carpe noctem

forget the disappointing daylight
and that job that destroys your soul
flip up your only window and
wait for the night to roll you
out onto the anonymity of city streets
where darkness and neon lights
offer you their midnight bargains
where you can move, breathe and run
freedom in the coolness that shadows bring
redemption by the crowd for all you've done
not a child of darkness but it's welcomed denizen

river saviours

come with me to the river's edge
among the armour stone and stunted trees
at nightfall when it's darkest there
listen to the long ships sailing
to oceans and to river ports
their props and horns a Symphony
to we strays that wait for saviours
on river edges promising salvation
without condition or comitment

astral

i call down darkness
to cover me in its understanding
with cold caresses cover me
sing me raven lullabyes
under clouds of black tresses
as blankets for my own
there to sleep, dreamless
the setting moon as witness
to the rising of my soul

sacrifice

in his full youth and alone
before  the grave that waited
he journeyed fields where bent light
revealed grace and peace of summer storms
became a voyeur to the spaces
inhabited by animals and man
touched their gods in their devotion
discovered new consciousness
and took delight in their sensualities
a purity and vulnerability in their seduction
of their ceremonies to appease the constellations
bodies painted with brightness
their souls in dancing frenzy
that touched the memory of time
and he in their fluidity could only stand
transfixed haunted in their surrender
unable by birth or nurture or dogma
to meld into the unfolding spectacle
of man and God and space itself
as the limitless sky caressed the processions
with the light of the appeased constellations
finally in surrender, enchanted
limbs in movement in mad laughter
into the world of ghosts and gods
in the fog of smoke and scents and gestures
he was touched by the exquisite
awakening into the necessary world
his journey into new origins beginning

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Joseph A. Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. drawing from his profession and his Sicilian Canadian back round, he is an internationally award-winning poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, The Wild Word, The Chamber Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Ascent, Subterranean Blue, and in The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue, and appears in many anthologies including Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Canadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century. He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, and Philadelphia Poets. He has had two books of poetry published—The Cancer Chronicles   and   The Ghosts of Water Street.

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