No Regrets Journal Winter 2020

No Regrets Journal

Winter 2019 Issue 28 Clayton Medeiros 

No Regrets, a journal of poetry, prose and images about the exploration of being and meaning.

Clayton Medeiros, Editor, Poet, Photographer, Collage Artist claymedeiros@aol.com Neil McKay (Johnny Trash), Webmaster Submissions are by invitation of the editor Epublishing http://issuu.com/claymedeiros/docs Facebook page No Regrets Journal, haikus, poems and photographs https://www.facebook.com/NoRegretsJournal 

Cosmic Linguistics The vast cosmos stretches out in time and space From our earth bound momentary surroundings Before we knew the universe’s ever expanding complexity Our explanations turned to myths of creation The wild surmise of our imagination To fill the unknown past To fill the unknowable future To temper the present moment When we run out of reality’s words Language and images capture our place Minds bodies atoms cosmically entwined




Stars Stars whisper behind blue sky Speak of night as light Shines through the galaxy Red blue yellow white Each constellation Speaks its own language Sparkles across curved space Timeless music of the spheres Sings in harmonic convergence Planets moons suns all to all Listen to the stars voices Whisper the beginning When there was only silence




Sky Empty Sky’s empty hue Yet complete In this moment’s Flight against Time’s flutter Noon blue pales To dusky Sunset’s glow Evening star’s Bright song line Harbors dreams Constellations Luminous Spiral births Light’s inquiry Into darkest night Bends time Ripples light years Quantum confusion Infinitely strewn

Gray’s Rain A high gray day Bright wet light Skies that contain Time’s wisdom Present future The forgotten past Where there is no path To read the memory Of hunts fires bright moons The darkness of the eclipse A shooting star escapes The circle of northern light Seasons go round and round Tales told to pass the time




Storied Stars How do stars Decide who appears first Biggest and brightest Astrological weight Perhaps turns are taken Lots drawn Maybe volunteers Western hubristic physics Overestimated About what’s what Why’s why As if we’re in charge




Present Memories Memory lost in luminescent present tense A frailty of salient details form color Admonished by today’s inadequate reenactment Carried through to whatever’s next Perhaps enhanced by a beloved screen writer Secure in the knowledge of other narratives Endowed with coherent entertaining trajectories Culminating in a taut tapestry Accompanied by a jazzy cello tinged score Performed by a Coltrane inspired Bach trio

Color What if every act you undertook Suddenly burst in to color Each moment reframed the day Integrated shapes and hues Carried you through impressionist morning Noon’s abstract clarity Afternoon’s renaissance hours Medieval dusk caught between light and dark Expressionist midnight dreamscapes




What’s In A Name If you lost your name Who would you be What would have been lost Would you chose a name Long forgotten Hidden from the world When you were a child Only you knew the secret Only you knew the stories That encompassed that name That burnished that name And you with it




Story Time since you’ve asked I’ll tell you this story embellished here and there diminished here and there detailed precise moments destined in historic time rendered for today’s intent if my selection puts you off please freely ask others who may have been there to share their memory now that the story belongs to you to do with what you will




Time and Memory We live moment to moment Continuous present tense Who we are now Who we were then Much of our past Unwitnessed Uncorroborated Stitched together in remembered stories Told to family friends strangers ourselves We are author and narrator For the audience of one or more We share an ongoing narrative Interpretive recollections on call The present confirmed by the past




History More human history has been lost than recorded If nothing else our earthly presence began Well beyond inarticulate scriptless ruins Answers if any in petroglyphs and pottery Burials with obeisance to unknowable gods Selective memory brings reason if not rhyme To more recent decades and centuries The power of those who write the history books




Heavenly Options Perhaps there is room In the heavens For all our dearly departed Ancestors from the human tree Australopithecus and fellow primates Perhaps there is room for Our earthly companions Cool cats and best friend dogs The beasts of field and forest Desert and wide oceans The universe expands Runs away from beginnings At ever increasing speeds With stars coming and going Perhaps making room For all the souls




Evening Wings Walking the deep street Between night and morning Either fully possible Sleep an unlikely ally In dreamless time Sudden passing wings, Hushed feathers, Infinitely present Halt clock’s illusions Death’s dominion Held in limbo Dispassionate sinners In search of Dante No Beatrice No Virgil Look to starlight Etched wings A sense of flight Rises to consciousness Overwhelms the fall Perhaps feathered whispers Were once ours




Theology What if theological pundits lie?

Heaven covets neither saints nor sinners, Accepts those having the most fun As the key to heavenly success.

Each choir of angels, Unique, bright, party clothes Turquoise, tangerine Among whispering winds, Dancing, gaily bedecked, Heaven’s performance art.

Bad seats uniquely reserved For the righteous, Universal nay sayers, Searching always for the crime, Hopeful for time’s end.

Laughter, a worrisome thing, Darkness lurks in all that shines.

Faced now with eternal dance, The music of the spheres Turns out to have a back beat.




God’s Gamble Although God may not play dice God has a sense of humor In the great gift of free will To creation’s humanity Perhaps others as well Flounder out there With their responsibilities To other creatures The effort to understand Where and why they are In this universe’s time Issues of who came first Imagined in the mind’s of those Awake to the wonder of it all




Gray Hat Woman A woman sits Wears a gray hat Reads the book Of dreams and destiny The times of all things The world begins The world ends And the woman In the gray hat Reads lines of type Imagined into The world’s time Nothing in particular But the sound of Words rhythms Endless profusion Of possibility




Greek Myths Unlike today’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’s deft luster hidden Overcome by moonless shades Charon collects mortality’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 Thoughtless suitors greed