riding in those vertical horizon days
came near to wreck our Jeep
with their sliprock seat pucker cliffs
like “fly-on-the-wall” …”again and again”
hold on…okay, now gun it
Oh Christ…that’s why it’s “metal masher”
adrenaline wash fear…gas pedal brake
follow that line kamikaze guy took up “widow maker”
rock-rail graze that bolder
scrape sparks across the pan
breathe over heartbeats
at the edge of earth
Careful now…she’s fragile.
Give her no cause for fear.
A voice too loud will startle her
…too hushed, and you’re a blur.
Offer her soft…warm cookies.
Place a length of satin ribbon
…in her quiet hands.
Set a vase of lilacs where the sun
…will find their scent.
Careful now…she’s fragile.
Don’t frighten her to death.
Bonnie Marshall
from March,2013
Art by Frank Rozasy
She followed a decoction ritual…
steeped Assam’s potent chai leaves
with cardamom, peppercorn and cloves,
and honeyed milk in an earthen pot,
‘til she caffeine drifted…lulled
to remembered images of Africa and India
though she had never lived there
where cobras lapped saucered milk
on verandas framed with fever trees.
Her childhood fever had been real…
had extended into months
of icy compress…twisted sheets
and sorted consciousness
with white and yellow pills
slipping down the hurt…
until the real escape
when Rudyard Kipling entered
transported in a book
carried to her by her father
to divert her pain with stories
and words so powerful
that they drugged her senses
and inoculated care.
Bonnie Marshall
“The Elephant’s Child” by Rudyard Kipling: A Reading Just For Fun from Bonnie
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
Rudyard Kipling
Art by Andrea Clare
I knew all was readiness…
my palette daubed
with slight toxins…malachite
for glass green waves
below zinc white’s smother foam…
a bead of lapis lazuli,
all primed for sable brushes
there rowed upon my easel.
I knew all was centeredness,
my thumb and fingers balancing
the board against my forearm,
my axis perpendicular
to silhouette the shore.
And yet I lacked perspective.
I knew van Gogh had used a frame…
a strong wood perspective frame
with diagonal perpendicular horizontal wire
to line orient his vision.
And I estimated distance
of sailboats…on far deep water…
with gray storm clouds brewing
and craved his guidance source.
Bonnie Marshall
He leans his motorcycle
through cooling drifts of fog
where mountain ridges
stretch purple navy gray
beneath a growing brightness
of hazy blue horizon.
Forest breaks of sunlight
steam black pavement
as snarling thrums
of the cycle’s motor
reverberate…jagged…
off rough layered cliffs
of Appalachian rock.
Then with his ascension
to crests…a narrow ridge…
cliffs and forest slip away
as…frameless…
he blends to integration
of space and speed and presence…
immediate perception
of his otherness.
Bonnie Marshall
Proem... 
You must be logged in to post a comment.