Poem: Telepathy by Manuel Odeny

I hear you call me,
gently
amid the rustling leaves
silently
tapping me roof
i hear you….
call me

Your voice seeps with the wind
impatiently rasping me door
I, open- darkness
gust, gale gashes in
uninvited guest
filling the void
you left!

I call you
gently
nothing.
Then I hear you call me
tenderly-
again
silently
teasingly.

I peek
the groove whispers
night looking on
heavy with expectations
then, you giggle -
teasingly.
I seek thee
then stumble
and fall
on a soft mound
and hug your grave
to me bosom
i hold

"Good night love
sleep with a pullover"
i whisper.
"It's a cold night-
go back in"
you reply      

Poem: Alicia by Manuel Odeny

Did I tell you about Alicia
my childhood sweetheart?
her beauty bewitching
the lilt of her laughter
invoking a longing for love
the tilt of her graceful neck
invoking a longing for love
oh
her sweet seraph voice
the wake of her sweet smile
oh
love.

Did I tell you about Alicia
childhood vows broken
hushed, hustled promises
sealed in scented envelopes
all gone
with divide of time

Did I tell you about Alicia
my childhood sweetheart?
yesterday
she died
the big disease wasted her
AIDS emaciated her
before midnight hour
before cock crowing dawn hour
her soul departed here
agonizing
like echoes in a tomb
accentuating the hurt

but

as white shroud silently cover her cadaver
my spirit, soul settles silently
as she's lowered deep in grave
i shed tears of hope, love
raising with the dirge
upward with prayers
for am still in love
true

now

Have I told you about Alicia
my childhood sweet heart?
yesterday
she was buried

Book Review: Guilt by John Lescroart

A Soul Burdened with Guilt Knows no Peace.

TITLE: Guilt
AUTHOR: John Lescroart
PUBLISHER: Headline
GENRE: Fiction
PAGES: N/A, read from Readers Digest collection,1970
REVIEWER: Manuel Odeny

Mark Dooher has many things to feel guilty about. Many things hold, both to his heart and soul. Many things. No peace- a tormented soul bound.

Mark Dooher is a powerful and successful lawyer; he dines and lives with the rich. Everything in life is fine and smooth. He owns a Lexus, goes, and is a member of a reputable golf club, lives in fine house and owns a profitable law firm.

This is the public mark Dooher, but in private life he is a monster. Mark Dooher has a troubled marriage and falls for a magnetic beauty of a young lawyer. Anything Mark Dooher wants, anything, he gets, no matter the obstacles on his road. And Mark Dooher wants the young lawyer even if accused of the darkest crime: the murder of his wife to marry the ravishing beauty and to get $1.6M life insurance.

The private monster envision ecstasy and thrill of power, even equaled to power of God; taking life. Everything standing on Mark’s way will be dealt with. Competitors are crushed and opposing lawyers found dead in their offices.

The guilt is getting heavier and the past is quickly catching up pretty quick. The soldiers in his platoon who died of heroine overdose, the drug supplier in Vietnam who died of bayonet wounds.

In Stanford University while undertaking his law degree, of a rape, 20 years ago, of a woman with a shaky life like an extension ladder. Though the woman hoped in beds and abused every drug on the face of America, she remembers what Mark Dooher did to her.

John Lescroart

Weightier, the guilt gets heavier when police officers believe he murdered his wife and a rival lawyer but cant prove. Being shrewd Mark Dooher gets away scot-free with a trophy wife but lose his friends, clients an firm. That is when the guilty has to face reality.

John Lescroart (pronounced Leskaw) writes fluid English, well placed contexts and even suspense to hold the reader and make the book a page turner.