No Regrets Journal
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Summer 2012 Issue
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No Regrets is a journal of poetry, prose and images about the twists and turns in the human condition, the search for love, meaning and community.
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Poems in this issue are by:
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Clayton Medeiros Neil McKay
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Editor
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Clayton Medeiros is a poet and collage artist.
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Neil McKay (Johnny Trash) Webmaster
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Submissions
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Submissions are by invitation of the Editor
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Copyright May 2012
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Survey Research Is there anything that you do not know that you wish to know? Is there anything that you are not now that you wish to be? Is there anywhere you wish to go, where you have not been? Is there anyone you wish to know who you have not known? Is there anything you have not felt that you wish to feel? Is there anything that you have not been that you wish to be? If you could know one more thing, what would it be? If you could be one more thing, what would it be? If you could go one more place, where would it be? If you could know one more person, who would it be? If there was one more thing you could do, what would it be? If you could feel one more thing, what would it be? If you could be something else, what would it be? If you could speak to one last person, who would it be? If you could say one last word, what would it be? If you could give one more kiss, who would receive it? At your last breath, who should be there? Clayton Medeiros
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Sacrifice
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I would give my right arm for you I want you to know that. I would rather go blind than to see you cry I would take a bullet, walk through fire, Crawl over broken glass. For you.
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And then, of course, You would have to feed and dress me, You would need to rearrange my house so I would not trip Make sure I didn't burn myself on the stove And change the dressing on my bullet and glass wounds Because I love you that much.
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Neil McKay
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In Sight The western sky tonight, what color was that? Purple? Orange? It was both and neither. Bellingham bathed in indescribable light, Purange? Orple? There is not a word for it. This beauty, this wavelength, That cannot be reproduced in photographs. My friend Corey tried to capture it, In photo after photo. "Here's a picture of a sunset," He would say, "over Bellingham Bay." "And here's a picture of another sunset I think I took this one the next day." Dozens upon dozens, all alike, all lifeless, Until I mocked him silent. "This one is a photo Of a photo Of a photo Of a sunset," I said, sarcastically. This evening I regret my cruelty. Tonight, as the colors darken, I wish for his success. Keep trying, Corey. Never stop. Neil McKay 6
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Greek Myths
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Unlike today始s crisp blue Sunset gray island darkness Etches cloud ridden views With cold damp predilections Somewhere gods look west For omens of the land of the dead Hyperion始s deft luster hidden Overcome by moonless shades Charon collects mortality始s coins With brusque equanimity An indiscriminate leveling Of every dreamed vanity Hidden in myopic portraits Consensual delusions Of skin deep visionaries An insignificant eclipse As if Odysseus had failed And abandoned Penelope to Infinitely disperse suitors.
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Clayton Medeiros
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Metaphoric Me I busily unwind my metaphor In exercises of endless exegesis Tuned to letters and lyrics Across page after page Each line始s epiphanic meaning In imaginative inferences from Perplexities perceptive paradoxes Of self eroticism with unabashed Romance from readers and writers In silent pointed pirouettes Honorific late lamps light Celebrants dark dance With no rush to midnight Morning始s minions still sleep Among surreptitious dreams Immune to sunlight始s euphoria Across each day始s noon Clayton Medeiros
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Perfunctory Sky
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A perfunctory sky doesn始t bode well A parsimonious temperature With indecisive events Inconclusive conversations Words hang in the weather Shadows unsure of their direction Neither cumulous nor stratus clouds No horizon to be seen Time itself muddled The sky leans close Hears whisperings In the haze
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Clayton Medeiros
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Self Love Unless you are Walt Whitman Self love is an unpoetic affront To requisite angular angst Loveʼs labor lost and found Diffident dads and morose moms Godʼs predicted periodic absence Melancholic miasmas mirror Solicits servile solitude A whirling dance of doubt Perhaps Emilyʼs quirky grace Of musical vowels and consonants The only certainty in mystery Allah waits to be discovered Promises to take us back Yahwehʼs dutiful life after death Forever lost in the glory of God Buddhaʼs meditative moment Requires you to forgive yourself Clayton Medeiros
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Northbound Interstate 5
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This morning the sun in my rear view mirror like a motorcycle's high beam drew my eyes from the road ahead again and again.
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Marshall McLuhan said the rear view mirror was not for looking at what you have left behind, but what is coming up on you.
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Neil McKay
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Abandoned My all that matters she said Laughing at clever prosing In one of several books Perched here and there Filled with underlines Shimmering notes He shared with her always Suddenly no longer there In the coffeed kitchen Shifting memories now Ever more distant In mortality始s confusion Of confounded mysteries Captured in poetic lines At the end of a gray day Written against memory Seen from empty rooms Empty door ways Mourning his long ago Melodies when no verses Will ever be sung again Clayton Medeiros
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Times of Me and Us
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Who am I now that I was not then? What recognition is required To feel childhoodʼs wonder, Simple, black and white photographs, A dimpled boy, unknown to me now,
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Yet, an investor in lifeʼs mortgage Of perpetual payments inflated With unknown interest rates. Black paged albums consecrate time, Memories, not necessarily mine,
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Like museum paintings owned By flitting five year old eyes Across artist colored shapes, Endlessly spiraled hours just At the edge of poetic phrase.
