KENNETH NORMAN COOK

KENNETH NORMAN COOK

OF LOVE AND DYING

(A Classical-Style Poem)

O sweet lady of sunrise,

Weep not, dear lover, for me.

For my spirit is an eagle, free soaring,

O’er a clear-glass and azure-blue sea.

O sweet woman of evening,

Fear not, soft angel, my soul.

For my ears are alight and wide open,

As the steeple bells sound out the toll.

O sweet lady of sunrise,

Weep not, dear lover, for me.

For my breath gasps a slow dirge of dying,

But my heart has one last beat for thee.

KENNETH NORMAN COOK

THE SHOW IS OVER

My happy plastic smile has melted.

The eyebrows start to slant

from jolly arch to angled “V”,

while my oily laugh is morphing

to a snake-like hiss through an

ireful grimace: Teeth set; jaw locked.

Watch carefully as my sparkling

eyes glaze over with an icy frost.

The mask is off and the show is over:

The costume is burned to ashes,

for this charade is ended at last.

The black ugly truth shoots from my

gaping mouth like hot, smelly vomit

as a slimy puddle of honesty forms

at my feet and the stink ripples up

into the air in obscene waves of

thick, nauseating, intolerable reality.

KENNETH NORMAN COOK

CONTEMPLATION

Leave me now

and the stars

will turn cold

as they fade

to dull points

of dead rock

adrift in an

empty corner

of a black icy

universe.

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. Kenneth is the  author of five books: Shadow Walk with Me, This Side of Nothing, Theater of the Absurd,  From Dark Corners and Dusty attics, and Strange Bedfellows.