MARK BLICKLEY

MARK BLICKLEY

Leap Of Faith

I’m a dead frog and I don’t say this with any pity or understanding or shame, it’s just an observation that people seem to like us, like us a bit too much because they like to push hooks through our jaws and cast us out to sea, as well as amputate us for fine dining and draw us as a cartoon shuffling cigar smoking smart ass, and they like to blame us when they choke on the phlegm in their throats, and they swear that some of us give them hideous skin infections while the evil ones enjoy tossing us into their steamy potions as the younger ones imitate us with a game of leaps and crashes, perhaps because we abandon our young and we larger ones like to eat the smaller ones, and some of us are poisonous and have arrows dipped in our blood for killing others, and snakes like to slide along with our swallowed bulges straining inside their bellies, and we are stunned and frozen and sliced alive by school children with sharp tools, yet we still swim and splash and smile because the sun warms our cold blood and reflects our moist green that gives summer its most vibrant color, and the Chinese believe there is a toad in the moon not a man, and the Japanese consider us good luck, and that luck includes the growing of long legs to hop away from dinosaurs which is why we are the best leapers on earth and millions of years ago became the first animal with any backbone to live on land, and Shakespeare wrote that we wear a precious jewel in our head, and, best of all, beneath the summer stars, the sky is filled with our clucks and clicks and croaks of romance and camaraderie, sprinkled within a flying feast of buzzing wings and microscopic swimmers, and so this is what dead frogs will do just given the chance, a chance that will always destroy us.

Screaming Mime

I should speak out when they abuse

This pasty-faced artist who decided to choose

Being trapped in silence with make up queer

I may not speak, but I can hear.

The taunts, the insults, and the hate

Towards street performers who refuse the bait

Of ridiculed anger through vulgar gestures

Believing performance is a continuing semester

Of learning to grow within painted smile

Ignore the assholes, concentrate on the child.

Who laughs with joy or open-mouthed wonder

Yet tosses no coins as my stomach thunders

Breaking the silence, begging for bread

My intestinal rumblings plead to be fed

A steady diet of human compassion

Through the clinking of coins in an appreciative reaction

To my ancient art and enduring hunger

Selling myself like a common whoremonger

Hoping to satisfy an insatiable crowd

In tight fitting Spandex, a seductive shroud

Ignoring lewd sneers at my exposed anatomy

That I've twisted and stretched in hopes it would flatter me

As my muscles contort and my body sings

A silent song that once entertained kings

Gravity Ungrateful

Yes, I am dressed in mourning

Dark clothes for a dark time

Yet I yearn to escape

Pandemic imprisonment

With the germ of an idea

That will allow me to soar

Above my confinement

In an airborne threat

Against complacency and boredom

As I reach up to a blue heaven

That promises social distancing

On a cosmic scale,

But that old bitch gravity

Bears down on me,

Slapping me down

Like a petulant child

Crying out

For what she cannot have,

Slammed back

To a blanketed earth

Of red white and blue.

MARK BLICKLEY

MARK BLICKLEY is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild and PEN American Center. He is the author of Sacred Misfits (Red Hen Press). His most recent book is the text-based art collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin, 'Dream Streams' (Clare Songbird Publishing House).