Eye On Life Magazine

Make every day a beautiful day.

Eye on Life Magazine is a Lifestyle and Literary Magazine.  Enjoy articles on gardening, kitchen cooking, poetry, vintage decor, and more.

Man in the Moon

I watched the sky tonight,

Saw the moon in the strangest of light.

it made me look twice,

Everything beautiful

Makes you do that,

sometimes.

I watched it reflect off you

I’ve seen you many times before,

But never in a light like this.

I saw the reflection

of your smile on my face.

If I never had to move,

I don’t know if I could.

Beautiful things like you,

Make me unable to move,

Sometimes.

I’ve never seen the moon in this light,

Never seen it reflect the way

that It has on your face, 

the way it has tonight.

Sometimes things in the moment,

Can’t feel anything but right.

 

Maura Recabo

LANTERN BRIGHT

Quills deep in the darkness,

My steady hand penetrates

The light so many claim

To see in things dying,

in living death 

They tell me 

I am of darkness. Darkness

too light, too bright the world

cannot see

That my opaque words are

Merely lanterns that mean

To glow by

Greater embers than a billion

Suns might

Think to cast; that no

Blast eternally bright might

Outshine,

A single thought

In a single mind. 

 

Daniel Scott Batten

J.B.M.

He sits lone like

Most people sit with

Ten Thousand friends -

So serene - a plastic

Drip of man. 

A sweet sort of

“Contentment” -

A solid flicker of

Candle in defiance of

Wind and night,

Light

Like a feather is embraced

By a breeze - teasing the

better fragments of

Us all to remember the

Power of being so

Small.

  

Daniel Scott Batten

THE GREAT PYRAMID

THE GREAT PYRAMID

 

We grease the palm of Abdullah

and clamber to the top

of the Great Pyramid

that lost its head

which reappeared

and still shines like a beacon

eye on U.S. dollar bills.

 

Later, we flag a cab

whose driver looks like the Sphinx,

and under the keen eye of Hubble

bubble our wheels

toward Mina House, that swell hotel,

that oasis out of this world

though grounded in the dunes of time.

 

 

Andrew Oerke

THE LATEST YARN

Life may be stippled apart

or stapled together,

each atom no matter how smart

not telling us whether

all things are petty, paltry,

and impenetrable

as monads or nomads,

or general as Plato’s perfectly stable

template of for instance a table.

 

The illusion of language is able

to alter our forms and norms,

and Deity like us is both from

and impossibly toward,

a dwindling, expanding,

yo-yoing ball of string

with little beads that tally and sing,

or a spool of yearning wishing

to become a material thing

conscious of its mission

in the vortex of the cortex

of the mind of a mathematician.

 

Andrew Oerke 

A POET’S LIFE

His universe cracks like an eggshell

and he pops out of the crust

like a stripper from a cake,

a phoenix from its pyre.

On fire with words, he’s the worst

and best battling on a darkling plain.

Then he’s Shanghaied away from shore

and what he as a human being can bear.

 

He escapes during a storm, makes land,

and crawls down a cave to Middle Earth.

He wrestles the Midgard Serpent,

Fenris the Wolf, finally Old Bones himself,

but sells his soul to slink back alive.

 

Next, he sneaks to the other side

of the tracks, drapes his elbow across a rail

in front of an onrushing freight, then stumbles on

waving the bloody stump like a flag,

still believing in everything and nothing,

having never lived inbetween anything;

having always stuffed the too-skinny present

with Way-out-there or Way-back-then.

Then he slips through the meager rupture of Now

into whatever rapture poets earn for their trouble.

 

Andrew H. Oerke

THAT JUKE BOX HEART OF MINE

I know I am because the juke box beats

me on.  I can eavesdrop in on myself

as though a stethoscope hung from my ears

and loudspoke a bang-up ontology.

Having always hankered to know what I’m like

beneath the skin, I flip inside-out

and here I am, my revolving brain flaking

prisms of  light on pairs of legs doing fine.

 

There was nothing to it; now I’m myself

and no mistaking: There glows my push-button

heart, that grand piano has a kidney look,

and my glands have thinned to crepe.  –So easy

when you know how; won’t you be an inside-out-

er on the lam with me?  devotee

whose everything works and nothing stops

till twelve o’clock when coach to pumpkin drops?

 

Andrew H. Oerke

BEHIND THE MOORISH WALL

Behind the Moorish Wall we kiss

Running water that masks our secret

A rose petal falls gently to the ground

As I inhale your breath inside me

 

The romance begins and I wonder

How the magic will end

As the moon turns full over the windcharred mountains

 Night decends and we sleep by the hillside graze

 

Trailblazing is what our romance is

Gestures that makes the heart beat stronger and faster

Your face burns brightly in my mind

With the courage to break down the Moorish wall

 

From the gardens beyond the perfumed air

I pluck a rose from the generalife 

Rose to Rose; Petal to Petal…falling

We renew our vows below the hedgerow maze

 

William Nunez 

A COUPLE

Thelma sips her coffee, flicks her cigarette ashes in a tray

Starring out the window thinking, “What another wasteful day.”

