david ward - two poems


Next Illusion

Everburn.
their fists aflame,
empty roads and 
stories jotted down on the run.
don’t listen to the traveling man
with his dreams packed in a suitcase,
with his leather voice
and whiskey songs.
he’s all just smoke and mirrors.
play your songs on a heavenly six-string
and sit at the delta before dawn.
the bayou children stir
and the swamp lifts dreams 
to the muddled hands
of the traveling beast,
the heart-broken bluesman.



Disdain

She cast a glare, her voice rife 
with anguish.
I thought you wanted me.
No more sway of hip, he thought.
Just a swanky ballroom queen
holed up in a house somewhere,
but not in Jersey.
A hostage drug experience,
a child with her lover’s gun.
I wanted somebody, he replied.
For a long time now,
everything had been the end.

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