Blues Again
by Barry Wallenstein

Lying in bed, waiting for sleep
or something entirely different
to come up,
I heard a whimper in the tick tock blue
and dipped into a distance, sky blue
and far from this room with its eight bar blues
and the tick tock again of the clock
with your voice going out the door.

The weight of these sounds still bears
the color of water under a blue dome
and I am alone with a twelve bar blues,
love having fled its comfort;

lying in bed now, sweating blue bullets
as in paint ball--a splatter to the skull,
my eyes closed, my ears dimmed;
the keenness of sleep is yards away
blinking, darting fitfully into a blue day.

Pandora's Box
by Barry Wallenstein

--had a lid tightly fit and lovely as the ages
with a lacquered rendering of Diana.

See the semblance of Diana
posing in her summer garden ripe
with poppies, peonies and all the expectant green.

In the background Acteon is blundering on the scene
with his dogs confused and about to turn.

Poor Acteon, he too will turn
and go down to his own blood
leading-without knowing-
all those who stumble into the wrong person's garden
or into war, begun so as to never end.