The remote control surfs the talk shows, mesmerized by the tube

Believing all the zealots as she stuffs her face with food.

 

Jason tries to build himself with resume in hand

“No opening this time” they say. “I hope you understand.”

He dons his apron at the diner and starts to scrub the trays

Another fine product of a five year MBA.

 

Jason struggles home at nine, and Thelma walks right by.

No need to ask about their day, the answer is in their eyes.

They snuggle on their black futon; their faces won’t betray.

The unfortunate prospect of having to face another day.

  

William Nunez

WHAT THE MOUNTAINS WON’T TELL YOU

The terraced valley returns to nature

After all the wars are concluded

And the tourists have gone home for the evening

 

A quiet wind that swirls around my head

Violently whips up images of a long lost era

That the modern age has yet to embrace.

 

The “cortado”  leaves a nice foam on my lips

As  I settle in to write my poem 

The one I promised to write for two years

 

My first line reads, “Behind the Moorish Walls we kissed”

Whereupon the curtain stirs and the window opens

Calling me towards the Andalusian mountains

 

I press my ear against the wind, not a soul in sight

The high pitch becomes a sonic boom

A cry for help-a critical moment

 

Whether to intervene or return to my poem

How many stories do the mountains hold

For the fallen women of Spain

 

Who sing their songs of lament

Not for Jesus or a son cut down by war

Because they are married to an abusive husband

 

I’ve always wondered if the deep red of the mountains

Was clay or blood from domestic battles of the past

The thinking part is over and the screams vivid as ever

 

But to intervene would involve the police and a statement

The mountains can tell the stories better than I

Besides my poem awaits and the coffee is getting cold

 

William Nunez

I Saw You

I saw you once at the zoo. 

You were 24 months that year. 

All snuggled in a blue onesie, 

head slack, eyes shut, happily slumped 

in the stroller.

 

Once on the playground. 

You were six that year. 

A daredevil on the swings, plunging from your seat 

and landing on the grassy ground beneath, careless of 

the pink skirt tangled around your legs.

 

Once in the bookstore. 

You were 10 that year. 

I caught a glimpse of your crystal blue eyes 

as you hungrily scanned the shelves for 

something enticing.

 

Once at the movie theatre. 

You were 15 that year. 

In a gaggle of girls, all prettied-up 

and loudly whispering the secrets of youth. 

Your hair a tight ball of curls just as mine had been.

 

Once on a college campus. 

You were 18 that year. 

Ready to leave and eager to be done with 

goodbyes, you rushed off without a second look back, 

a tall slender figure moving with determination.

 

Each time I saw you you looked well. 

You looked loved. 

I was relieved to give you up. 

I am content that you were ripped 

from me to be placed in another.

I am thankful that I saw you.

 

Deanna M. Jessup

An Irish Enclave, 1956

       South Side of Chicago, 
           long before Barack Obama

 

On bungalow porches 

and out in backyards,

on hot summer evenings 

old men lower themselves

into green canvas chairs,

smoke and sip beer,

laugh and relive 

Easter, 1916

and plot what they’ll do

when the niggers pour in

and eddy all over

the dregs of their city.

  

Donal Mahoney

 

In 1956 African-American families were advancing, neighborhood by neighborhood, toward Chicago Lawn, where lower middle class European  immigrants lived.  One result is the poem above written by Donal Mahoney, who was an adolescent living there back then. He recalls how rumor of a “black” family moving in saw Irish immigrants, armed with baseball bats and accompanied by other ethnic immigrants, marching down the street in search of blacks who were not there.  But for Mahoney, the irony lies in the fact these Irish immigrants—the very ones who celebrate the Easter Rising of 1916 against the British—saw nothing wrong with trying to stop black people from moving into “their” neighborhood. Mahoney knew men like these and what they talked about. He thinks they disliked the British occupying Ireland more than the idea of blacks moving into their neighborhood, but he’s not certain what they would have done if told the British would get out of Northern Ireland if blacks could move into Chicago Lawn. Today Chicago Lawn, Mahoney understands,has many Hispanic immigrants who appear to be living in peace. Some whites remain.  Whites did not “flee” the neighborhood as much as their children were able to move to better neighborhoods as a result of higher education and white-collar employment. But for Mahoney, the adage still applies, emotionally at least, that you can “take the boy out of the neighborhood but not the neighborhood out of the boy.” 

Quincy, Illinois: 1962

long before Barack Obama

 

In 1962 my father toiled in Quincy,

two weeks, no more,

and saw no blacks except for

two young ladies

who moved like swans

busing dishes 

in a farmer’s cafeteria.

 

Daisy badges on their uniforms

announced their names,

their years of service.

 

He still remembers how

throughout his meal

he wanted to stand,

a stranger in a 

seersucker suit,

and shout:

 

“How can you live here?

