Featured Work
Original, published work by Chris Basher (a.k.a. P. D. Kline) Selections for Summer 2025
I RAN FROM DEATH
I ran from death, right into its arms.
It only smiled, knowing I’d come,
coaxing me to come inside to see
its haunting, breath-taking collection.
Somewhere in there I kept running past
endless walls of paintings and prints from
every era, form, and style; past shelves
like years packed with delour and plotlines
that featured my antagonistic
host; through chambers that stunk of rot,
some packed with printed news from every
city, town, from under every rock;
a clubroom dressed in keepsake postcards:
Hiroshima, Kigali, Auschwitz,
Tiananmen Square, Yangtze River,
Port-au-Prince, Gettysburg, Golgotha;
past staging spanning miles with legions
of shameless actors smiling that smile,
arms intertwined and taking their bows;
through a crowded taproom built around
Pieta (God get me out of here!);
through hallways long with timeless faces,
those I loved and longed to see again.
Even as I shuddered in grief, it smiled.
At last, down dark and hellish cellar
stairs to my mental core where fearful
thoughts are sired in futility.
HARDEST BREATH TO HOLD
The older you get and
the more you hold on to
the favors of your past,
the more what’s passed let’s go
of you, except what’s kept
in your pocket and won’t
come out in the washing,
no matter how many
cycles and how much soap,
‘til dancing on the line
to a fresh spring breeze it
darkens the sun and sucks
the breath from you again.
FINDING WHAT IS GONE
I couldn't find you where you are,
so I looked for where you were -
echoes of our cartoon laughter,
our wild roller coaster ride that picked
up speed and wouldn't let us off,
tracks in snow that we chased farther
into the woods beyond our home,
the yellow bus that never brought
you back the way you left ( and we
waved good-bye every day). After
all was said and done, after all
that wasn't said and wasn't done,
how tiny was our universe
among the other sands of time.
Is that why you're so hard to find?