Marc Meierkort is a writer and educator who has taught high school English for 19 years. A graduate of Southern Illinois and National-Louis Universities, he currently lives in Chicago’s suburbs. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he recently had poems published by Columbia College Literary Review, The Nassau Review, Inscape, and Spectrum.
FRENCH RIVIERA
He confesses, admits to getting laid.
Consent? Yes/No offers too much He Paid/
She Said. Interviews demand tight spirals
of truth as her cruelties go viral.
About making speeches, I charge a fee
for the first lie justifies we are free
from online opinions and empty frames.
For juries? They vote like playing a game
of First-Person Shooter, soften the slap
challenge alleged at the Hotel du Cap.
AMNESIA, I FEAR
For blood, the earth bleeds.
The child minds the store
keeper and his skin what holds most honest
most private when objecting to minor
points of law. Joyce’s history is caught
in a loop, the nightmare for some now turned
real, unapologetic. I fear
to forget why the white man will always
believe himself right unless the other
is whiter.
What I need to forget Fear
of a Black Planet is amnesia.
CHRISTCHURCH
Dr. King says it Beautiful.
Warns as darkness returns
deeper stars multiply the void.
Love says Lennon is all we need.
Prayer clogs
cloture motion.
No floor vote.
Lobbies tainted.
They crater for paid
election returns. Twice appealed.
Twice rescinded.
After Christchurch, New Zealand
reacts automatic, bans
what kills.
Nameless assailant –
guns silent. Shot down.
If you’re open
to metaphor inclined
to unseat itself,
consider their
Madam Prime Minister
takes one week
to pull her trigger.
IDIOM
Early worms get burned
in bellies of beastly
temptation, leading us
not into cats or gods
but we who people
have scored
four
and
twenty
wars to end all delivery
of art and evil.
Oh liberty Oh pursuit
most alien
most asunder
Madam hailed, ribbed Adam.
We’re all Mary, blessed union
of light
allowance, daily
recommended
and
happiness
free at last
of man’s God almighty.
ABANDONED GODS
I.
What thinks the philosopher born with no trait for wonder.
What becomes the philosopher with arguments prime to be sliced
open for my clever poems.
What believes the philosopher smarter than I
am no longer in training to be. A philosopher takes years
of practice to be smarter than I am. No philosopher
worth weight-gain from salt knows how
to unlock human vanity. That’s not philosophical debate.
Meaning we yield to process before permission.
Would the philosopher turn blind eyes toward sky gods
when the earth-loving ones are quite still to be settled?
II.
Philo the first philosopher faces the mirror worthy
of his own study of his own mind.
Philo the first philosopher sees himself and sees
the gods not unlike his own reflected expression.
III.
The philosopher sees right away the way out
of what comes up incomplete.
Questions the philosopher asks imply
little understanding of the primary
purpose of questions to propose –
Trees falling. The forest listening.
The philosopher serves time, returns with one
clean vision for humanity.
The philosopher thinks thinking has its limits
in deciding what to think about –
Humanity’s future philosophy or man’s
crumbling infrastructure of abandoned gods.
in parentheses 
enter the discussion: