Gasping For Air
Dark hole sucks me in suddenly, no warning and I'm lost falling, falling, falling. No bottom, no end, until time passes while others stand condemning they know not what. Private agendas pursued regardless of consequences to the future. The one in pain gasps, seeing destruction looming restrained from stopping. Automatic "ON" There is a switch I cannot find somewhere inside of me. PANIC! PANIC!! PANIC!!! It sounds alarms instantly, before I know it's happened. Train thunders by pulling me along. Far down the way steam has decreased and my brain can think again. Others say: “Insane, unreasonable, bizarre, not fit...” No. Just mental wiring. Jumbled Together Reading, I come to jumbled letters on the page. A word, I think, but what? Makes no sense. I close my eyes, stop thinking, let the letters sort themselves right. Open my eyes: there is now a word and I continue reading. Less, this happens as age becomes my pain, yet I remember still Letters Stand A mind contesting with its brain over what the body will do – or won't. The daily, hourly, struggle of one so graced with dys- lexia. Letters on the page don't stand still, or stay in order. Others have no clue. Child doesn't know all others aren't the same – this, the normal he only knows. I know. Unfoldment When your grip is slipping off the rope and there is no length left for another knot to hang on to.... What do you do? What do you hold on to? What can you do? What will hold you up? Wings WINGS will set you free! WINGS you didn't know you had. WINGS of unknown power. WINGS beyond belief. WINGS to fly! Bio: Duane L. Herrmann, an internationally published, award-winning poet and historian, has work featured in print and on-line publications as Midwest Quarterly, Little Balkans Review, Flint Hills Review, Manifest West, Inscape, Orison, Gonzo Press, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and more, in fifty-plus anthologies, over one hundred other publications, plus a sci fi novel. A fifth generation Kansan, with branches of his family here before the revolution, and a Native branch even longer, he writes from, these perspectives. His full-length collections of poetry include: Prairies of Possibilities, Ichnographical, Praise the King of Glory, No Known Address, Remnants of a Life, and Family Plowing. His poetry has received the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship, inclusion in American Poets of the 1990s, Map of Kansas Literature, Kansas Poets Trail, and others. This, despite an abusive childhood embellished by dyslexia, ADHD, cyclothymia, an anxiety disorder and now, PTSD. The father of four and grandfather of seven, he was surprised to find himself on a farm in Kansas and is still trying to make sense of that, but has grown fond of grass waving under wind, trees, and the enchantment of moonlight.
Fevers of the Mind 