THERE IS NO MELISSA

Today I finished reading a book
From cover to cover

It was my first

I remember you now
As the coffee is depleted

And the table needs clearing

The sky has turned azure
Just like your face

I can see it in my mirror

School is out
I'm going to get drunk

Help me recall your name

Copyright © 2007

wiredwriter

THREE MINUTE POEM

Go! says the timer

Its yellow grains of sand

Sifting through the little

Waist of the plastic cylinder

And I know I have to think

Fast, each moment counts

For something, so I consider

How the air feels around me

What the room feels like

As the sand cascades into

The lower container, the top

One perilous and frightening

Just like the bigger one in Oz

When Dorothy knows her life

Will soon be over

EARLY TROUBLE

In his window periphery

the great red eye

of morning’s horizon

watches         he thinks of her

alone

in the emptied house

looking for him

room to room

calling out his name

her voice

escalating from wonder

to fear, answered only

by sickened silence:

he is ten

now twenty miles

away, this growing

distance a strange

freedom he calls

hate or distrust:

the mileage

adding up

to nothingness:

each marker

a past regret:

the road itself his own

undetermined death

Copyright © 2007

Jeffrey S. Callico

DISMISSAL

The coffee in the cup

remains untouched:

a cold memory

poured out

by a remembered hand

once warmed

with the cup itself,

now awaiting another

that never partook

Copyright © 2007

Jeffrey S. Callico