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Allegories

June 6, 2025 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
[with poetry by Dasan Ahanu]
 . 
. . .
I see potential where others feel desolation
Show me a danger zone
I see an area under construction
An optimistic land developer
who’s been an indecisive bulldozer for too long
Never knowing whether to dig or bury
I’ve got a hard hat and a lunch box
because it’s a long day’s work
to rebuild a heart so beautifully broken
Fenced into construction sites
with lovers who have a lust for demolition
wearing orange vests
and steel-toe boots
Then wondering why all I have are stories
of things falling apart
. . .
from Suspense
Dasan Ahanu
Concrete Jungle Allegories, Sable Books, sablebooks.org; © 2025
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Love is a homeless wanderer. Might show up on your doorstep and make you decide whether to open /dig or slam / bury. Love is bread. You going to throw it out when it’s stale, then die of hunger? Love is not the punchline, it’s the plot; love is not the punctuation, it’s the enjambement; love is not the letters you learn to write or the words you learn to read, it’s the unlearned mother-tongue. Speak it.
 . 
Love isn’t easy. Are all its stories about things falling apart? In Concrete Jungle Allegories, Dasan Ahanu experiences hot love and cold love, empty love and full love, mother love and father love, and always on the edge of being sliced open by love. But always, always there are second chances. I guess this is what it means / when a poet has an epiphany.
 . 
The mystic discovers that love is the fabric of the universe, matter/energy/spirit within us and around us and every moment available for us if we will share in the discovery. The poet discovers love in every particular, a shout or a cry, a down-and-out or an up-and-over, and every moment discovers love is the only thing that can propel us forward. Years ago I argued with another poet that all poems are about Death. The immortal gods do not write poetry but only send us mortals such cutting awareness of our finitude that we are compelled to write the lines the gods hunger for. But the other poet challenged me that all poems are about Love. Love’s immanence or its distant faint glimmer are equal inspirations. Dasan Ahanu argues on the side of Love, and every poem must end with tears, or with AMEN. Hear it, and know.
 . 
❦
 . 
Dasan Ahanu is a community leader and cultural activist. He has taught courses on hip-hop and Black culture at UNC-Chapel Hill, coached the Bull City Slam Team, and served as Cultural Organizing Director for the NC Climate Justice Collective, as just a few of his influences for good. More about Dasan HERE; his newest poetry collection Concrete Jungle Allegories is available from SABLE BOOKS.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Baggage Claim
 . 
To the homeless kid
who knew about horoscopes,
spoke about success in life,
and asked me what to do
about a girl
who feels for you
but is in a relationship.
I wish I had more to offer you.
I pray my hesitation
wasn’t seen as disrespect.
It’s just that the look
in your eyes was so familiar.
The one that lets people know
we both prefer to play with
broken things.
 . 
I sat there in that airport
listening to you conjure a roommate
and a job.
Watched you cast the illusion
of a roof over your head.
Became mesmerized
as you told me the story of
how you met her.
Conversations that left you hurt
and confused.
The man that doesn’t deserve her.
I don’t deserve to watch your magic.
To be front row
as you make the best of ghosts,
demons, and puppets.
 .  . 
You say you know this girl
better than she knows herself.
Say that she pushes you away
because she’s fighting her heart.
I know that you are wrong.
You know an illusion that looks like her
better than you know her.
She pushes you away because
you call her the wrong tomorrow.
She only talks to you because she is curious
about this her you love so much.
I know how you got here.
Loving someone who doesn’t love
you back is a familiar model
established by your relationship
with your Gemini of a father.
 . 
It taught you to learn to see
apparition and temptation
as two sides of the same thing.
 . 
Isn’t it funny we met in the
baggage claim of the airport?
I was looking for an outlet.
I guess you were too.
Three in the morning.
I’m stuck there overnight.
Better than the cost of a hotel.
You are stuck with Cupid’s arrow in your heart,
talking to me.
Better than the cost of therapy.
You here telling me you want to claim
someone’s baggage got me all
teary-eyed at the selflessness.
 . 
I want you to have a home and a meal.
You want a conversation
and a happy ending
that says she will recognize
the wizard in your eyes.
In that moment
I am so torn, yet
so awestruck.
 . 
I force these working-class
pieces of advice out of my mouth.
They come in low and hushed.
This is an eloquent urban renewal.
Where I give you all the hope I have,
then rebuild my heart
high-maintenance.
Leave with an uppity faith I’m worth more.
It’s still just gentrification.
The kind I try to balance
with assistance for new residence
in your heart by vouching
for the value of optimism.
Justify it by saying it’s for your welfare.
That it is the only way that
I can be sure your dreams will survive.
 . 
When the police officers arrived
and asked you to leave,
they said they had seen you here
++++ before.
Said they had talked to you
++++ before.
I now they still couldn’t see,
couldn’t imagine
the power you possess.
Here I was in a city I didn’t live
talking to a sorcerer and
wishing I was one too.
Wished I could think quick enough
to cast a spell to keep you here.
But like you,
I’m so used to things ending.
used to people being led away.
 . 
I couldn’t even muster up a goodbye.
I had nothing to offer that would
stop your pain. For once in my life
I saw through my father’s eyes.
I could feel his mute silence.
 . 
The officers told me to be careful.
Told me that the living dead walk and
search for warmth here.
Advised me to go back upstairs.
I just wanted to sit there and cry.
Didn’t know how to wield such magic.
How to hold to a wish
when you have no world around you.
How to craft such a work of art
with scraps and trash.
To want to love.
To care less about a home
if you could know the glimmer in her eyes
was yours.
To be able to contextualize your
father’s mistakes as library,
lessons shelved until you need them.
 . 
Dammit, why couldn’t they have
left you be long enough for you
to teach me how to
want,
believe in,
and chase
a happy ending.
 . 
Dasan Ahanu
Concrete Jungle Allegories, Sable Books, sablebooks.org; © 2025
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2020-03-07
 . 

