This is a new poem that is actually a group of poems. I wrote them with a common thematic goal in mind, and though I feel this is unfinished, at this point, I’m unsure where it is going or when it will end. I hope you enjoy.
UPDATE: Gerard Van Der Leun of American Digest kindly offered his editorial eye for the poem “Fairy Tale Future”, reshaping it into something that retained pretty much all the original wording, but carried a cadence that helps propel the poem forward to, as he words it, “an inevitable conclusion.” The art of fiction should have the intended result of surprising the reader at the end, whilst leaving them with the notion that no other conclusion to the story is possible. With poetry, the same might hold true. Mr. Van Der Leun’s suggested changes help the poem’s rhythm to become more pointed, more musical, and ultimately, the poem is more conclusive and weighted than it was before. I’ve adjusted it slightly, but on the whole, the version you now see is the one suggested by Mr. Van Der Leun.
Nature, Who
Stone, who moved thee?
Who set thee amid the brace?
Sun, who struck thee?
Who lit thy fire from within?
Bird, who sent thee?
Who lifts thy wings upon the wind?
Man, who made thee?
Who fastened the days upon thy face?
The Bell
Seasons bright and strong to count the time.
Cycled rests and stops and fits of rhyme.
Nature sets her course like a ship sublime
and tolls passage true with death and chime.
Untitled
May wind blow strong; zephyrs gust that
August head, hot and sulfurous; violence thrusts
November, shatters ice; metals rust and
March down brutal streets; silence hushed.
Buddha, Christ, and the Robin
“Chirrup,” says he, Mr. Robin, worm-hunting
earth-robbing.
Of seasons and clocks and men he knows but one
true thing:
Nothing.
And Men, who know such things as clocks and rhymes,
know all true things about robins.
Everything.
“Worry not for tomorrow, it brings its own suffering,”
wise man says.
“Worry not for tomorrow, it brings its own desires,”
second man, also wise, says.
“Chirrup,”
Mr. Robin says.
Methinks they agree.
Finance
The dust of moon and mites of feathers
float (lazily, as all must do in times of leisure)
quiet above the fray, listening to the drone
of unquiet city bluster, frets with networking
people, unholy risen at holy hours to net their daily gains.
Streets rumble, glinting cars and sullen lights
and dust settles, mainly on the plains of pain.
Wall Street, 8 am.
Warning
A dangerous precedent, this.
Poetry with a purpose. Feeding a supposed need.
As it lies dying upon a rose, or a flea, or Flanders Field
it reflects the dying moon, its glowing embers trailing, haunt-like
seeking out dark forests, thickets filled with doe and young ones.
It pokes its pale fingers across the leaves, rustling, finding
purpose in purpose. It finds need in need.
Of this, we should not be surprised.
Careful then, as we write. Speak softly.
Write with invisible strokes. Take caution
in your tone and pretend you’re sealing a letter
to a loved one.
Spray it with perfume, place it in a box, then look to the
day when its mate finds you alone by the fire,
snow falling like dust and feathers, goosedown.
We now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast.
Untitled
He runs with purpose, strangely, for the joy is purposeless.
Empty, with promise.
Feet bounce over cork, bounding to spring anew
legs pumping furious blood to parts it’s due
no time for heart to–
it’s bursting just running, keeping up with the gunfire
or surpassing it, all without thought, without desire
without presence of being to waste or tire
Firm heart bursting with the sadness of Life coursing through
The Horoscope
Fortunately, there was a solution to her problem.
Unfortunately, it involved pipes and needles and vomiting.
She decided to stay fat after all.
Which was all well and good until the comet came.
Actually, not really, just her horoscope
“Horrorscope” she called it unknowing, though
it seemed to her a proper word, as every thing it said
came true with a vengeance only fat people can understand.
“Be wary of true love, it doesn’t exist.”
“Confine yourself to large spaces and hope for the best.”
“Dogs love you, however, cats will find you offensive (don’t worry, she thinks, that’s just cats).”
“People–that’s a whole ‘nother bag, honey.”
“Like I said, stay inside your confortable (yes, that’s how it spelled it) house and eat.”
“Forget about slitting your wrists, the razor could never cut through the grease flowing through your veins.”
Well, okay, maybe stars were lying. Or maybe
they had nothing to do with it. Whatever the case,
she figured the universe had had it out for her
from the beginning.
So she rested in confort (the newspaper said it),
waiting for the star to fall and seeing the city lights instead.
Fairy Tale Future
There was age in his eyes
when he first told his son
the story of the three bears,
and his son, wide-eyed,
listened and shrieked
when the bears pounced
on poor Goldilocks.
He liked telling fairy tales
the way they once were:
Cindarella’s toes being chopped
in half to fit the glass slippers;
Little Red Riding Hood as
a recently deflowered virgin;
Sleeping Beauty’s incestuous
and cannibalistic mother.
Tales the old way,
as kings were told once.
He could burn for telling them
in the old way.
He told his son
that he must never tell
anyone, even his mother,
of the tales he heard in bed
in the shifting darkness
of the candled room,
but must treasure them
inside himself, until he could
pass them on to the next.
In this way, he meant
for true history to pass
beyond the slavish, bug kings
that ruled them with tentacles
of pain and suppression.
One person at a time.
His son agreed at age six.
At age twelve, the secret police
caught on and had them both killed,
but not before the son
had told half a dozen field mice
with swords of pincushions,
who alerted their comrades
and rushed to the city center,
where the computer deity
shone like a radiant fire.
The mice did what no human beings
had done since being conquered.
And when it was over,
the mice and newly freed humans struck a deal.
For that is the way of history
that hasn’t yet happened.
She Slept Poetry
Child sleeps, keeps time breathes rhyme
her snoring, verses, nightmares, curses
pillow, potion, brings to death
softly spirits of unrest
moaning wights whose crimes confess
in dreams they dine, in sleep they find
their home inside, roaming halls and walls
of her mind.
Banished on waking, the ghosts of time
and untold night, send thither ’til
the gloaming might unfold the rhyme again.
Flowers In Winter
Winter, and the flowers still bloom on my doorstep
Barren wood lines the forest, bordering ghosts of decay
yet flowers bloom on my doorstep, more set
in Spring than the last shavings of Winter’s dead day