Poem: Blizzard Images

 

 

Blizzard Images

branches thicken into pitchforks 

under a drizzle of intertwisted rollercoasters.

 

it's a hectic cri de cœur, 

jumble of every language, 

swept along in snowflake sprees.

everyone knows what is said, and what will be said,

by this indecipherable jeremiad of gusts;

 

of rapturous February linens, 

cerements which unravel even as they are stitched.

this sort of cerecloth doesn’t care

about the curse of omens borne in its ghostly slip.

 

is it mere luck that such nude monsters disperse 

as soon as they howl?

that none of them flies long enough to exist?

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5/28/24 ... 

Original title, Blizzard

Poem: Boomerville

 

Boomerville

 

plowed by commercial decades,

this mind could never break leash.

 

grooves have been cut

for neural ivies to trellis in my head.

cartoonish plants.

 

my last dying thought

might be Coca-Cola.

 

maybe if you rip off layers

of toilet-tissue-papery prods,

those soft sorts of goads

that make human beings salivate like dogs,

 

and maybe, too, if you could ignore

the economic circus of greed,

there might be something more,

 

beyond this logo-face city,

smiles, walls, signs, wrappers, screens,

weedy from gutters to computers,

up to the top of my beliefs.

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2/20 ... removed 2nd-person references to keep the poem focused on 1st-person

2/2 ... "human beings" replaces "humans"; "could ignore" replaces "ignore"

1/29 ... baffled minor edits ... "sort" or "sorts"  ??... etc.

Foot hurts, hobbling.  Lonely.  No humans around to help.  Just me and my muses.  So I write stuff (give up my body to spirit guides).

Poem: Ice Oaks Day Dusk Night

 

 

Ice Oaks Day Dusk Night

 

flashy branches stream whorls of sun.

a surreal, hypnotic thrill, surely,

and yet not kind,

amok with ravenous gossamers

which soon succumb to purple nightshade--

 

those crepuscular filigrees of twigs  

laden with wine-tinged tears,

haunted, fated, frozen in their sparkle,

wistful and serpentine,

these mantles half-remembered

to the raucous glory of the day,

desperate now

for a mere molecule of star.

 

and yet

could heaven be a pomegranate moon?

in hover, gorged on delight, 

above the medusan mantle of the canopy?

 

could it be

 

an oasis bathed in the spectral,

celebrations of tapestried glints,

so many pinpricks, illimitable yet soft,

joyful in their midnight?

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5/28/24... 

Poem: Layers

 

Layers

 

we can’t see much in mirrors,

or even clouds.

 yet there's too many phantasms

to distress our veneers,

our flesh their mutable ache.

 

too many twists under sub rosas.

we’ve lost accommodation.

 too many tyrants in the belfry

who lack clockwork in their swagger-

and-cloaks.

 

when the tower of our strata collapses,

what heart, if any, what truth,

slouches the dunes of flimsy rubble?

==========================================

5/28/24 ... 

"truth is the product of orderly systems" --  phrase that came into my head just now

1/24   ... "dunes from our hearts"  replaces "the dunes"

Poem: My Mind Races

 

My Mind Races

 

dogs with lank tongues, curled as scrolls,

sever the trail.

 

who invited  

such startled violence,

 

roadblocks with as many questions

as teeth?

 

does god favor dogs

who scent out pleas in urgent breaths?

 

do angels chase and harass

the fawns of curiosity,

 

until they run frightened

from any glimpse of what’s right and true?

 

shocked branches and weeps of nettle

rip at my flight,

 

and such things pursue,

barking to spread confusion

 

through the treachery

of this gone forest.

================================================

5/28/24 ... "gone" replaces "lost"

 1/22 ... "such things" replaces "the monsters" ... "lost" replaces "dark"

Poem: Incubus

 

Incubus

 

across continents

leaves no footprint,

 

harpoons a heart

while hidden in a thought.

 

whispers about blood

to affect pulse,

 

goads heartbeats to trample

fields of pride.

