Inspiration Buffet:

This week our buffet features two poems by Curtis Whitecarroll and a few photos by Katrin Baustmann.

 

The Vulture by Curtis Whitecarroll

Holding my stitches together well enough
to write another poem
I have made a mirror on paper

Seeing that I am a collection of
all the former selves I have abandoned
to the leprosy of guilt

Living just fine after all the times
I was prepared to die ,
Lazarus wanting only to be wrapped
in bandages and left to rest in cave

I turn my pen to a vulture
to pick away pieces and feel lighter

Remembering the run over rattlesnake
threatening the impatient vulture
who was too hungry to wait for stillness

I watched them both, while hitch-hiking.
At 14, I knew the desert was home
to creatures that fight hardest for life,
but are the most deserving of death

 

…

For The Starving by Curtis Whitecarrol

“Words are loneliness.”-Henry Miller

soon poets will
be reduced to starving
wolverines

but we will keep scrounging
for a bit longer still
you wonder what winter
is for us,

the white flakes of time
the indifference

that will blanket us
given time

our words having strength
only among wastelands
of silence,

we had such places as
the eggs we hatched from

we are the condemned
by being content to live this life

searching for the first in a chain
of last meals

our words come from our mouths
but do very little to fill it

may god allow us to
cough up our own heart
perhaps make a meal of it

a fine distraction from
nuclear winters we find calmness in

I am certain there are others here
close by, being alone also

there is no location here
it is simply the mind and its overlapping
cartography

the great cliffs and valleys of melancholy
and the attempts at filling in distances
with happy routines,creatures of habit

let the routines grow thinner
and let us grow tolerant of

the losing game as we know it is come
let times indifferent snow fall give
us a good blanket,

as our legs and spirit finally become
too weak to chase the wild herds
of inspiration, so far spread out

let us be as respected as dinosaurs
as we fall down into dusty history books
barely read

 
Curtis Whitecarroll is a poet and reading-event producer living in Portland, Oregon He has been published in Multiple online and print magazines.

Katrin Baustmann is a German writer, self-publisher and always looking for great images at Pixabay for future book projects. But she also loves to capture the world with all of its beauty with the camera and gladly share them with you.

Poetry Potluck:

Bring your dish to the table.  We invite you to use the comment section below to share a poem of your own, sparked by or related to today’s Inspiration Buffet.