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B Emess Sep 2020
After you left and my office walls grew
Ominously wide
And summer smoke was thick with choke

I saw you
Changing rapidly
Growing: fangs claws horns dullish eyes frustrating day at the mall and you wanting to stay in all the time and too much work and

In my terror I saw you felt myself
Solve unresolved love like an anagram
Reformatted with subtitles and projected back

I want to rewind and pause and cut you out around the edges
Carefully
Then press you like a flower innocuously between the pages of my heart

But your delicacy is mercury and lead
I shred you like last year’s tax returns
Dull confetti

Then piece by piece you back together
With scotch tape and leave you
Filed away in case of audit
B Emess Sep 2020
We fell into step with one another
And made meaning of an ease
Found faith in elegance
Saw significance in happenstance and circumstance
Poets forging senti-mental lines
With heavy rhyme

If we were free verse darling
Would you any idea
What words come next
And why they do

Just jumbled noise
The Cantos and Finnegans wake
And a million other drunken tags
Dreams interpreted

Nonsense imbued
Translated haikus
Ring crisp

They seem to glow so
Charged with meaning
Forget Christ on the cross
Show me another Chinese symbol
On a white boy’s arm

I think I’ll write in blank verse for a while.
Or in prose, at least until I can be sure I’m not just writing what comes next. And while I’m at it, could you make sure you call the landlord today?(Carl - 604 310 9032)

-grapes
-eggs
-scotch tape
-coffee
B Emess Aug 2020
I’ll find meaning in the wind again
I’ll find meaning in the wind

Abandoned I’ll be taken up and moved
Letting myself become yellow with August
I’ll find meaning in the wind

When my motor fails and its rhythm is tripped
The tin begins to squeak it’s empty squeal
I’ll find meaning in the wind

In the last afterthought of sunset’s
Over eager fingers night on skin
The hungry mouth of Fall not far behind

I’ll rouse myself and shudder to the yawn
Somewhere outside of Kansas’ aching sprawl
Outside of suburbs’ storm of the routine

I’ll find the zephyr’s force has filled my mouth
And I will find my meaning in the wind
B Emess Aug 2020
O! Great God Pan! Hidden amongst a’
Is thou enraged that no one kens ya?
No shrine built up ta not forget ya
Except this song
That begs and calls ya goat like figure
Honourable faun

I had a crack and heard on vine
That thou had wilt’d past your prime
Now in some cavern sootie and grim
Thou’s left ta dwell
Enraged as trees fall ‘ll round ‘im
Cre’ting hell

But now your glorious hour’s upon us!
As Christ no longer quite impresses
So now I wake ya to awake us
An’ in through this verse
I beseech ya, please protect us
An’ lift this curse

Your flute, which hasn’t made a sound
In thousands a year, now let abound
From grotto dim ta lofty ground
Let’s hear the reed
Is time ya now took up ya crown
Across the tweed!
B Emess Aug 2020
Sip me slowly like a cup of tea
Although the heat may burn your lips a bit
Or send a shock to seeking fingertips
Persist.

Let splashes of me spill across the brim
Leaving stains on worn kitchen counters
Or table clothes caught innocent bystanders
Do not mind.

Take me gently like a cup of tea
Pass breathes across my rippling surface
I’ll feel your every meaning only wordless
Be quick.

I am just nervous.

Yawning cup I am who cannot tell
If I am me or I am steam that blows
Or if I am half empty or half full
Or why you wait.

Or whether it’s because I am not herbal
And caffeine late at night won’t let you sleep
If so then gulp me back stay up with me
Drink me down.

Or did you fix me up just out of habit
Of loneliness just brewing to keep busy
Well I am just a lonely cup of tea
So sip me slowly.
B Emess Aug 2020
There is already enough to go around by now
You could go ahead and take two and no one would care to notice
We have designed and redesigned gone back to the drawing board
Enhanced and streamlined every stitch

But I couldn’t count the ways you filled my pockets
I only wish I had cut holes in the bottom
So as not to be weighed down when you took off
B Emess Aug 2020
Tibia or not tibia?
Is a stupid question
The one-two staff
Keeping the rhythm of life on track

Oh metronome of movement
The pair of pillars for the coda
And the reeds or pipes beneath
Catching wind under feet like Hermes

A duet will only do
Your solo career is a nosedive not worth investigating
(And monotheism is a dull state of affairs)
Better yet, take Paul to John:
You took your lucky break and broke it in two
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