 

without sight

controls vision,

 

enchants bright stares

to blindly plead.

 

no dream

has such a false kiss,

 

yet so true

how lips open to the force

 

of this lack,

even as they whisper

 

why.

===========================

Some phallic imagery leads to the choice of Incubus over Succubus.  Though gender norms are sexist, so maybe I'll change the title to Succubus/Incubus.  All so complex to my puny mind.  Thoughts on this can reach me at owlwholaughs@gmail.com

Poem: Stars On a Lake

 

Stars On a Lake

 

still and serene, but then frantic:

sizzle-sidles of ping pong balls

energized à la cartoon.

 

no more noblesse.

no more immortal carriage,

staid of constellation.

 

the great curtain of the velvet-forever 

now pulled to puppet

a sparkler-melee of cosmic jugglers.

 

what could this mean? 

these torn seizures of hypersonic beasts,

Canus, Draconus, Cygnus?

 

this fireworks of armageddon?

 

everything, now, the whole damned dome,

so volatile and fragile,

heaving to corkscrew, wamble, 

and oscillate.

 

so bright!

and yet dim this fervor of chaos,

this once-peaceful, logical course,

 

smacked by the flap and flutter,

of a single disgruntled quack

from a less-than-spectacular swan.  

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5/28/24 ... 

1/16   "a la cartoon" replaces "in a cartoon"... "puppet" replaces "expose"... added "wamble"

1/15 (hours after posting) ... "swan" replaces "duck" ... "exposed" replaces "revealed"

Poem: Alteration

 

Alteration

 

mourning cloak

on daybreak gravel,

 

royal in the lithe of light,

indispensable,

 

the pebbles below now precious,

perch for this supernal

 

flaunt.

 

no other moment

of my lean, grey stride

 

touched by such languid 

inexpressible wings:

 

such rich purple,

aureate, depthless.

 

none of me,

beyond this lucky token,

 

ever to measure

so brazen with life.

==================================

5/28/24 ... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphalis_antiopa

1/17 ... "lithe of light" replaces "lithe light"

Poem: Writeless

 

Writeless

 

the rock in my head

claims lava as its pulse.

such cracked and turgid ducts.

 

fingers 

massage it into fast-forwarded storms

coursing cranial continents.

 breath seeks to ease

whatever cerebral albatross

vents these voluminous fulminations.  

sulfurous, nauseous--

 

what is hell?

this thing in my head?

this crucible of the anti-civil,

fixated, primal, antediluvian, reptile?

 

or maybe it is just emotion.

 

thumbs plug nostrils.

knuckles prop ears.

 

maybe a Great Spider

shouldered the world this way,

a world that was a head,

too heavy for its neck.

 

a balancing act, then.

stilts, patience, contrivance 

across an intertangled, irreducible overdetermined

web.

=====================================

5/28/24....

1/16 ... a couple minor changes

Poem: Lessons of History

 Lessons of History

shelves of books

lean beggarly

to prop each others’ isolation.

 

genius festers

under slabs of dust,

wise yet antiquated

 

in an old man’s condo.

 

a moth,

color of the last leaf

of a miniature autumn,

 

settles,

meek in its finitude,

on a spine.

=========================================

5/28/24 ... "a" replaces "his"  (no, I don't know what I'm doing)

1/5   ...   "his" replaces "a" 

this is a poem about my father

Poem: Ceaseless

 

Ceaselesss

 

curtains opened before searched

stretch responses from riven mouths

to swarm geysered breaths.

 

beauty poses there, sculpted

by a commotion of hands

and clapping jaws that dissemble

urges to own and control.

 

around and back, from all sides,

every angle spreads,

a succession of shapely dunes,

brave to bury unsightly reviews.

 

the news, it transforms so quick.

coronations and abdications.

airwaves of riddles, veers and swerves.

eyes, smiles, hips.

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5/28/24 ... 

7/17 ... fixed typo

2/17 .. ."riven" replaces "rave" ... other mods