John Martino
Sure, I’ll Promise You a Rose Garden
Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights
spills from my newly widowed ear.
And now, Dick Rose has found me out
and wants to eat my Chanticleer.
A silver fork in each fist, mon fair,
mon sembabble? Maybe first
a game of Scrabble? “Trouble” gets
me double, plus bonus points.
It’s Eat or Be Eaten, Post-industrial
Style. Freedom is recognized necessity.
Asses, asses, walls fall down!
Some things are just too sad to see.
David skating naked as birth
out of the camera onto the screen.
His sculptor’s hands cupped behind him,
one inside the other. Long, cold, lonely
winter. Curses! Tin-foiled again!
Tweedledum and Tweedledummer.
Come, my Dear, let’s Twist once more,
like we did last bummer.
John Martino‘s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, HEArt Online, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, and the anthology Envy, Vol. 6 from a 7-volume series on the 7 deadly sins by Pure Slush Books. He has worked as a teacher and tutor of English for 22 years. An avid traveler, Martino currently resides in Hong Kong with his wife, Shelley.
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