"boneyards" poems
Nestled
in a gyroscope
of allotment, haybail and heath
is the scenery of
my solemn country.
The skyrise, hollows. the
dripping
fat of the land.
The cities have boomed
and they're beautiful.
Like open roses they're
garlands of wire,
pylons and street-lights.
A thorny crown
on a girl in a nightclub. They're
blistering
they drink, kiss and drink.
And all the while
we live with whispers
splashed like
blood in a gutter.
As murmurs
pumped
through the strip-lit veins
of an office block.
Its a life where
prayers
are mist on train windows.
When we walk
we check our
reflection in car windows
and we're beautiful
we run
our hands
through our hair
knowing
we were babies born with
horns for this.
When we ride
its over
railroad boneyards,
the sleepers are
metal teeth locked in
asymmetrical laughter
at everything
at everyone
at nothing.
The skies are a
psychosis of sunlight, clouds,
vapour trails,
it's heaven
and
we're bent at the alter,
our shadow on
the crypt
has horns.
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 3:32 PM UTC
Grasp my hand and lead me,
Through the boneyards left behind.
Conceal the sorrows of the past,
And allow me to vestige into obscurity.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 6:54 PM UTC
Atomic blue anesthesia ,
microscopic spheres gravitate
to Earth , only to flatten and
weaken
Sidewalks lead the forgotten
elderly home
Chocolate rivers swell in August
swelter , steam collects on lettered
city windows , screaming trains
draw blackbirds skyward into sullen
iron , brick boneyards
Buses track wet asphalt , state flags
hang dead , killing diesel fog
Cars continually trouble a dead dog
Mean people vie for brick homes
Second class citizens pay for poison -
at McDonalds , BC powders at Family Dollar
Purchasing money orders for the machine
Dying a little more each day
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 11:37 PM UTC
They rarely bother to mow here anymore,
Once a month, perhaps every other
(Times are tight, full burials being pretty much
A thing of the past these days)
Though it’s unlikely anyone would notice
If the grass grew a bit longish,
Or the crownvetch and crabgrass became a little more prevalent,
No one being buried in this part of the cemetery
For the better part of a hundred years now,
The stones bleached and faded from decades of sleet and sunlight
And acid rain from the auto plants of Flint and Lorain and South Bend,
(Now boneyards for gears and drill bits themselves)
Those names still legible on the teetering, unsteady stones
Mostly the stolid Scotch-Irish surnames
Vaguely familiar from the town’s founding generation
Found on its street signs or pocket-parks,
Their descendants mostly having fled to friendlier climes,
Though the odd lesser strain of the families remain
(Not that they would choose to pay tribute to those ancestors
To whom they have fared so poorly in comparison)
Though many more bear the family names of their trades,
Clusters of Coopers, Weavers, and Smiths,
Their stones bearing the sentiments of grim Victorian fatalism,
Thus in mercy early call’d away or The happy soul is that which fled.
Such thoughts are quaint, eccentric things to us now,
As would be the clothes they wore, the songs they sung,
But we would know them nonetheless,
Know the muted joy of their minor successes,
The depth and finality of their defeats,
The sting of bowing and scraping
To the owners of the mill, the haughty town fathers,
As they served them at the milliners or the drug store,
Their odd, fleeting dreams of grandeur having come to rest here,
Cherry-lidded as they proceed to dust.
May 2, 2017
May 2, 2017 at 9:35 AM UTC
Grasp my hand and lead me,
Through the boneyards left behind.
Conceal the sorrows of the past,
And allow me to vestige into obscurity.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 6:53 PM UTC