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

 

 

 

 

 

tache noire 

 

 

 

 

for The Precipice  at  desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

desperate poets

The Last Fire Of Winter

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open Link at Desperate Poets

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

remiges

 

 

 

 

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

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

Sekhmet

desperate poets

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

The Burnt Angel

 

The Burnt Angel

Following the jesus of absence,

flying on the defunct

Pegasus line,

will the angel come again

when the moon walks through pines

or under the yolk of sun

frying unbroken above, or

to the dancing floor 

on white wings, where flying leaves

fire-waltz till they're dirt

and leaves no more?

Will the tongue

that was a biting worm

push deep into the shifting worlds

to eat the wide silence

last legends leave behind?

How will the hands

that broke down stone by stone

each road and arch, bricked bridge and hall

pile up that rampart 

cloud-placed at last

without rafter or wall?

The icewind says nothing

in her bully brief run;

nothing to the questions

the coming dark

asks the sun. 

 

Pegasus flies, but

Icarus in flame-halo crown

only tumbles

burning,

            burning

                        down.

~December 2014; lightly revised May 2023

 

 

 

 

desperate poets

 

Image: Pegasus, by Wojciech Siudmak  Fair use