Poem: Refugees

 

Refugees

 

in the gardens,

petals fluttered down to weave rosaries.

no one dared pray on them, or the fretful stars,

those pigments of bone.

 

instead they walked among battered brick,

cities that lacked a hearth.

chokeberry juice dyed their tongues.

they boiled the bark of broken trees to chew.

 

not so heavy as tank treads,

dull legs slugged it out with the ground.

tattered shoes tottered in the deeper mud,

where corpses lolled, immune to dysentery.

 

no rest, nowhere, for eyes ripe with tears.

why lay down unless commanded by a final sun? 

why scavenge for dreams under the scythe

of a doomed, mournful moon?

 

with nothing left but stains

--of tears, hope, blood, and salt--

all their fat gone, lost to dead relatives and homes,

the refugees found the hem of a realm so green

that war lost its name.  so much so 

that the citizens there didn’t recognize it. 

 

these well-fed ones

smiled at desperate scarlike mouths. 

their welcome of wealthy words

shone calm as gold in a mysterious victory,

one that made less and less sense,

when they fastened more and more locks

on the perfect gates.

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Poem: Mdfk

 

Mdfk

 

the bong in the clock had eternity on its tongue,

gods in the tones of its chimes.

still, it was the headache that reigned omnipotent.

black holes in the temples of duty and inspiration.

black holes that sucked light to throb.

 

to implode.

 

there would be no bypass

of the duress that gorged on sound.

ixnay on the anodyne of the opioid and wine.

when a murdered ghost saddled a host,

when it claimed all ears,

and forced its fury

to possess an otherwise static mouth--

 

it was like this.

 

no exit.  the Snuffleupagus

and all it represented from a congested childhood:

the betrayals never believed,

never expected to be thought of again,

let alone to dominate every sensation.

the blocked doors.

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Poem: Reflection In Cola

 

Reflection in Cola

 

white hair against effervescent tar.

blue eyes gone black, unwandering,

while nose pokes nose,

ribbing a liquid mirror with each breath.

 

this man in a brown moon,

bubbles for craters, he cannot hide.

dimples burst up

near an airbrushed smile of curves and glass.

 

and that head, whaaaaaa?

far more eggish than realized.

absurd with wrinkles,

per the tap of a fingertip.

 

you peppy fool,

 

the pedestal of your importance

shrinks as you sip yourself away,

smaller and smaller,

mutual in a nothing stare.

 

are you so bemused

realllllly?

that ego could fixate for so long

on someone as thin as a surface?

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Original version (significantly different) published in Octavo.

Poem: Storm Through Glass

 

Storm Through Glass

 

dizzy inertia of raindrops

rattles the windows with inkless blips.

 

such a rorschach patina-menagerie.

such glossy beaten thudding heads.

 

how they shriek, silent but not quiet

while gales thrash and paint--

 

such nonsense splatter:

 

trickle-twisted horns, whisked whiskers,

storm-coopered hooves,

this mutable zoo, far too grotesque;

 

yet generous, still, to blur the visible.

 

if palettes of water resolved true,

nightmares would mar

tempestuous panes.

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Poem: Proof

 

Proof

 

shadows crept with little aplomb

under the anemia of a filmy bulb;

the bulb a starved winter sunset,

less and less orange succulence.

never there.

 

but it was the rats nest of books,

nestled in dogears,

that feasted on tired hands

to devour their paralyzed,

insensate scholarship.

worse still, the real mice

which throbbed in the walls,

an eerie omen of sibilance.

 

below half-dead, hung eyes

some last tome of hope lay open

--vivisected, slain--

yet no cure for a tortured quest,

no Quod Erat Demonstrandum .

 

the sad only conclusion, then, being god.

god who had designed this futile math,

an impregnable Door,

with human knowledge its mere architrave.

 

to step through would be to slide,

sunset’s smallest last shadow--

forever to stretch, thinner, endless,

not quite gone, but nevertheless

never there.

 

 

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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 genesis to omega,

a nova of 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 have movement,

all the possibles manifest. 

so when you go out, or come in,

through that blinding door,

there is, on the other side,

so they say, a mirror

of your own making;

and it bends to infinity,

such is the claim,

where you tend to walk.

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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

 

wolf spiders over the keys,

they ravage the sonata,

the piano a coffin black.

 

the audience swilled

by the eloquent caterwaul

of the furioso octaves--

this peyote and hypnosis,

this tempest of burning crickets

that clash to wisp away.

 

the notes themselves

relieved by their own harsh deaths.

the torment in the chords

somehow fragile, even so, of consonance,

to brush pretty wings.

 

wings

 

they levitate torn.

and the split feathers

and the shreds of tranquility

bare no patient descent.

 

instead bridges.  chasms.

a confusion of sharps and aortas,

lost in bittersweet passages,

before the silence.

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Poem: Long Night Into Day

 Long Night Into Day

light stung

with its lack of tomorrow,

the what-was that devoured the what-if. 

lost in a pine forest of overdose needles.

below sharp blue height

that leered over endless boxes.

 

light, it ran away so fast.

it didn’t have to face causes.

the clear-cut nudity

of harsh sexless sex.

the cortege of wind-tumbled people,

prisoners of ruthless equations.

 

the light. 

it hurt.  it framed.  it trapped.

so brutal that hope

preferred to remain an unearthed stone.

in the night, lurid pretenders.

maskers who played cards without mercy.

games of dogs, paws on each other’s hearts

to dig for bones.

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Poem: On a Ledge

 

On a Ledge

 

no humans for miles.

no engines in lines.

no rail irons

or psoriasis of picket fences.

 

where throngs of hands

battle for the last scrap of land,

a whip-poor-will

is worth a billion dreams.

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