Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Poem: Liquidity

 

Liquidity

 

lonely escherian skeletons

rib a lake into canters.

their bones complicate its old face.

 

they crosshatch into tigers,

trellis through pregnant angles,

a clash of stripes on curved stilts 

that somehow manage to glide.

 

these songful sways,

such curvy green-gold-blues,

tease the senses like a protean harp,

strum spine, graze chest.

 

you, too, they sing, a lonely skeleton,

footsteps that spread to branch,

scions of symbol and deed,

ripples on a page.




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The sort of thing we ought to think on when we hear "liquidity."

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Poem: A Hummingbird

 

A Hummingbird

 

a hummingbird zoomed

two feet close,

thought a man a mirror,

but then saw he was too solid.

more trapped than alert.

 

the flawless emerald gorget sparkled,

while the man played the numb ogre,

construct of a steel-and-street,

lawn-and-order colony.

 

the resplendent bird birthed incarnations,

slices of natural magic tricks.

it cajoled the well-heeled fellow,

but he blinked just once,

in a failure of apprehension.


the brilliant wings, though, wouldn't stop.

they hovered, flashed, prompted, offered 

a vanishing act of so many doors.


but the man, too slow,

despite heaven and hope,

too preoccupied with his sod,

entertained not even one.



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Sunday, March 14, 2021

Poem: Stuck

 

Stuck

  

the dresser flaunted caterpillar knobs,

climbing as it was the walls. 

 

the mirror wore always only itself,

a coat of light too threadbare for warmth,

while the giraffe neck lamp

claimed curious, constant danger.

 

a few too many light sockets

mastered their two-faced masks,

slits and half-circles in fine fettle,

caricatured to cry.

 

there were bears in the carpet,

wolves under the piles.

sheep hung in dark niches

from triangular gallows.

 

the creak of a hissy fan

ignored the stuck room,

antsy and efficient

from the blur of its guillotines.

 

not even cartoon fish

could escape the oceanic wallpaper,

their hollywood smiles stuck,

shades of blue-going-grey,

though

 

if a forehead hit the plaster,

bashing the false depth, so hard,

surely the blackout 

would hear the shriek.



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Saturday, March 6, 2021

Poem: Wylder

 

 

Wylder

 

inquisitive

in a world where tears bleed,

because few can winnow

sorrow from blood.

i’m skilled at reading

the swoopfonts of bats.

 

to touch a stump

yields circuitous crowns.

my masseuse wields such fingertips,

lilts of pine needles, myriad in breeze--


swerves of strum across 

my naked curvatures.

 

when the drunken moon

scrabbles in torn skies,

(what a moody show)

my soles whiffle and jar

near the bed of dawn.

 

such a magus in a cocoon,

aloft in unstable bliss,

petals unfurl around me,

exposing themselves

to the last rose.

 

but the ribs below them,

these i will not touch.

cages of bone, starved for breath,

never again to wake sensitive.



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