Poetry by Mark Gibbons

             Mike Maguire CC



Unmasked

Beckett & Camus
existential boys of blue
come and go
more so than Eliot
or Michelangelo
they keep pushing
Willie's wheelbarrow
through Hell
dump old Virginia
down Ophelia's well
beg Ezra for the keys
to Uncle Walt's cell
sprinkle a dash of Emily
over lower case life
forgetthespace e-e-who
let Langston be
the brown stone thrown
by those without sin
those linen shades of skin
the best minds blown
& murdered generations 
explode genocide 
the human crisis now
a comfortable closet of fear
justifiable retreat
blood in the streets highlights
the absurdity of it all 
Old Sam's Endgame
Sisyphus on a roll 
Go-Go still waiting for God
who-knows-what-for 
no exit on a frayed rope
swinging loss into hope
making meaning for laughter
while the suckling mother
slouches toward the manger
cradle of the troubadour
masked beast dying 
on the parlor floor




​
The Book of You

Who are you: that little girl
jumping rope in an Ethiopian 
refugee camp; a black father
identifying his unarmed son 
covered by a sheet, shot by a gun;
the single mom wiping tables, 
taking orders and lip for tips 
from dead-eyed truckers,
hashing the all-night shift?

Your days play out whatever
your role and accumulate like
calendar pages torn off and 
thrown away, meaningless, 
gone except to you. You do 
what's in front of you, gauge it 
accordingly, choose your level
of love to fear, of flight or fight,
how to squeeze out another day

Into another year, opening your 
eyes to sunrise, that awareness 
you are still here in this realm, 
noting what's around you, where 
you are, and knowing it's going to 
end. Some of you have survived 
on air, water, and scraps of love,
lived daily on a diet of fear, yet
the dream of hope, lost to you

So long ago, is buried deep in
your tissues, blood, and bones.
Whatever this is, whatever path
you tread, tortured or privileged,
you are alone and connected to it, 
this dream, this being, this here.
You gain love by giving it away 
today before the next show, that 
one after your light goes out.

                 for Chris La Tray

​

Mark Gibbons' is the author of eleven collections of poetry. In the Weeds, Drumlummon Institute, 2021, is his latest book.  A 2013 recipient of the Artist Innovation Award from the Montana Arts Council, Gibbons is the current poetry editor of the Montana Poets Series for FootHills Publishing, Kanona, NY. He has worked with Poetry Out Loud, the national recitation competition since its inception and taught poetry in schools for The Missoula Writing Collaborative for the last three decades where he lives with his wife, sons grown and gone, the backyard a pet cemetery.

---