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What would I share with him? Perhaps his betrayed innocence In years of alcoholic increments, Linguistic liquidity slurred Until you silently walk away.
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Perhaps my new loveʼs wonder Against accusatory gray moments Shared heartsʼ mystery beyond time, Until anywhereʼs home, So long as you are there.
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Clayton Medeiros 13
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Consonant Love
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Our love is like consonants All full stops No liquids or aspirates A linguistʼs nightmare Spawned of inchoate desire Lexicographyʼs failed maps Require Dr. Johnson To parse hidden meanings Buried in old Greek vowels Understood among bloody bones Shared with all who loved Erosʼ enduring shadow Ensconced between us Like wordless expectations In an unspoken litany of Solitudeʼs filtered phrases Filled with defamationʼs praise Our inescapable search Seeks for springʼs readiness Yet to be sprouted seeds Precursors to Julyʼs roses Fallʼs amorous apples Set to begin again In spite of winged cherubim With flaming swords Guarding an empty gate Clayton Medeiros
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Shades and Shadows
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Sums of shades and shadows Indeterminate in passing time As if everythingʼs contained In an instantʼs mutable nuance Of lascivious blossomsʼ Quirky public pollination As love misbehaves among Salvationʼs groping gestures Shared by every faith Ever fearful of redemption As if there had never been Another confused crucifixion Another heavenly ascension Another tree of life No angels had spoken No sinners were saved No passions preserved Ethereal lovers luminous Among fractured stones Release the dead to better times In the never ending round Of historyʼs desperation
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Clayton Medeiros
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Boots, His or Hers Part 1 Boot heels始 wooden click Posits priapic purposes Iniquities intention No insipid inspiration Of water color washes Hard edged primaries Pierce inquisitive eyes Induce aesthetic arrest Unable to run to or from Part 2 High heels始 brick walk click Betides beatific bounty Salvation始s certainty Without agnostic angularity No geometric pretensions No muscular bronzes Engulf the wary mind Subsume all hesitancy In sentient stasis Clayton Medeiros
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Boat Parades
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What would be different If there was no eastern star Just boats with colored lights Harbingers of better times! ! Sailing the bays of the world Sparkling over winter lakes Shimmering on dark ponds Melodic dance replaced Revelations始 dystopia Across the universe Percussive pulsars Black hole huzzahs Galactic chorales Welcoming all births
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Clayton Medeiros
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Black Drop Coffee House Reveries Rapt readers coffee cup silence Here and there newspapers Books roost among digital detritus Philosophic beatitudes quiver With faith始s unwavering certainty Ecstasy始s evasive insights Desultory depression始s depths Reflected in expressive cups No distinctions are made Among client始s diffuse beauty In thrift shop splendor Nothing counters the wonders Of images and words across Pages and screens coming Through the centuries! In search of kindred spirits Clayton Medeiros
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Time始s Trap
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Time holds us In memory and expectation The experienced present Devolves into history Evolves into the future Forever indeterminate Memory始s literary license Expectation始s false dreams Swirl the passing hours
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Clayton Medeiros
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An Explanation It is not an insult that I fall asleep first. Too many years I spent my nights listening for regular breathing, ! Before I could relax enough to close my eyes. Now I'm so relaxed, I fall asleep midsentence. I'm sorry, my love, please understand, I feel safe in your house, in your room. We will wake slowly to your myriad of alarm clocks, Jarring and loud but each silenced quickly. Eventually the day will begin. Neil McKay
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Photographs mat and glossy candor Capture romance and banality Possibility and disappointment Kept in thick black pages None too carefully by aging aunts Whose siblings beat them to heaven So they maintained the family history As best they could for dwindling Survivors who no longer knew Who the proud people were in front Of the wooden store somewhere In French Canada before the Moves to Massachusetts And Rhode Island
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Clayton Medeiros
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Light始s Gray Bellingham始s bruised light Shades gray horizons Ensnares the spirit In diminished island freedom Melds sea and sky Confuses consciousness Reneges infinite perspective Recedes line始s perplexity Draws night to dusk Clayton Medeiros
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Silence
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Over the years he found silence best Words meant so many things Inadequate conversational swirls Easily mistaking metaphorical truths For something hurtful though unintended Support for Aristotle始s point that ethics Only manifests meaning in actions Perhaps listeners must have dominion Over the speaker始s fusty framework Of memes and morphemes Piquing curious linguists始 interest While weighting listener始s eye lids
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Clayton Medeiros
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No Regrets Journal Web site noregretsjournal.com Claymedeiros@aol.com
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