Lovely oh,
tell me Havanna
be heaven
on holiday
I wake to
not some poor
pastel paradise
of infinite weariness,
accursed with grief;
oh lord,
I praise the sun’s
slow burn and
muddied earth,
the rose-pink
air tinged with
citrus and cedar;
and can you hear
the breezes hiss,
the distant trills
of bird-call,
the island tides
glittering where
the lowlands
fall to the sea’s
motionless blue
meadows that
found a way
into your eyes?
Forgive me, oh.
beautiful, sublime,
ravishing you,
azure ablaze,
silver-dollar bright
features as soft as
melancholy’s
minor key
blown open
my heart capsized
and still adrift
in search of…
yet it waits
upon a veranda,
bewitched by
starlight and the
bright clatter
of hooves, tucked
beneath sullen
palms in prayer,
oh lord,
there’s a fierce
pathos in this
place as pungent
as the city’s
iris halos
adrift in lurid
pools of petrol,
as sharp as
the coast’s
horned coral,
and as plain
as this made-
then-unmade
earth’s love
of green, but
now I think
back and what
I wouldn’t give,
to lose myself
again in those
pre-dawn hours
filled with
a cloying, after-
life reek and
indulgent
refrains that
conspired and
coupled so
easily with
dream and sleep,
dear lord, oh
sweet, strange,
infernal sleep.

Author Bio:

A resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate, John Muro has authored two volumes of poems — In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite — in 2020 and 2022, respectively. He is also a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, as well as the Best of the Net Award, and he was a recent recipient of a 2023 Grantchester Award. John’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Delmarva, Hemlock, River Heron, Sky Island and the Valparaiso Review.