There are two worlds on Earth, that you believein, both nourishing sources of light-Suns without fire. So we recreate our patternsfrom scratch. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays […]
George Cassidy Payne
Animal
You call me animal but I am not your predator. You bear your teeth to mebut I cannot see past your smile. You are nocturnal, like all hunters of fame, yet your eyes are domesticated. Your ears are attuned to the sounds of warm-blooded noises and North America means nothing on your map. You wear your hair with feathers, eagle feathers and heron feathers. Your […]
Curiosity
Look back in wonder“my 1st picture of Earth from Mars.”80 minutes after sunset on January 31, 2014. 99 million miles away. A speck of light in a dark and lonely corner. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at […]
Out of Nothing
My love for you is gravitationally balancedbut unstable. A system of huge swirling whirlpools endlessly recycled as repulsive forces that expand with constant acceleration, like starlight created from radiationMy love for you is finite and ambiguous Unbounded and forever, decreasing with time, as the universe evolves, it weakens. Simplest of all known universes, my heart for you pounds with the pulse of […]
A Scene from Cumberland Bay
Before his sister could budge him out of the way,Mendon climbsdown the rabbit hole to a window in the stars where everything worth seeing is hidden inside a half-devoured pine cone. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher […]
After Meditating On My Front Porch
I again realize that mindfulness is noticingstillness, how the inkon my paper has more than one color of black and feelsfluid as silk. And how the hard plastic wheelsof a stroller across the street,scraps the gravel, making soundslike crackling embers.It’s noticing the stillness of a solitary pine needle pulsing in the sighing wind. An eternal thing that must be […]
The Tao is broken, too
Murky and flimsy. Weakand empty. Dark. Dangling. Depressed. Deep hunger pangs. Dying on the vine. Ignoble onpurpose. Groundless and buriedlike emeralds or silent and boundless as jackrabbits in the grateful dead of a Western New York snowstorm in March. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry […]
After the Tear Gas
and joyful taunts of revolution, the fallof every infant sparrowis evolving as a eulogyin my heart, producing a vision of peace throughjustice, still conversant withthe knowledge of Babylon. Oh, how I know these sonsand daughters of Babylon, their language and history,on both sides, they came from sailors and farmers and weavers. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. […]
Humpbacks 2
Before the finneddinosaurs of the icydepths were disappointed bythe steamships of men, they casttheir ballads into the velvet abyss, waiting as mothers do with untamed hearts, big as school buses George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 […]
The Persistence of Memory
Before the finneddinosaurs of the frozen deepwere interrupted by the warships of man they cast their love balladsinto the vast abyss, waiting,with hearts as wild and big as schoolbuses, for their own answer. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at […]