Author: Makar

Stephen Sutherlin is a designer, poet and musician. He writes poetry about life in the southwest and enjoys metrical lyricism.

Fresh Snow

Shrill, shrieking screams
Cold. Violent. Chilling
to hear in the distance
A sharp thud and another
and a scream and more
yelling I can’t understand…

As gentle flakes drift
and sway in the silent wind

A murder
of crows caw and bolt
into flight as the next
wail splits the silence.

Round white globes volley
back and forth
another thud
another scream
as I approach.

Fresh snow, two hands
A shocking cold spray of
force and wet hits your
cheek and sticks
to your glasses.

“Hey, no fair! I said not in the face.”

2019 Garden Psalms Poems

aspens

Post author By Makar
Post date December 24, 2019
No Comments on aspens

Auburn poles
From white holes
Paintbrushes
Jammed into soil
Painting the only
Color in the blinding
White mountainside.

2019 American Place Colorado Poems

Snow and Coal

A dark cloud rolls
O’er the town
Backlit by street lamps
Burning the midnight oil

As herds of children
In their ‘jams
Drag “experiential” parents
To the steam engine’s boil

For ‘cross this frosty
Little town
Large groups of people
Can be found

Searching for the next Express

Into a time they step
Back in line to board
The old coal and steel
From rail to tail first
Cold winter’s night

They experience the past
As if it were real
And Christmas wishes turn kisses
Into hot chocolate dreams. Awake
They return
Glowing with the magic of the season!

2019 American Place New Mexico Poems

Sketch

Post author By Makar
Post date December 14, 2019
No Comments on Sketch

Manganese for iron horse
Pulled from mountains with no remorse
To birth a nation with lines of steel
Nature stripped but never killed
Meteorite from another world
Maybe the lizard’s celestial fuel

Ars Philosophica Ars Poetica

Criticism

Criticism in 2019 is bordering on cruel often seeking to dismantle credibility in the eye of the beholder.

Critical (Analysis) Critiqué (Peer review)

The critic (Siskel and Ebert) is very usually the failed artist. One who knows enough about a form from their own experiments, but orient towards the analysis of said art. I am not saying that I am not open to criticism. Though I prefer to wield it against myself and to question my heroes. I myself a degreed and proper student of literature with an expensive education in letters that is only useful now that I have made a living doing other things. Analysis is perhaps a better word these days. Not so rife with the darkness, our sardonic state of dialogue.

The art of poetry has been dissected, de-constructed, rebuilt, reconstituted, regurgitated, fight over it and derided as unacceptable. I doubt
I offer anything new to its discussion, but I am very interested that poetry not go the way of Latin. I don’t want to practice a dead art.

Ars Poetica

4 Pillars

Think of the
line break
as the natural
flow of your breath.
How does your speech
give cadence?

Ars Poetica 4 Pillars
Clarity | Mystery | Memory | History

2019 Albuquerque American Place New Mexico Poems

Early Departure

Empty streets
only 3 kinds
Driving
Drunks, Cops, Work
4:55am
No cops
Tied up
w/ drunks?
No bodies
in a hurry
to get
to work.
Flight
6:05am
Don’t want
to be late
for the
wait.

2019 Poems

Changing Second

Frosted espionage
Creeping sword, reaching
Shard. Lock. Hold. Arc.
Sweeping across smooth glass
Building architecture in
seconds. Barrier to clarity
Corrupting a clear view to the
outside world. Starburst
anemone. Prism prison
rapid takeover from two
opposing forces driving
chemical change. No pattern
repeating. Seemingly permanent…
Blown away with
one hot breath.

2019 Albuquerque American Place Garden Psalms Poems

Early Snow

Whipping torrent
Whistles away
Last hold outs.
Stripping bare trees
In preparation
For first snow;
Long and calm
After wild wisps.
Clouds; tentacles
Reaching out
To whip the
Sky to attention
And receive
The constant
Constellation;
Stars dancing
In the street lights.
Settling into
Contrasting parallels;
Vascular branches,
Reaching out.
Breathless.
Persistent.
Silent.
Mesmerizing…

2019 Albuquerque American Place Poems

Thanksgiving Day

Relief.
Months of
Mounted
pressures
Released
for the
first time.
Steam bursting
from a boil
of potatoes
changing
soiled
potential
into energy.
Gathered
friends to
remember
and enjoy
the bounty
that our labors
have provided.
“Let us give thanks.”