KENNETH NORMAN COOK

KENNETH NORMAN COOK

BEHIND MY EYES

It floats in wisps of crystal fog

like smoky silver sparks,

never speaking, only whispering

in tiny waves of sorrow.

It lies behind my eyes,

where dark secrets brew

like an ancient pagan tea,

curling up into my brain

in ribbons of steamy sickness.

It rolls around in my head

and settles over my heart

with an icy chill that

turns my blood to thick black

and freezes my soul.

It lies behind my eyes,

buzzes like a mosquito in my ears,

swells my tongue

and chatters my teeth

as it sends a shiver up my spine

and rattles my bones down to

the cold red marrow:

It is a sadness unspeakable

and a sickness that cannot be expressed

with any words fashioned by man.

I WALK ALONE

It is a lonely path I walk now.

I hear no birdsong resonating from the leafless trees.

I hear no crickets chirping in the gullies,

nor bullfrogs croaking in the marshes, along my lonesome way.

It is a lonely path I walk now.

I hold no soft, warm human flesh in my cold hand.

I feel no gentle female breath on my sad, pale face,

nor do I hear friendly footsteps crunching

along this trail, accompanying my own weary feet.

It is a lonely path I walk now.

Suddenly, I hear a voice echoing from the brown, dusty hills.

The realization hits me like a rock tumbling off the cliffs:

I have shouted to the empty sky, and the message has returned; the sound of my own voice, in multiple reverberations:

“I walk alone”.

UPON THY DEATH

(An Elizabethan Lament)

The bright golden sun hath hidden his joyous face

from the hapless world behind bold gray clouds,

and the spring rain which hath wept ‘til now

in happy silver showers to green the anxious Earth,

hath turned unto cold black pearls of angry marble;

pelting my bared head with her furious dark temper.

O mine sweet and only divine angel of light:

Upon thy death did Nature steal from mine frail spirit

all her granted strength, and yea, her very gift of breath

from mine panting, longing, mourning breast,

upon which I beat in mad, defiant counter-rhythm

to that dead organ which I dare haughtily to name “Heart”.

For upon thy death did the shimmering stars turn away

their twinkling light, and display to mine weepy eyes

the still, black, icy chill of their hard, ebony backs,

as I shift downward forever mine wet, sad, sallow face

unto the cold brown Earth, wherein thou dost now dwell

deeply below, with the slimy worms as thy eternal companions, and my dead, lost soul as thy silent, solitary lover.

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.