KENNETH NORMAN COOK

KENNETH NORMAN COOK

YOUR TEARS

I reach out and touch

your pale cheek,

as one tiny tear runs

onto my finger.

I will slowly place it

upon my tongue,

for the salty tang

of your tears

is the rain from

your sorrowful heart.

And I am here,

always here for you

to cry upon.

You reach out and touch

my warm chest.

Warmed by your tears

and beating in rhythm

with your soul.

WRITING POETRY

The heart beats out a passionate rhythm

of sadness, joy, anger, levity and fear,

with humming, vibrating waves of emotion

pumping upwards from the heaving chest

and into the hot, impatient, chaotic head.

The wired, anarchic brain quickly scrambles

with wild, desperate, silent screaming

to assimilate, formulate, order and create

the heart’s emotive signals into some sort

of rough, raw, embryonic set of words,

while the eyes shift, the teeth grind,

the throat grunts, and the nostrils flare.

At long last the fingers begin to twitch,

while slowly descending to the patiently waiting

keyboard; and the choppy, sporadic typing begins.

Hit the keys: Type… Backspace… Type… Delete… Type…

Then it’s edit, edit, edit, edit… and edit again.

DONE! The smile begins to form at the corners

of the mouth, as the bleary eyes begin the final review,

and the stiff, weary index finger reaches out at last

to touch the finish line of the writer’s world;

that ultimate goal; those favorite keys of the poet:

TURN A BLIND EYE

Turn a blind eye

to her toxic smile!

The smile that

shoots hot poison

from between

razor sharp teeth

of blood stained

dazzling white!

Turn a blind eye,

Kenneth, you fool!

You’ve tasted her

deadly mouth before:

That sweet venom

from red, sugary lips.

Ah, and you’ve felt

the ecstatic sting of

that adder’s tongue!

So turn a blind eye,

or pluck them both

from your pathetic,

dizzy, thick skull!

KENNETH NORMAN COOK

KENNETH NORMAN Cook is an American, born in the United States and raised in California in the 1960s. (English is his native language.) It was there in Southern California, in grade school that he began to fall in love with words, through a sixth grade English assignment to write a poem about Halloween. His entry was selected to be published in the school newsletter and that started him on a lifetime sojourn through the creative world known as poetry. After living away for many years, Kenneth is back in California, where he continues to write daily. He is a regular contributor to several magazines, including Wildfire Publications Monthly Magazine, where he is a co-contributor for a section on tips for writers. He has been featured in numerous poetry anthologies and has released a newly revised edition of his poetry collection, Shadow Walk With Me. He is also the author of a second book, This Side of Nothing, a third: a collection of haiku and senryu poetry, titled Theater of the Absurd, and a fourth: From Dark Corners and Dusty attics, which is a combination of older poems, both previously published, as well as published for the first time. Here is a writer with over one thousand poems in his writing arsenal. Be prepared for a literary roller-coaster of emotions, imagery and intense imagination, for this is the poetry of Kenneth Norman Cook.