Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
Memories diffuse,
like sunbeams glint off a lake,
become phenomena, evade the tangible.
In unsteady light I see my father
rowing toward our favorite fishing cove,
the wavelets of our wake
real as that late August evening.

We bait our hooks, conversation
merely phatic communion\ I know he's cheating on Mom.
Words anchor heavy.
As my face turns into the wind
to dry tears without his seeing,
questions rise in my throat,
like a volcano about to erupt,
but I have no voice to ask them.

So we sit, dangle mono-filament
thoughts in dying twilight.
Father and son,
brooding statues of Buddha,
mute as bullhead on the bottom.
Only time could heal the pain.
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
Epiphany from the Berry Fields

You would not come with me
through constellations of Jack-in-the-Pulpit,
your reasons shrouded in obscurity.
I went there once to pray ---
Did I tell you? ---
I spied a grey squirrel
gnawing a cherished butternut
in a fury of drunken hunger;
forgot at once my prayers.

You went instead, alone,
to the Kingdom of the Mushroom.
I sealed my mouth
afraid to enter there.
You saw violent phosphorous rivers and
vivid galloping colors,
that were of mystical internal origin.

We might have eaten
vine-ripe strawberries and
drunk cold mountain water,
that gushed from the mouth of
the cave under the cliff.

Perhaps, like me you were afraid,
terrified by florid fields and familiar female.
How sad ---
Sometimes I am so dense ---
I should have told you,
I went there in the distance
as a girl.



       *Coincidental Drift


Through the airport window pane,
isolated, I watched the jet
traverse the field in silent shimmering motion.
My vagrant gaze remained
fixed upon the infinite horizon
long after the shadowy
plane had passed from view.
This seemed to me to parallel
my motionless furtive feelings,
as after one I've loved
has migrated in another season.

It was not long after this
that she re-entered the room,
bathed in the murmur of
alluring fragrance which
quickly drew my mind from
the solitude of thought to
a sensual appreciation of her perfume.
How easily she drew my mind astray
from pleasant thought of you and yesterday.
I recalled how earlier this morning,
as she lay neither asleep, nor awake,
but somewhere in between,
I had tried to touch her outstretched hand,
yet, uncannily she had withdrawn it.
The smoke that wafted above our bed then
was the only pervading reality and
not the Mona Lisa smile on her face,
nor the emptiness of my longing hand.

She's said, *She's ready ---
--- that her bags are packed ---
and shouldn't we be going?

Yes, Yes I suppose it's time.
And a wind howling in my brain recalled,
I'd either been here once before or
seen it etched upon an empty sky.
As seen from both perspectives
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
She has decided to grow her hair.
Not for frugal reasons, mind you,
rather, to see the extent of the future.
Or, how tangled it might become at length.
Why do women grow their hair?,
she postures to the mirror.
It's like deciding to go to market,
when there's already sufficient in the pantry.

Pouring water through the tresses
to cool like an Icelandic fjord,
trickling bubbles down to a spurious sea.
The squeakings bring enjoyment,
a sense of karmic victory.
*Knot it and make mysterious!
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
Celebrate the invisible embrace.
You will be quite alone,
When the altruistic deed is done.

Content your heart in silence.
No choir will raise its voice
To sing your praises.

Consign your life to anonymity.
History no longer needs
Martyrs to fill anthologies.

Comfort your dreams in oleander.
Flowers are an appropriate caress,
For love conferred in obscurity.

Cultivate a flair for solitude.
Isolation is the purifying fire
That steels a damascene soul.
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
I have hidden incognito a decade in this desert,  
enscounced in the Bad Lands of a wasted life,  
evading both politics and the Bureau of Statistics,  
immersed in maths for senseless games of chance.

I forget promises and birthdays with equal disregard,  
attempt mental reconstructions of past events,  
seeking the forgiveness I have no power to grant,  
all my atoms expanding heirlooms of critical mass.

The gravitational attraction of lifelong friendships,  
dithers perception at the horizon of a span of years,  
warping the wormhole space between our arms, our minds.  
I need only for you to ask that I should stay.
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
In soft darkness my aura of sadness emanates.
O'er cresting notes my lonely whistle treads.
Night birds sing to me their potentate
And lull the drifting images in my head.

All this my emptiness devours,
It feeds upon such times and moods.
My youthful optimism cowers;
Ideals tonight are mere exotic foods.

Do not look for me 'neath street lamps.
I shun the light, as wolves would shun a fire,
Preferring the company of street tramps,
Who seem to understand a man's desires.

So foolish are the rash, deceiving hearts,
Which convince our minds that love is rare,
For not infrequently a couple parts,
Never realizing the secret was to care.
Lessons of Darkness
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
She came down from Mt. Rainier
wearing khaki park ranger's garb,
a female Moses descending Sinai,
clutching a leather chapbook,
survival notes for a “Dangerous Life”.
Nightingales were songbirds for the grief,
as MS stole in like 'Frisco fog,
unnoticed by a comet-blinded public.
And when the awards came,
strokes of jackpot luck,
acquired enthusiasms soon were
dropped in excruciating back spasms.
She touted poetry as civic-glue,
paste for a populist purpose.
Olympia’s oracle rarely leaves the house,
curtains drawn, newspapers unread,
writing feverishly, as “The Body Mutinies”.
Dedicated to Lucia Perillo, winner of numerous awrds for her poetry including the prestigious $500,000 MacArthur award for her collection "*The Oldest Map with the Name America*".
Next page