy and swagger with America,
drunk with England on cool draft lager,
dine with France on her clean white linens with shining silver,
then turn to Italy, her eyes of tawny pools, and say,
"You and I are going dancing with Brazil.
We'll splash across the Atlantic and
samba all night!"
Some days I feel like punching the moon out of sight,
swatting down the stars,
pouring the oceans down the drain,
and switching off the sun.
There are nights when the skies thunder with revelry and streak
with disco lightening and the rain drinks champagne
and mother nature, with her thousand Arabic pleasures,
sways over to me slow thighed...
But before I explode across this page-
I've got to finish the laundry- I've got a ton of it to do.
Tony Walton
http://bostonpoetry.wordpress.com/?s=tony+walton
A Couple on a Sunday Drive
There are no disagreements as we drive along,
encased safely in the car, a road
split by the center line.
Practiced vowels, consonants and syllables
roll predictably with the hum of tires. Each topic
measured as the roadside poles,
the conversation's selected tone
mirrors the
ca-thump ca-thump ca-thump
of the the paved highway joints.
We stare at the windshield and
think of things that must be said - instead,
the words shift, twist, and turn
in our mouths
like worms, then sit angrily,
before we
brood them out of separate windows in
silence and
continue down the road
somewhere,
the receding light of the sun
searching through glass then
fading
in the rear window,
frame by frame
until the light is
gone.
http://bostonpoetry.wordpress.com/?s=tony+walton
encased safely in the car, a road
split by the center line.
Practiced vowels, consonants and syllables
roll predictably with the hum of tires. Each topic
measured as the roadside poles,
the conversation's selected tone
mirrors the
ca-thump ca-thump ca-thump
of the the paved highway joints.
We stare at the windshield and
think of things that must be said - instead,
the words shift, twist, and turn
in our mouths
like worms, then sit angrily,
before we
brood them out of separate windows in
silence and
continue down the road
somewhere,
the receding light of the sun
searching through glass then
fading
in the rear window,
frame by frame
until the light is
gone.
http://bostonpoetry.wordpress.com/?s=tony+walton
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
After a confidential word with the concierge
As I step down from the chicken fluttered bus
I'm hit with a blast of popcorn bag heat
opened directly into my face and I glide through
the cheek and jowl streets with
tangled knots of aromas from street market stalls
I feel life flow back into me(!) as I
grow nearer and remove my aviator shades
perching them on my head with my left hand while
my right hand confirms a lump of faded colonial pointed nose men
aiming towards the bar recommended by the fuzzy diced
1995 caprice classic taxi driver with a broken air conditioner and
I see fleshy tropical shirted gringos appearing uncommonly popular
at Las Diablo.
She holds eye contact for 5 glorious seconds
and slides through perfumed air towards me
and I rewind to a time of
cars and lakes and
cascading hair
and beery mirth and
soft touches and the freshly packaged
newness of youth that the counsel of
my years will not surrender
and I become intoxicated by the whole
damn thing and soon we are
stumbling into the sharp edge of the city
through dying light
past corrugated iron and angry graffiti.
We are sniped by well aimed stares of
lost possibilities from women whose
arms are thick from lifting children.
Their eyes have no flicker.
These things cause
our buzz to fade a little
and we become less tactile as
we reach a concrete squared house with a
sleepy hammock and mongrels and dusty children kicking a ball
and a grandmother slowly and silently lifts her face
towards my mumbled greeting
but her hands continue their soapy toil.
I find myself in a bare bulb room with a
picture of Jesus that I remember from childhood Catechism
on the wall and an old iron post bed with thin sheets and soon
I see this:
The symmetry of her face, close up, is melting.
Her lip curves slightly up on the left side as
does the right. Matching almond eyes
with a brow of gentle waves and laughter that
occasionally breaks into flashes of
sadness.
A child is conversing in the
next room in animated tones playing with
a (formerly) blonde one armed doll who is
competing with a tube tv
broadcasting a Brazilian soap opera.
A rooster crows, a reggaeton
car thumps by and the
street noises converge
into a disquieting hum.
We shift from grip to grip to grip as
a tired oscillating fan moves slowly
left and right and left, as if
in disapproval.
(Reprinted with the permission of Burningword Literary Magazine with the permission of the author)
http://burningword.com/2013/04/tony-walton/
Tony M Walton
I'm hit with a blast of popcorn bag heat
opened directly into my face and I glide through
the cheek and jowl streets with
tangled knots of aromas from street market stalls
I feel life flow back into me(!) as I
grow nearer and remove my aviator shades
perching them on my head with my left hand while
my right hand confirms a lump of faded colonial pointed nose men
aiming towards the bar recommended by the fuzzy diced
1995 caprice classic taxi driver with a broken air conditioner and
I see fleshy tropical shirted gringos appearing uncommonly popular
at Las Diablo.
She holds eye contact for 5 glorious seconds
and slides through perfumed air towards me
and I rewind to a time of
cars and lakes and
cascading hair
and beery mirth and
soft touches and the freshly packaged
newness of youth that the counsel of
my years will not surrender
and I become intoxicated by the whole
damn thing and soon we are
stumbling into the sharp edge of the city
through dying light
past corrugated iron and angry graffiti.
We are sniped by well aimed stares of
lost possibilities from women whose
arms are thick from lifting children.
Their eyes have no flicker.
These things cause
our buzz to fade a little
and we become less tactile as
we reach a concrete squared house with a
sleepy hammock and mongrels and dusty children kicking a ball
and a grandmother slowly and silently lifts her face
towards my mumbled greeting
but her hands continue their soapy toil.
I find myself in a bare bulb room with a
picture of Jesus that I remember from childhood Catechism
on the wall and an old iron post bed with thin sheets and soon
I see this:
The symmetry of her face, close up, is melting.
Her lip curves slightly up on the left side as
does the right. Matching almond eyes
with a brow of gentle waves and laughter that
occasionally breaks into flashes of
sadness.
A child is conversing in the
next room in animated tones playing with
a (formerly) blonde one armed doll who is
competing with a tube tv
broadcasting a Brazilian soap opera.
A rooster crows, a reggaeton
car thumps by and the
street noises converge
into a disquieting hum.
We shift from grip to grip to grip as
a tired oscillating fan moves slowly
left and right and left, as if
in disapproval.
(Reprinted with the permission of Burningword Literary Magazine with the permission of the author)
http://burningword.com/2013/04/tony-walton/
Tony M Walton
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