Posted in Imagery, poetry | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Calculus

May 30, 2025 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
[with 3 poems by Michael Dechane]
 . 
Something So Obvious
 . 
In the hardest days
with their outstretched nights,
whatever is beautiful
in the world recedes.
Light leaches from everything
we see, then. We can’t touch
ordinary goodnesses we might have
let buoy us. All of it fails. Sometimes,
we have to begin again
with something so obvious
and tired as the sunrise.
The wind in long grass.
The light holding back
our eyes from what is under
the surface of the water.
Then, the same light giving
a wrinkled glimpse of stones,
silt, and dark fronds waving
when we shift our stance
half a pace, or even turn
the angle of our face.
Some belief that goodness keeps,
that it might come back one day –
what could that mean today
when there is only the sun
returning in a flat peach wash,
the burning usher of another
Tuesday, coming in with the clanks
and grinding sounds of the city
shaking itself off, reanimating?
A waking we might observe
in colors we may discern
as all the life we lost burns out
of sight, beyond us now, as memory.
 . 
Michael Dechane
from The Long Invisible, Wildhouse Poetry, an imprint of Wildhouse Publishing. © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
If nothing else will happen
to witness so much alive
may be enough. . . .
from New Year’s Day
 . 
How much joy would it take to counterbalance the suffering of your normal lifespan? How would you quantify it, inchoate summation of glad moments over time divided by accrued heartache, grief, shame? What calculus might determine that life is worth living?
 . 
Last week in California a 26-year old man blew up a fertility clinic and himself. In an online manifest he described himself as “pro-mortalist.” Life is not worth living – bringing new life into the world is a crime. He is an extreme example of adherents of radical utilitarian philosophy. To achieve “the greatest good for the greatest number,” when society burns in chaos and personal joy is not to be found, when “good” is a rare and even unattainable commodity, the calculus of this logic dictates that numbers must be slashed. Decimated.
 . 
How much joy would it take? This morning I lean against the kitchen counter while my son stirs a pot on the stove. He is making his special stone-ground grits, with butter and cream, to take to Granddaddy in the nursing home. We talk about Granddaddy and my son’s reluctance to visit him, to open up to him. We talk about food and the kids and what remarkables we’ve each seen in the woods lately. For half an hour we are simply present for each other.
 . 
How much joy? My son is cooking in my kitchen because he now lives here with me. His marriage of twenty-three years has dissolved. Who can fathom the grief and shame he feels? My grief is bottomless. What can balance such an emptiness? Tonight my son’s daughter will visit to flip cartwheels in our front yard and help my son at the grill. She will pretend to be the maitre d’hotel while she sets the table on the porch and takes our orders. We will eat together. Soon he will drive her home and read Harry Potter before she falls asleep.
 . 
Why must there be any calculus at all? Throw it out. This moment is enough.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Meditation on the Heart
 . 
And then, one day, you see
the copper teakettle on the stove
settled on its iron throne, precisely
in its place in the kitchen landscape.
Where, all these years, it has been
let’s not say faithfully. Not exactly.
But in its home, hallowed within
a scene so familiar it seems known.
The faint blue streaks of verdigris,
even the dullness of the handle,
become beautiful in this long-arriving
moment of recognition. Beneath
its dinge in the pockets of its dents glows
an undiminished gleam. Every morning
it has been lifted, filled, and carried.
Each day, it pours,. But you so rarely
touch it between its burning hours. Now
it is you that is filled as you long
for what you cannot see or say but sing.
 . 
Michael Dechane
from The Long Invisible, Wildhouse Poetry, an imprint of Wildhouse Publishing. © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
At first the poems of The Long Invisible overpower me with sadness. I have to stop after each page and inventory my own life. I grieve for the inhabitants of these lines. I recall a poem by David Manning – Where does the fire go / when it goes out? Do our mistakes extinguish all the good we’ve ever done? Or that we’ve experienced?
 . 
I am rubbish at meditation. As soon as I try to sit in the moment all my failures and painful moments of the past jostle in beside me. Better to read a book of poems like Michael’s. Every moment is true. Pain and epiphany commingle. Here comes a bear, and wild flora, pelicans, all the things we love together. And love itself proves it is no stranger. Here it flares, even when we thought it had gone out.
 . 
We may be rubbish at love, but love is good at us. It doesn’t weigh the balance or work the calculus to some final solution. We only have to give love such a small piece of ourselves. Like poets do. Like this poet does, whose book in what it reveals and what it shares gives us not just a bit of himself but a bit of each one of us as well. Which must certainly be the greatest gift of all.
 . 
❦
 . 
The Long Invisible by Michael Dechane is available from Wildhouse Poetry.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
What I’ve Come to Love
 . 
The texture of finely grated ginger.
 . 
Fernet’s herbal alchemy,
its tincture when I close the day.
 . 
All the surprising variegations in a cloud.
 . 
And seven black cows my neighbor keeps.
 . 
Some modest disappointments –
the kind that help me
know I’ve asked too much
and not enough.
 . 
Those parts of myself I kept
locked up on a kind of death row.
 . 
A list that needs
to interrupt me into attentiveness.
 . 
How this, a poem,
can move me beyond
what I knew, then further,
past what I can imagine.
 . 
I’ve come to love portals
into universes that do not exist
until we say they do.
 . 
Whoever you are, I love
your power. I hope it gives life
and sustains goodness for you, and everyone
connected to you: every one of us.
 . 
I know that I’ve come to love
may not love me back
yet. May I keep on loving
then. Keep practicing on stones,
long grass in the grips of a wind,
water, every way that it might be.
 . 
What a help that will be to me
as I turn, at last, to you.
The one I could not know
I was meant and made to love.
I am a stranger, a faceless other,
but you have invited me in.
You give me this time with you.
Forgive me for not believing sooner
in the gift of generosity,
in the hospitable spirit you have
harbored within, all these years, for us.
 . 
Michael Dechane
from The Long Invisible, Wildhouse Poetry, an imprint of Wildhouse Publishing. © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2014-07-13
 . 