Where, except in church,

can you clap your hands

in emancipation?”

 

 

Donal Mahoney

One Veteran's Prayer

Memorial Day, 2011

 

I think Jesus knows I’m nuts

so why would he arraign me

in front of all those saints on high


so sane they’ll never see me

skipping down the road  at dawn

and not a soul behind me.

 

Funnel clouds may tear through hell

but not the ones inside me.

They come and go all on their own

 

as if  they can’t abide me.

Today they’re off to New Orleans

so batten down the hatches.

 

When they return they’ll churn again

whirligigs inside me.

Yet every day when I get up

 

I know this much for certain:

I think Jesus knows I’m nuts

so why would he arraign me?

 

 

Donal Mahoney

 

Heat Death

After the light and after

the song, in the part of the day

which goes out, where nothing comes back

at the wall of time, just after

the end of the matter.

 

At Kether, just this side of Ain,

the mind and the way and the door are one.

Like Evening Grosbeaks feed in flocks

and scare together, like Egyptian charms

stuck dick like

in the earth

and meant to keep the bugs from the corn,

like paleo‑flints chipped by a fire

then put in a pouch for later.

Like a green lion eating at the sun.

 

After the gathering of time and space

and when it’s all done up in a cone:

then we are back with the stars awash

in our mouths, plural, the same, and alone.

 

Joseph Dionne 

How to Look Upon the World

Snow‑rain, banshees, the stuff between seasons;

fog rising on a frozen lake;

the gauze of the moon

borderless

behind the clouds at night;

children lying over the phone.

 

Life is Celtic and clean,

interlaced with illusion.

It’s a whisper‑thin plot in the Diamond Cutter’s Sutra.

It’s birds in the rain

outwaiting

in the trees.

Then thunder in 4 colors

and war in the east.

It’s children switching channels

on the hopelessness of Apache priests.

 

“La Vida es Sueño.”  Not a catechism.

We live in a rock, alone in the weather.

We get worn.  We get wise.

Our shadows move daily, our hearts never.

 

Joseph Dionne 

The End of Fish

They give us 60 years and then they’ll

be no more fish. The sea itself emptied of its little wills.

The Oceanic Symphony completely naked of notes and key.

Poseidon will have to sing himself to sleep

and even the waves against the shore

will sound hollow and punk.

If you think of the abyss as an orchard

the water trees are bare in the fields of the sea.

Without her half-shell Venus is aborted

and we will never know beauty again.

Without her fish there will be no rapture of the deep

and in the oceans there will be no further dreaming.

 

We should not wake the sleepwalking sea

who first learned the Tale of Paradise,

imagination’s springs and destiny’s wells.

Each of us will learn the new venom

by getting bitten. The barren waters

without their lexicon. No shadows drift

or dart among the kelp and without these changes

there can be no syntax or anything said at all.

It’s a good thing god is dead.

I can’t see him forgiving us for this.

 

Joseph Dionne 

The Busted Docks of Tonawanda Lake

It’s Halloween and in an hour or two

the dead will be up and walking in our air,

hungry for the ghost supper.

But on the lake

I’m rowing around the edge, nearly liminal,

just exactly skirting a line between

the hem of the world

and her mystery.

I glide on the water

as if my being was as intermediary,

an intercession

in a setting I’ve been sent to.

All the leaves but the Oak are down.

The cob is teaching the last cygnet how to fly.

 

In the distance,

the neighbor whose cabin burned rebuilds.

His hammer dents the movement we are in

as if it were signing a name in time –

something wrapped in a cartouche,

in hieroglyphs and their determinants

hung up to signify –

like the reflections of the ruined docks

breaking up in mandalas

tell me who and where we are as we pass.

 

Joseph Dionne

A Man with Children

The way I walk these days the tips

of my soles and the edge of my heels

wear out too fast for a man with children.

 

So I tell Rocco, cobbler nonpareil,

“Tack on four steel cleats,

two in front, two in back”

 

so I can walk home between

two full shopping bags

and whatever pride I can summon.

 

All four blocks of concrete,

I’ll keep those cleats from clicking.

Decades ago I wore cleats

 

as big as doubloons;

I struck them so hard sparks

flew from the sidewalk.

 

You bet all the girls

in high school knew 

a man was walking behind them.

 

 

Donal Mahoney

 

So Fingertips Kiss

Five kids, eight years. 

And then one day my wife 

shouts to me on the tractor

roaring in the field:

 

“I’ve had enough.”

And like a ballerina,

she rises on one foot, sole

of the other foot firm

 

against her knee

and with arms overhead

so fingertips kiss,

she smiles,

 

pirouettes,

and then like a helicopter

lifts into the air,

whirls over the garage

 

and keeps rising.

I can do nothing now

but curse

and be proud.

 

As if at the ballet,

I applaud from the tractor

and blink at the inferno

as she hits the sun.


 

Donal Mahoney