Cathyann Fisher: California Poets Part 7, Four Poems

Cathyann Fisher

July 1st, 2024

California Poets: Part VII

Cathyann Fisher

Four Poems

Bus Pass to the End of the Line

He sits across the aisle

somewhere between street corner and

country preacher, sly smirking, listening

to the bustle of generalized plans

Unspoken, the more unspoken, the wider

the grin, the bullied teenager who can’t go on

the age-appropriate circling the drain

Those who’ve stopped living because they think

they are close to dying    beat the bullet,

buy the bus pass to the end of the line,

It’s all a one-sided war

rake the psyche, tap a resurrected past for

a fertilized future, prophetic mushrooms

hold court with street-corner signs in the

minds of adventure-seeking riders

Even in this cacophony of improvisational sound

the silent page remains silent

 self-banishment

    wasted, wasted hibernation

a bus ticket to the end of the line.

Be

I’m not popular -

be a can of tuna

but, no one likes me -

be a loose plank on a park bench

but, no one gets me -

be the least utilized punctuation mark in the French language

but,    I am alone -

be used motor oil

be

something

in    the endless possibilities of life

try be  ing a   telephone wire,

be a 20-year-old jar of jam found in the dust of

the cellar of your grandmother’s house,

be  a  low pressure system displayed

in whirls on the nightly news   be  the sound of

star shine on a dark green leaf for 2 hours 49 seconds,  be

a wilted stalk of celery at a picnic in August, be

a 3 blackboard-wide math equation proving

the method of communication between mealworms

be   pizza crumbs on a Friday night next to a cold

empty mug of beer   be the backlit wings of an angel

tending to a fallen bird   be those things that people don’t do

be big purple hair be  an empty goldfish bowl laying sideways in a garage

be  a gelatin experiment that went wrong but you brought it to the potluck anyway,

be the failures of 13 millionaires collected in a garbage can, be  a mother

gently bending over her sleeping infant   be  as wide as the page of a lifetime

in landscape layout and thin margins,  be the run-on sentence and the dashes between words

and the train of thought and the stream of consciousness   be this and that and other things

until your be ing is full of being…  be anything,

be

anything.

North Beach

Lights gone down in the city -

the city, that part of the city

freedom, freedom in the alleys and the

bars of topless dancers, and the

mind expansion and the political

pitch-perfect middle fingers and the

ethnic eateries and the words, the words

the words, the words, and the music.

There is no place to park

tourists mob the scene all day

wanting a piece of what they

never built, taking, taking, taking

taking in the food, taking in the music,

taking in the echoes as if hard-won truth

can be ordered in their size, the ears hear

that it is the place to be. It was, it was

the place to be when filled experiments

and expressions when police, the man

chased freedom away with the money

it takes to be where they began.

We’re all living in has-been cities

once-was locations of the juicy way

it used to be, like sand brushed from

a precious stone found in the joyous sea,

polished and placed in a captive setting,

measuring  its worth.

A Piece of Toast and the End of the World

The end of the world begins with a piece of toast,

winged eyeliner, breakfast as usual,

star-searching comet streak heralding angel

falling on white noise ears…a piece of wheat toast

spread with jam.

The end of the year begins with

dry, dry, dry, dry, bam!!!

rain, rain, rain, rain float into new,

drag grey cloud Linus-blanket over

countdown of remaining days.

The end of sanity begins with

broken hearts full of diamond dust

joy-relics strewn on particle-board floors,

fragments of the heart, scraps of the mind

blender set to pulverize, meal replacement

thoughts with shrieking silence and

epidemic sound.

The end of anything begins with ordinary,

least expected, cannot force it, dust on a

windowsill, a light switch flick to lions in

the room, one minute a piece of toast,

the next, the end of the world.

Author Bio:

Cathyann is a beat poet of illumination set to the jazz percussion of her mind. Sweet, salty, full of yes, hell yah and you’ve got to be f’ing kidding me. Cathyann speaks the language of lava, speaks the language of wonder, speaks the language of earth goddess, of multi-textured combinations driven on wheels of passionate expression.

Cathyann enjoys creating works of art out of a multitude of media and making an adventure out of spontaneous experiences. Cathyann has been included in 2 Great Weather for Media anthologies, Fresh Hot Bread, Voices Israel, and Sparring With Beatnik Ghost anthologies. She has published 6 books of poetry: Being Myself on Fire, The Soul Made Visible, The Main Content, Ordinarily Divine and Walking Down The Street With the Sound of Life in Her Eyes, and her latest release: Roadtrips, Fantasies, and Lava Flows.