Posted in family, Imagery, poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

2025 Sam Ragan Awards Day

May 23, 2025 by GriffinPoetry

 . . 
[with poems by winners of the NC Poetry Society Adult Contests]
 . . 
The Atheist
 . . 
Her playground shoes
teem with sand and mulch.
She kicks them against
the passenger seat,
floorboards anointed
by the debris of recess.
 . . 
From the altar of a booster seat
she asks who I love more
her or Daddy,
as she wraps a clutch of gold hair
around a hooked finger –
 . . 
its end a wet fireless wick.
I tell her I love them both
more than anything.
She is fast
with first grade
scripture –
 . . 
how Haley says you
must love God more
than anyone.
I reach for her knee,
that sprig of branch.
Through
 . . 
tears
she says she loves
me more, too.
 . . 
Claudine Moreau
First Place, Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award of the NC Poetry Society
 . . 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
Rodanthe
 . . 
You watched the cottage
pitch and yaw on its stilts
 . . 
writhing in video frames
until it slides sideways
 . . 
into the surf, you said
Why do people build there?
 . . 
A fair question given
a rising sea. Next day’s sun
comes bathed in lavender,
dolphins chase each other
across the living room’s picture
window, terns dive feeding fish,
 . . 
tiny sea-turtles wriggle
from warm sand behind
 . . 
the garage. You can only dream
this life, this view, this broad ocean
 . . 
of where you’ve come,
screaming that fiery
 . . 
breath, beckoning you
home, stepping through the glass-
 . . 
door to ride down
this swaying deck, down,
 . . 
down to the licking crests,
slipping beneath
 . . 
the darkest water.
 . . 
Michael Loderstedt
First Place, Bruce Lader poetry of Witness Award of the NC Poetry Society
read at Awards Day at Weymouth Center by Joan Barasovska
 . . 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 
Life is a swaying deck. What will save us? Better to hold tight and imagine it is not going to burst beneath us, or to leap, eyes closed or eyes open, into the void? Some mornings the drone of mowers from the next block is a comfort that summer is coming and all is as it should be; other mornings their incessance is another bitter reminder that for some people life still follows its benevolent routine. Swaying, we are swaying and gravity and balance elude us.
 . . 
I sit on the porch with the book closed before me. An hour passes. Why would I want to read these poems that some judge somewhere has deemed are worth sharing with the world? Why would I want to share any more of the world’s troubles or its implied triumphs? Well, I don’t want to, but finally I open the book anyway. Page after page. The faces of these poets as they read at Awards Day appear to me, or my mind conjures a face and a voice for the ones I don’t know. And, well, at times I have to smile.
Fleeting but with at least a moment’s healing. And where the swaying may take writer and reader down, down into the darkest water, I see that the world wants to share with me, no matter what it is I may want. At last, after the final poem, I remember Rule #2: I will cry with you.
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
Front Hallway
 . . 
Nine births
eight named
if only
for a day
six
children living
laughing bickering squealing
muddying up the house
on the table there
between the bible’s leaves
a whisper
of hair
a sunny towhead
the memory
too
fragile
for a name
 . . 
Laura Alderson
Second Place, Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award of the NC Poetry Society
 .. 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
Madame Butterfly
 . . 
“Mom looks great,” my brother proclaimed
on a quick visit after she had endured
pneumonia and sepsis.
 . . 
Maternal astronaut orbiting
