Windy
sighs sift through boughs,
swirl to soften willows,
lull fronds.
air purls as always,
trees as staves, the glade a stanza,
leaves as clefs.
the sky a vase
full of faint violins,
whispery with cadenzas.
the forest remembers
and rephrases arias all day,
fugacious
until crepuscular amethyst
and a coda
of moon.
Age
wrinkles slither
over the desert of my skin.
so many beached eels
on a saggy road,
twitching in packs,
a seine no memory can evade,
not even a breath.
maybe i’ll try verbal cobwebs,
the art of weaving
creased old skin.
maybe i’ll hunker down
to crab-grip pens,
copying the mayhem
on my throat.
===============================
Thank you for looking at the poems!
A quick note. I often edit a piece quite a bit after it goes up. The more-or-less final version, the one that settles in, arrives after a few days of the initial posting. (It's almost fair to say that a true 'final version' is like the Holy Grail and not likely to ever materialize).
Admittedly, this is a feeble strategy. I use it simply because it gets me to edit faster and more attentively than if the poems were merely tucked away in a folder.
The downside is that readers who visit right after a work goes up are often met with a less-than-stellar version. For this I apologize. Again, my only excuse, albeit feeble, is the quirkiness of my own craft.
If you have comments or suggestions, or potential topics you'd like to see, you can email me:
owlwholaughs@gmail.com
Fly Well in the Dark,
OWL
===========================
Malykatu
young cars and old clouds.
hills of secrets around skyscrapers.
No shaggy animals.
Fire Bird blinked and the glaciers went.
Ant Spirit took over then,
dominating the Two Legs.
crowds are now many.
busy conquests and wonders
crawl thick over Grandmother’s skin.
their hunger and lines disrupt her face.
they unravel the baskets of animals, of plants,
and the tales of kindness-in-life
she wove every day.
=======================
Not So Great
the fathers invoked a heraldry of the linear,
eschewing the lessons of Creation.
the fathers crammed nighttime into a blue box
of corralled stars.
blood doesn’t flow so straight, nor ivory.
beware those tongues and teeth.
beware the lunge below the glint of the square cyclops eye.
beware the cubic tyrannosaur of the-many-into-one.
imagine
if the whitewashed blood and fangs and dark gleams,
and the shallow sharp bursting bombs of flare,
fell into a chastened pile.
all those vectors of Manifest Destiny
humbled to salute the coils of riverbanks,
and the curled claws of wild willow roots.
would the dark deeds eventually decay
through the soil toward those killed in their name?
would the symbolism then
form a sediment of eternal regret?
would it even, finally, flower a decent destiny?
surrender to a supple, graceful peace
its indivisible bars?
============================
Eagle Over Lake
shadow above aqua,
slow circle, a slash, a boomerang,
part current, part sculpture,
fang of keen white head,
water the skin, a stray ripple
the jugular.
silver of spine
wriggles punctured,
hauled and gripped.
no reflection,
nothing
but a wisp within a photo,
unless
the sun comes too close.
brown flames then.
brown flames and ivory embers.
=================================
A Moment of Rest
seconds dissolve
into universes dying.
we wear them in our thoughts like rain.
so many births
that struggle not to tire,
restless and relentless,
narcotic and aphrodisiac;
and yet completion evolves to resist
even as it tastes.
such explosions!
they seem inevitable,
passions gone, just like that,
obliterated on the canvas of the heart.
mind, all minds together,
configure the globe,
this harmony of similar originals,
this message:
we cannot grip
the beckoning hand of god.
awe is not faithful that way.
hearthstone, signpost, deathbed,
love awaits in all those places.
who will see?
some. sometimes.
nothing less.
nor more.
==================
Gazelle
sharp shards of shadow
bind my shivery breast.
your tongue slashes my mouth
to slide inward and taste the fresh insult
of denial slain.
vicious, your arms,
vicious tigers,
they lunge grip drag
until i fall, a gazelle,
to stare up awkward
at the cutlery beneath
your relentless grin.
i tremble you feed.
you swell like my pupils,
even as your heat surges, a fang
to puncture my soul.
============================
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