I Come From the Sea God’s Desert

January 17, 2023 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Orion. This is where I am.
Slay me with your bronze club.

I fear I am denied
an ending.

Artemis does not lurk
in the shadows.

Remind me
what it is to be mortal.

Set your dogs
to tear my flesh from bones.

Why and Wherefore

January 16, 2023 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

I appeared
in the afterlife
to my parents
as a character
on a daily television
soap opera
about a rustic town
named Mill Creek
where the rocky creek bed
looks more like
the colored pebbles
in the bottom
of a fishbowl.

I was a young doctor
who used
special surgical tools
to remove
the scorpions
that produced
stinging words
from people’s throats
and employed CRISPR
to splice Libra
or Gemini genes
to any infant Scorpio’s
double helix.

Restless

November 18, 2022 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ 1 Comment

The astrologer
asks Paul
if he has
always been
a Scorpio.

I doubt it
he replies.
My restless birthday
moves yearly
about the calendar
to the month
with the best
photograph.

Fiery Mars Destructive Pluto

January 9, 2022 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

I never thought to ask
why I was born in November.

A friend told me to count the months
backwards to Valentines day.

A Hallmark created holiday
vanished my parents’ mid-life divorce.

So that is why my first four months lived
felt winter’s frost daily.

And why I live the paradox of being
a desert animal that wears the sign of water.