Umbriate Press Poetry

Beauty and SADNESS Chin Morano

The old men's wives
gather near the street's edge
to rake through the years
and talk as if they knew tomorrow.

I hear them from my closed window
scratching at the dampness of time
while their mouths unearth
decades of birth and confusion.

At times I feel punished not being 
able to revel in such misguided optimism,
being too burdened with self-pity and
dire portents of the unremarkable.

Yet I am blessed with the gift
of easy acceptance,
seeing everything as already ended,
a question of simple crises
or a question of sadness and beauty. 

Traveling Erika Uvelski

A woman armed with moist lips
softly opens them
letting her tongue roll northward
to grab a lick of the sweet face of air.

A man who slips naked
between the emptied sheets
creeps a hand toward the knot of kindness
slowly closing it 
around the linen of absence.

Both await a kiss
given to those who travel
as does all pleasure
into the nap of daybreak
be it in the mind only.