listening to contemporary soundscapes on the radio
I realize I am the  age of my grandmother
when she was terrified that I was
happily howling the latest Beatles  songs
and trying to play them on the piano which
    for her
was a sanctuary of late 19th century music
she liked to play with virtuosity and passion

much of what my culture radio station
calls contemporary music
or pop music stations praise in their charts
does not really catch my ear either

times keep changing

a tender fog
hides our view
of what might be
a face most beautiful

but we don’t know

as local laws are such
     that beauty only shows itself
to spouses predetermined
by the wisdom of the elders

who demonstrate to have
     no  understanding
of human wishes and desires

The buttery eye of a butterfly caught my sigh slipping shy to the windowsill where your lips spill insomnia powering watermills undefeated by the modern Don Quixotes. My muse breathes in higher frequency... I'm telling her to stop... Stop. My thoughts don't rely on my lungs anymore for they have organs of their own... as well as separate agendas. They paint you psychedelicate, frail and yet invincible. Murderously vulnerable. Violently tender. The hunted is the hunter. The femme fatale.

The word I can’t find is gagging my pen
Gates slam shut when I knock on the door
The thunder clouds rumble and crash while
The sea nears it’s ebb and the seagulls all land
To scratch in the sand for what I have lost
Intellectual handcuffs chafe but hold firmly
To the cast-iron pipes of yesterday’s genius.
My pencil has a broken lead; the poison seeps
Into the veins that hold my life together.
Fist pounding breaks the thinner ice along the edge
But the navigation channel remains frozen
And thoughts ice skate away to music I can’t hear.
Like a hungry bird chick in a broken nest
Chirping with an open mouth for sustenance
From Mama lying dead below among the leaves.
I know the meal will not appear.
                           ljm

What life does
A butterfly see
Pretty black
Fleeting eyes

Butterfly vision
Unquenched love
For flower's colored vista
Though I expect

They often think
They are solely
Living a short life
Only eating and pooping

Defined as
Caterpillar forever
Or, does their mind
Metamorph also

Now, it's little brain
Like the angel's
Holds thought to fly
Released to drift free

Astonished to rise
Chasing flower's nectar
Until too dark to see
Or bloom unrevealed

Anyway, as it is
Seen by you and me
A soaring glory
Of handiwork divine

Absolutely
A life sublimed

©  2017 Jim Davis

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