Poem: Snow Images

 

 

Snow Images

branches

 

thicken into pitchforks under a drizzle of rollercoasters.

 

a hectic creole,

jumble of every language,

swept into a snowflake decree.

 

no one deciphers it,

but everyone knows what is said,

and what will be said,

by this jeremiad of February.

 

gusts

 

of unraveling linen weave garments that tear,

even as they are stitched.

 

the sort of cerecloth that doesn’t care

about the curse of omens

born and disintegrated in its wrestling slip.

 

is it mere luck

that the nude monsters disperse as soon as they howl?

that none of them flies long enough

to exist?

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

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.

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

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 On Oaks

 

 

Ice On Oaks

 

flashy branches

stream whorls of sun.

a surreal, hypnotic thrill;

and yet not kind,

amok with ravenous gossamer,

soon to succumb

to purple nightshade.

 

crepuscular

 

trees sip wine-tinged tears,

a haunted, fated, frozen sparkle,

mantles wistful and serpentine,

half-remembered

to the raucous, glorious day,

desperate now

for a mere molecule of star.

 

and yet, could heaven

be a pomegranate moon,

gorged on delight,

in hover above the medusan heads?

 

oasis

 

bathed in the spectral,

legions of tapestried glints,

pinpricks illimitable yet soft,

joyful of midnight?

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

Poem: Layers

 

Layers

 

phantasmic.

we can’t see much in mirrors,

or even clouds.

 

so much distress.

it toys with our veneers,

our flesh a mutable ache.

 

too many sub rosas and twists,

let alone those afar.

we’ve lost accommodation.

 

such tyrants in belfries

in a clockwork of cloaks.

these layered tasks.

 

when the tower collapses,

dunes from our hearts

slouch the flimsy rubble.

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

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 lost forest.

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

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

Poem: Incubus

 

Incubus

 

across continents

leaves no footprint,

 

harpoons a heart

while hiding 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 immortal carriage,

staid of constellation.

 

the great curtain of velvet forever

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, the whole damned dome,

exposed as volatile and fragile.

stars heave to corkscrew, wamble, and oscillate.

 

so bright!

and yet dim in the furor of chaos,

this once-peaceful, logical course,

 

smacked by the flap and flutter,

a single disgruntled quack,

from a less-than-spectacular swan. 

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

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,

 

pebbles now precious,

perch for the supernal

 

flaunt.

 

no other moment

of my lean, grey stride

 

to be touched by such

inexpressible wings:

 

rich purple

aureate, depthless,

 

none of me,

beyond this lucky token,

 

ever to measure

such a life.

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

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

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

Poem: Writeless

 

Writeless

 

the rock in my head

claimed lava as its pulse.

cracked and turgid ducts.

 

fingers massaged it,

fast-forwarded storms

coursing cranial continents.

 

my breath sought to ease

this cerebral albatross,

vent its voluminous

fulminations.  sulfurous,

nauseous--

 

was it hell?

 

this thing in my head,

this center of civil-social fears,

fixated, primal,

antediluvian and reptile?

 

or maybe it was just life.

 

thumbs plug nostrils.

middle knuckles prop ears.

 

maybe a Great Spider

shouldered the world this way,

a world that was a head,

too heavy for the neck.

 

a balancing act, then.

stilts, patience, and convolutions

of intertangled, overdetermined, irreducible

far-too-dense web.

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

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 home.

 

a moth,

color of the last leaf

of a miniature autumn,

 

settles,

meek in its finitude,

on his spine.

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

1/5   ...   "his" replaces "a" 

Poem: Ceaseless

 

Ceaseless

 

doors entered before searched

stretch questions from riven mouths

to swarm stumbling breaths.

 

beauty sculpted

by a commotion of hands

and clapping jaws that dissemble

what they crave to control.

 

around and back, from all sides,

every angle spreads,

a succession of gusts and shapely dunes,

burying unstable reviews.

 

the news, it transforms so quick,

coronations and abdications,

airwaves of riddles, veers and swerves.

eyes, smiles, hips.

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7/17 ... fixed typo

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