Monday, February 20, 2012

Vis-à-vis


Mean while awashed in the putty
and petty in pruitry, we labour
to stave isolate, in a way me as dandy
and here you tapping on the glass,
treading brine in the other jar. Don’t
you know me by now? What.
With no stitch of close, embryoed
via softshore float and stuffed
under a two-tin lid. Me, boy. Maybe
were it not for the jarring, we’d even be
umbilicalled. Yet we too are kept a feel
as pulp mash for the screening trough,
await on artisan’s whim, even
made of stern fibres to scrub along
the complex curvature of our inner housing,
but not likely to loosen the lid up top. Still,
flipped and fetal like the chance de maldoror
in a doppelgängered image suggested
by glass, rain aside and mouths wide.
                                                Silent.
You see we're nude, fluid move
in our amniotic drip. You might wish
to rush to crash and hoist me to your flowering 
dug. Instead, we flatten pliant heads
that may the better be full. And hope.


Sodden Frill and Furbelow


The milliner makes me a cute hat with pins and mesh,
a cornflower, three sprigs of baby’s breath, a round of blue ribbon,
a straw base, and a delicate mound of wheat chaff. I pull on
my springtime dress and invest more than adequate time
astooped at your address with my gloved knuckles bashing dents
into the surface of your solid core door, which you painted such a deep red
that the entry to your world might draw the eye of even the reasonably
cobbled stone passer-by. And that was I. Oh, would that you could
adjudicate without a deeper counsel, not only before Judge and choir,
but to fill the thirsty buttercup like dew in a meadow
while the mourning sun juts along a gurgled stream. Had I the skill,
I would build a raft of creambush tied with marsh grass and padded out
with a bed of wild blooms upon which I would lay with you. I’d release you
from my tetherhook, allow the tear to well and watch the water
carry you from view. You’d become naught but a memory to me, bittersweet,
and against which future suitors would be measured. And when the Savior
draws you back from the blackened mouth, and kisses you with new breath,
I’ll be waiting back at my home, in the parlour as the sun lowers outdoors,
warm fire in the hearth heating my tea, my punctilious needlework
spread open across my lap. And when you crawl back from the depths
and pull so soft on my brass knocker, I’ll answer your call.

But here I stand, clouds building into a darkened morning, an insufficient dress
flapping in the gusty wind, already late for the morning service, but begrudged
to stop my beating. Had I the wherewithal, I’d release your ruddy barrier
from its blanched irons and blast it back splintered into your foyer.
But the carriages are creaking past to retrieve parishioners. I’ve my head stooped
as if in prayer and it strikes me that cold rain drives down
like a volley of milliner pins dropped from atop a cloud.


Prayer Time


The muezzin is in the know

while I’m busy on the floor,
      fingers tracing tiles of dusted mosaic.

Across the market square, Sebastian sells arrows
      to the Huns, while mongrel whores

snap at scraps of greasy meat.
      On solid ground, one man

peddles the holy word, while above,
      another cries out to no avail.

From on high, the voice calls,
      pulls me from the fray to come pray

though I opt out. I trace
      another tile and smile while

far beyond the scope of my Elijahic vision
      Mohammed crouches on the rock

burbling admonitions to his lambs.
      I see Sebastian peddle away.

Chew a bit of mutton and wait
      for the service to end,

and about me all is silent
      as, upon the minaret, the figure rests.





Beetle Box


I’ve my beetle in a box like yours, so much
like hours spent feelers spread against u-
tilitarian carpet cubicle, hard shell crackled
with pock and divot, forewings tucked away.
On scuttling legs, our bugs crawl in dark,
and yet I dream of some sun dappled meadow
buzz and dewy spongegrass underfoot glow
that emanates from inside, a bioluminescent
soul song that could join a light lattice choir
to spite the sun, if not for lids we keep clamped
tight over boxes, the secret life we keep hid.
If we could only find some sort of release
we would place our bugs in a tabletop maze, race
as a means to compare my bug to yours.
(The boxes don’t open though.) We don’t know whose
is quicker, more beautiful, singing the sweeter song.
All we really know is that there’s something in there
knocking around, and we trust that it’s beetles,
that yours looks something like mine and that
maybe we’re of the same species.


Saturday, February 4, 2012

Among the Lunar Fields


I see the yielding expand,
  eyes pressed into such bundled
    tinder, bulb waves beating.

Blew hollow wedge may catch
  of the grotto. Private flowers that
    had plum space and if I wasn’t tired

when I was cause there through.
  Taut in curious blue suit. Each day
    cleared of sleet whips. Said monkey

whisker. Said onion ape. Graph
  the touching floor, cut flash iris
    seemed hone with after whine has

away. A cluster cawl grown deft
  and there is now but a little loll
    of a more over barren tongue held

me to might have known the white
  dress seized to nearly crumple.
    We had heard both and done come,

pendulum had been in would unto
  a sour spill. Step it up. Bright shift
    for a wet moon, bird afloat

for arm space lit older we think
  the turn. Nightly we slow. No one
    said yet with this, felt to swim latch 

back along some knowledge cones.