Two Poems

by Stephen Mead

Is Sadness Upon Sadness

transparent, layered as water
laid stroke upon stroke, with the stretches reflective,
& having opaqueness enough to shelter color,
become shelter alone?

Shells are enclosed so, convex with their turns dark to the eye,
but held as light. So, if unrolled, maybe our spirits too,
are surely banners, are textured as silver-tinted,
as goldenly opalescent with certain rainbow slicks.

Without an umbrella walk in that weather.
Strangers to no one, our sad/happy faces glow unmasked
in shields of bone & gazes.

Rain drops on, rain, the world's climate, its intricate beads,
strands our hands are the pearls of still.

✦✦✦

Nylon Drape Dance

Spinning, spinning-----
the immaterial, the sheer silver, this mesh & its hold
full of unloosening dust…

My skin is nude under the intricacies, these webs
upon nets, a fabric for finding images of what
the windows pour.

Images, this is a longing-----
those last wild grapes a tenacious tangle out there
vivid on the vine.

Drapes, vines, this is our lives at any time,
lives arranging themselves, rooting
to whatever guidepost comes as wood-comfort,
the grace of us spiraling.

Stephen Mead is a retiree who, throughout all his pretty non-glamorous jobs still found time for writing poetry/essays and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this. Currently, he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art before he pops his cogs, https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/stephen-mead

Resident artist/curator of artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations, and allies predominantly before Stonewall for The Chroma Museum. https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/