Poem: Refugees

 

Refugees

 

in the lost gardens,

petals fluttered to weave rosaries.

no one dared gaze on the fretful stars,

those pigments of bone.

 

we trekked among tumbled bricks 

which lacked a hearth,

and boiled the bark of broken trees to chew.

chokeberry dyed our tongues.

 

our tired legs 

slugged it out with the misshapen ground,

not so heavy, not yet, as the tank treads.

our uneasy footsteps sidled 

when we came upon a pit, 

and saw so many tangled corpses

immune to terror, agony, hunger, grief, despair, rage, pain

and dysentery.

 

no rest, anywhere, for our thousands of eyes 

which were no longer ripe with tears.  

why cry or rest or sleep 

unless commanded by a final sun? 

why scavenge for useless dreams 

under the scythe of the moon?

 

nothing left but stains

of hope, blood and salt,

all passion sucked away 

by dead relatives and uprooted homes,

we stumbled upon a fence--

 

and beheld a realm of green 

where war had no name.  

 

the well-fed ones there

offered a welcome of wealthy words

while, even as they smiled, 

they fastened more and more locks

on the gilded gates.

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10/2/25 ... eds ... awful poem, tried to fix, 

Poem: Mdfk

 

Mdfk

 

the <<<bong>>> of the clock had eternity on its tongue,

god in the tones of its chimes.

still, it was my headache that reigned omnipotent.

black holes in the temples of duty and inspiration.

black holes that sucked on light to throb.

 

 

there would be no bypass

of the freudian duress that gorged on sound.

ixnay on the anodynes, 

the aceta-ibu-mino-prophetic-fen.

when a murdered ghost saddles a host

to claim all ears, force its fury,

and possess an otherwise static mouth,

 

it was like this.

 

no exit

from the Snuffleupagus

and what it represented from a congested childhood.

the betrayals still hard to believe,

never wanted to be thought of again

and again and again,

let alone to dominate every sensation

and block the doors.

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

Poem: Reflection In Cola

 

Reflection in Cola

 

white hair, effervesce of tar,

blue eyes gone black, unwandering,

when nose pokes nose,

ribbing a liquid mirror with each breath.

 

a man in a brown moon,

bubbles for craters, he cannot hide.

his dimples burst upward 

round an airbrushed smile of curves and glass.

 

and his head, whaaaaaa?

far more eggish than realized.

absurd with wrinkles

per tap of fingertip.

 

you peppy fool!

 

the pedestal of your importance

shrinks as you sip yourself away,

smaller and smaller,

mutual in a blank  stare.

 

and are you truly so bemused?

realllllly?

that your ego could fixate for so long

on someone as thin as a surface?

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

7/21/24 ... 

Original version (significantly different) published in Octavo.

Poem: Storm Through Glass

 

Storm Through Glass

 

a dizzy inertia of rain

accosts the window with inkless blips.

what is this rorschach patina-menagerie?

what glossy thudding heads!

 

they shriek silent, but not quiet.

gales thrash and paint so much nonsense splatter:

 

trickle-twisted horns, whisked whiskers,

storm-coopered hooves.

it's a mutable zoo, far too grotesque

 and yet generous, still, to blur the visible.

 

if these ideas resolved full,

nightmares would mar the tempestuous pane.

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

9/8/25 ... huge mod spree

Poem: Proof

 

Proof

 

shadows crept with little aplomb

anemic under a filmy bulb,

a bulb of starved winter sunset,

dimmer to dust,

less yellow than hollow.

never there.

 

but it was the rat's nest of books,

nestled in dogears,

which feasted on an old man's tired hands

to devour his paralyzed scholarship of a soul--

and thus the proof of the real rodents 

scurrying in the walls,

eerie from their omen of sibilance.

 

below the old man's half-dead, hung eyes

a tome of hope lay open,

vivisected by his fingers and yet mostly slain--

and still no cure for his venerable quest,

no Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

 

the sad and only conclusion, then, 

an impregnable tower of futile math,

all of human knowledge 

merely its architrave.

 

to climb higher, therefore, would be to slide,

to become sunset’s smallest last shadow,

to forever stretch thinner and yet ceaseless,

not gone, but nevertheless

never there.

 

 

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

5/20/25 mods

Poem: New Physics

 

New Physics

 

a person, they say

is in fact a universe

with as many neurons

as there are galaxies.

and no one really

can put a value on any of it,

because meaning depends

on what is thought.

death, they say, resolves omega,

a solution to all one's quests;

and the light cast off

is more than equal

to the original big bang.

in fact, outside of time,

before you take shape

or move or hope,

all possibles manifest. 

so when you go out

or come in

through that blinding door,

there is, on the obverse,

so they say, a mirror

of your own making,

one that bends to infinity,

such is their claim, anyway,

no matter where you tend 

to walk.

 =================

Regarding the Poems

 Thank you for reading the poems!

Often the poems are not in the best of shape when I put them up.  The reason I post them is that they get more attention from me than if I filed them away somewhere.  

Sometimes poems don’t get modified at all after posting.  Others get edited into decent shape after a few days.  In some cases, it takes a long time to get things even somewhat right.   “Crystal Ball,” “Mosquitoes on a Screen,” and “Written,” for instance, involve months of struggle.

The editing process never really ends.  And, of course, some poems will never be ‘good’, simply due to my lack of ability. 

I am very glad, though, that some people find a bit of impact reading them.

Fly Well In The Dark,

 OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

Poem: Performancer

 

Performancer

 

hands

 

like wolf spiders over the keys.

they ravage a sonata

on the piano's coffin black.

 

the audience swilled

by the lamentful fury of the octaves,

a caterwaul of cricket notes, 

which burn to rasp and wisp away.

 

the intermezzo a fraught wrestle,

both reviled and relieved 

by the music's harsh deaths.

in the final torments of the last movement,

the chords drain more fragile, 

bits of nuance to protect torn wings,

 

hands

 

transformed from wolf spiders,

and yet their bent feathers and shreds of flight 

bear no patient descent, 

when confused they veer

through chasms of sharps and aortas,

lost in a rumble of spent bridges, 

down into silence.

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

Poem: Long Night Into Day

Long Night Into Day

light stung

with its lack of tomorrow,

the what-was that devoured the what-if. 

light lived in a hive of everstressed people,

below a sharp blue height 

which leered over crowded boxes.

 

light, it ran away so quickly.

it didn’t have to face the facts,

such as the clear-cut nudity

of the harsh sexless sex, 

that is,  the overdose of money-smitten people

shackled in towers of ruthless equation.

 

light. 

it hurt.  it framed.  it trapped.

so brutal that hope

preferred to remain a lurid, unturned stone.

the night fed the light its pretenders.

maskers who played cards without mercy.

games of dogs, paws on each other’s hearts,

digging for bones.

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

9/23/25 ... eh

Poem: On a Ledge

 

On a Ledge

 

no humans for miles.

no engines in lines.

no rail irons

or psoriasis of fence.

 

no throngs of hands

who battle for the last scrap of acre.

in this place, on a ledge,

a whip-poor-will

is worth a billion dreams.

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

4/28/25 changed a word