UNDERGROUND VOICES MAGAZINE/ANTHONY LICCIONE

ANTHONY LICCIONE

At Gunpoint

Everything seems late,
senses finally come to stark
emptiness, and rest to skeletal-
you count your blessings
as life flashes in fret,
when (you're) at gunpoint.

Of fears and regrets
the always need to prove
to the world sanity, of hierarchies
and diminished things, a worthwhile
cause when it stares back at you
and tells you all is late.

So you can hang your head
high, your values low
swallow those shallow
forgivenesses, to tell her
that love is only the distance
between anger and a trigger,
and a reason to die.

On the Run

I heard of a man,
who couldn't stand
to see Time on the run,
being a two-timer
with a fistful of anger
he ran for his pistol,
stocked blind in the closet.

With an aim, named Glock
and a cock or two he shot
the clock stagnant on the wall,
and before it felled seam,
it let out two-chimes it seemed
and died with a dimmer to tell.

And though it was sad to see
outside the river and trees
flowing and falling in unison,
birds flapping their wings and
children ring-around-the-rosy
singing, told the old-timer
that Time hadn't done stop.

And when that thought fail
he choked back his tears
for he had many years
sitting in awful resent-
so he pulled out his gun and shot
at the noontime sun that stood,
staring back with bite, knowing soon
it will turn night and blood moon.

Well, son-of-a-gun, he said
gaunt with a frail-hump back
and arthritis conquering bones,
he sat in the middle of his home
hammering out thoughts in mind-
deciding to use reverse psychology
to sate, counting backwards from
twenty back to one,
and he pulled the trigger a last time
against the gray of his head.

Anthony Liccione is from Upstate New York
and has been writing poetry for over ten
years, appearing in magazines as: The Hiss
Quarterly, Snow Monkey, Red River Review,
Soft Blow Journal and Mad Hatter's Review.
He has recently won the 2006 LizaBeth
Poetry Award and Unscrambled Eggs Poetry
Contest, and was nominated "Best Tragic
Poem" and "Best Poem of the Year 2005"
(Muses Review). He released a chapbook
Parched and Colorless with The Moon
Publishing, and a full-volume book of poems
Back Words and Forward. The American Author's
Association has given, Back Words and Forward,
its highest rating--5 stars and Silver
Medal Award for Poetry for 2005.