Saturday, June 10, 2023

Walking The Paper Plank

 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
Walking The Paper Plank
 
 
 
In the wildest place,
my mouth stopped with stars,
I came to the end of words;
the parched mint, bitter
paper plank
 
where I lost my balance,
on one foot teetering
along that roadway where gold-
flashing fireflies stand effortlessly
 on air
 
to send their fragile signal
out,
every night a nocturne
of one less
til I and the last firefly
 
danced alone
in the wildest place
sending our last ignition
out
to find our kind
 
or else fall quiet
and one
with the wild that
will neither be spelled
nor known.
 
 
 
 
June 2023






a late poem on the Wild Thing Challenge, posted for Open Link

 

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

The Abyss

 
 
 

 

 
 
The Abyss 
 
 
I remember the precipice of
your opening mouth, the weight pulling us
down through an echo of fathoms
where sleep would search for us,
phantoms tumbled and rolled together
like half-formed dough,
many elements made one pliant thing,
sticky and salt, hair damp,
skin hot, limbs uncoiled and slack
abstracted hands caressing the aftershock
cupping, carrying all that heat
off the edge into wavering dark.
 
There was no landing from that
once we had jumped, just
a foreverfall full of vague sorts of
banging collisions, mangling and dividing;
yet a song that is half-scream can't be
unsung. The tache noire: cessation,
desiccation; could not blot away the glow
from those brown eyes
nor the fire alive in my skull.
A blue flame blinks there still
to pilot the last breath,
however cold the empty air of separation.
 
 
 

May 2023


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Comforts Of Fear

 
 

 
Comforts Of Fear
 
 
 
Into the blue river
seven drops of blood;
 
into the honeypot
a tail-sting of acid;
 
into all pleasures
the pinch of a pain;
 
these are the charms
that comfort my heart,
staple it safely
two steps from happy

for that's a glass cup
too easily broken
by the thick fumblings of one
who sends vessels flying,
 
for one who has watched
all fragile things fall, time
and again, the bright heroes crippled,
songbirds in feathers on fire;
 
who parts her hair with
a sparrow-bone
 
who laughs with the jeer-caw of crows;
who sees welcoming smiles
 
dry as they meet
her insufferable oddity
 
the last worst theft
and the best confirmation:
never expect
anything whole
 
just sometimes the small
salvage, the private ray cast
by hope's prism splitting
the need to believe
 
from the narrow light thrown
by the comforts of fear. 





May 2023















Friday, May 19, 2023

The Last Fire Of Winter

 

 

 

Fire
 
 
The Last Fire of Winter


burns in the hearth. The last
strabismic look from the demon's eye
wanders in its heart,

where jumps and lurches my little man of fire;
the blue grey imp that dances
on the crackle of eaten logs.
He was there when I made dinner

making a display of himself, only a devil's hellbrat,
cackling foolishly at the dogwhistle silence of vegetable
agony as I peeled aubergines and salted their flesh.
He doesn't know my unspoken name or all the secrets

buried beside my bones, my graveyard face,
beneath the coffin boards of my floor. 
Still, he smiles that same
laudenum smile as his comely master,

happy to be the go-between
who brings the goatskin missal
where my incubus writes me
all the brimstone news from hell.

But he’s not the one who can read the answer
I throw on the flames that hold back morning,
where the last fire of winter
burns in my heart.



March 2012
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Monday, May 15, 2023

In The Roses

 
 
 

 
 
 In The Roses


Old love is in
the roses,
in the rain today,
falling like
nothing so simple as tears
like milk from the breast, perhaps
of a Gaia that weeps as she smiles
like October, or an old woman
whose cane slides on the vast banana peel
skidding alone to a
pratfall arranged at her birth.
 
Old love is falling
like rain today
like Rome,
like Tintagel, like
Nagasaki in the nuclear brag.
It hides in the wet roses that
opened sarcastically for Mother's Day,
in the dregs in the cup,
in the twitch on the trigger or a white
rabbit's ear, but never here
in my arms.
 
Never thin lips
again iron on mine
pulling for more
than I was, than I had,
no matter it dripped like blood
maged from that stone. Never again
the split and slash of your laugh
or your fearless eyes closed,
remiges on my cheek,
the bird's wing
folded.

Old love is in the roses,
in the rain today,
falling dark and wild
as your flyaway hair
flickering my sight
like a falcon
in front of the sun.



May 2023
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

State Of The Rat

 
 
 
Le Roi de Rats © Louis Pons

 
 
 
State Of The Rat
 
 
 
It's all a twitching,
isn't it, a muzzle lifted
sniffing, a shadow pouring
across the floor so fast
the eye grabs liquid movement
never form.
 
It's the blink dictating,
the jetty eye winking
matching chance
with opportunity
to gnaw
at the stolen byte.
 
It's a flicker, a twisting, a squeak
running flat out and weaving
before the padded paws of Sekhmet,
a phase-shuffle;
 
onyx eyes and crystal teeth
honing themselves on your pain
baring the bloody
bones of things
 
just

before the pounce.


May 2023

















Saturday, May 6, 2023

The Edge

 
 

 
 
The Edge
 
 
"..the lingering illness/Is over at last—
And the fever called 'Living'.."
~ Edgar Allan Poe 



 
 
 After the ritual
ten a.m. tea in the pottery cup
cut with the tree of life
I stand on the dark sharp edge
of my time

where green shoots have rioted
hardened and yellowed
where baskets of rain
washed their soft-
swishing hands

long ago, willow braids undone
to meet dissolution running.
 
Still
I stand on the edge
without reason or net.
Love has screamed and run off
wherever she goes

when years brittle the body to
an unpurposed flesh-house, condemned
and groaning in the torrent of night. 
Even your fragrance has rubbed
from my skin
 
in scales sloughed off
by the fever dying within.
 
The witchwind breaks boughs,
its wild rough hand reaching
but like yours I can't take it
without a fall.
I only stand on the edge
 
while words drop like daggers
and darkness
kisses my back.
 
 
 
 
May 2023