the son, she ignored her tubed tether,
the hiss and click of oxygen concentrator
at apartment’s center, and served
weak tea and sweet biscuits
before alighting on a chair,
delighting in his quips.
 . . 
A monarch-embroidered kimono,
porcelain foundation and blood-red lipstick
masked her sallow visage, haggard physique.
 . . 
When we were little, she fluttered
through the house each evening,
tidying rooms, readying her face,
donning heels, before our father’s headlights.
shot through the shutters like lightning,
and thundering, he flung
open the door.
 . . 
Jennifer Weiss
Honorable Mention, Jean Williams Poetry of Disability, Disease, and Healing Award of the NC Poetry Society
 . . 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
The Adult Contests of the North Carolina Poetry Society are open each year from December through January. Details and Guidelines, as well as a list of all the 2025 winners, are available HERE:
 . . 
Poet Laureate Award: Judged by the North Carolina State poet Laureate and sponsored by Kevin Watson (Press 53)
 . . 
Robert Golden Award: Endowed by Nexus Poets and Linda Golden
 . . 
Charles Edward Eaton Award for sonnet or traditional form: Endowed by an anonymous donor
 . . 
Mary Ruffin Poole Heritage Award: Endowed by Pepper Worthington
 . . 
Bloodroot Haiku Award: Sponsored annually by Bill Griffin
 . . 
Poetry of Courage Award: Endowed by Ann Campanella
 . . 
Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award: Sponsor initially by David Manning and annually by Susan Carol Hayman
 . . 
Bruce Lader Poetry of Witness Award: Sponsored annually by Doug Stuber
 . . 
Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award: Sponsored annually by Diana Pinckney
 . . 
Alice Osborn Poetry for Children Award: Sponsored annually by Alice Osborn
 . . 
Jean Williams Poetry of Disability, Disease, and Healing Award: Endowed by Priscilla Webster-Williams
 . . 
Besides annual contests for individual poems by students and adults, North Carolina Poetry Society also sponsors: Brockman-Campbell Prize for best book of poetry published by a North Carolina author; Lena Shull Award for a poetry manuscript, including publication by NCPS; Susan Laughter Meyers Fellowship, including a one week residency at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, NC.
 . . 

Sam Ragan; NC Literary Hall of Fame

 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
Green River
 . . 
Those summers we spent the afternoons rolling
down the levee by the mud brown river. We blew
dandelion seeds and helped my grandmother pick
rhubarb from the small patch of garden she kept
behind her shack. We fill in love with what rural poor
people have: sunlight and sky, the work of their hands.
My grandmother taught me how to live with mice,
their unsuspecting necks snapped while bacon fried
in her pan. She was not sentimental of mice
or men. She told me it was as easy to love a rich man
as a poor man. She told me that the Kentucky rain
poured over her garden, over the ugly river because she missed
her daddy’s farm. She braided my hair while we listened
to Judy Garland sing and skip her glittery heels down
the yellow-brick road. I never felt richer than when
I was in her lap, her calloused fingers rubbing my ears, practicing
my spelling bee words. C-h-r-y-s-a-n-t-h-e-m-u-m, rolling
over my tongue like a tiny thimble. Honey, you’re going to leave
this place one day. Her needle and thread nearby. The tired
Singer machine propped on the kitchen table.
 . . 
Brooke Lehmann
First Place, Robert Golden Award of the NC Poetry Society
 . . 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
 . . 
…

Posted in poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

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