748

Autumn—overlooked my Knitting—
Dyes—said He—have I—
Could disparage a Flamingo—
Show Me them—said I—

Cochineal—I chose—for deeming
It resemble Thee—
And the little Border—Dusker—
For resembling Me—

1059

Sang from the Heart, Sire,
Dipped my Beak in it,
If the Tune drip too much
Have a tint too Red

Pardon the Cochineal—
Suffer the Vermillion—
Death is the Wealth
Of the Poorest Bird.

Bear with the Ballad—
Awkward—faltering—
Death twists the strings—
’Twasn’t my blame—

Pause in your Liturgies—
Wait your Chorals—
While I repeat your
Hallowed name—

He took a shotgun out one night
'cause loosened teeth and injured pride
had driven him out of his mind.

He loaded her sat on a rock
while Douglas firs shook in the dark
and beetles crawled beneath the bark.

He laid the gun across his lap.
While beetle larvae squirmed in sap
he grunted once, and doffed his cap.

A slug of whisky stained his breath
yellow saliva flecked his teeth
stars shone upon the lonely heath.

A slug entered into his head.
When morning came, the sun had bled
into the clouds, and all was red.

1463

A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel—
A Resonance of Emerald—
A Rush of Cochineal—
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts its tumbled Head—
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy Morning’s Ride—

We watched the sun fall down and scrape its knee again, across the horizon.
Effusing amaranth, carmine, and cochineal across polluted vista.
It felt petty to issue guttural laughs, or engage the myofacial crescents beneath its visual lament as the Earth turned its back again.

We watched the sun rise, bruised, tender and shy this morning.
Its muddled contusion obviated by the gauze of fog.
A mottled neophyte -
Luminescent crepuscular rays defied dregs of interstellar debris and cloud.
Aching to kiss your skin -
In stellar cloud nursery, it eschewed the torque of orbit and gravity - eras before verity of your essence.
Humbly settling concentrically about oblate sphere, and gaseous tome.
Latterly - It altered the atmospheric pressure on the other side of the planet a week antecedently, as you clung to your dream lattice, and Earth innately turned oblate nucleus.
Its intent –
A veneration of you.
It bade the atmosphere convey a breeze echoing about your dermis, as it gilded your frame laconically, betwixt shaded steps beneath cloud and arbor.

The sun yelled at me at its pinnacle today,
Pallid bone – molten - miasma of rage
Its core missive garnered inertia – coronal plasma warping ellipsoid factions in inflections of elusive filigree
Pirouetting spicules spattered smelted torrents in the dismal anchorite
Atomic schism – silent but felt
It stoked humidity under shadowed niche - casual vaporous smears evinced no clemency.
Flesh torqued, and seized beneath itself, briny globules shed from puckered pore.
Culminations of sensitive fluid sacs scorched into the shallows of my chassis.
Insignia knit in cellular shrapnel

The sun ignored me today – or perhaps, it was I it.
Enigmatic tenacious resolution – an echo of its gravitational collapse
Inverse thermonuclear fusion
It is not fear in a relationship that keeps you apart, it is neglect of the infinitesimal.

581

I found the words to every thought
I ever had—but One—
And that—defies me—
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun

To Races—nurtured in the Dark—
How would your own—begin?
Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal—
Or Noon—in Mazarin?

They’d crashed the party at midnight
Surely, a motley looking crew,
All of them dressed in the weirdest best
That the Monster Shop could do,
There was Beelzebub, and Astaroth
And the pale Witch of the North,
Ahead of the Prince of Darkness in
A goats-head mask, of course.

They didn’t look out of place, for all
The guests were dressed to ****,
One attired as a Fairy Queen
While others were dressed to chill,
Out of the mouth of Frankenstein
The blood poured in a stream,
And though it was only cochineal
It brought the odd party scream.

Most had thought it a great idea
(Except for her folks, who’d cursed),
They’d all dress up in the neighbourhood
For Emily’s twenty-first,
They’d even formed a committee so
They knew what they had to do,
And each would be wearing a different face
So there’d only be one, not two.

They studied the Ars Goetia
And scanned it for demon names,
The butcher had come as Malphas for
He only had brawn, not brains,
The newsagent was Vapula
And his errand boy was Baal,
While the postmaster was Sallos
And he came there, bearing mail.

They all were full of the grapes of wrath
As it chimed the midnight hour,
While Emily surged out like a goth
From the depths of her wardrobe bower,
The house, at 22 Rankine Street
In the ‘burb of Astral Downs,
Was built where an ancient charnel house
Had piled the bodies in mounds.

Her folks had put in a swimming pool
Where there’d been a village well,
Right on top of a demon school
In the seventh circle of hell,
The water began to heave and churn
As Beelzebub drew near,
And it cooked a few of the swimmers there
As their laughter turned to fear.

‘You thought that you could make fun of us,’
Said the Prince of Darkness then,
‘For that, we’re making you one of us,
You won’t bother us again!’
The ‘burb dropped into a bottomless pit
That glowed with the flames of hell,
‘A subterraneaun coal seam fire,’
Said the Fire Chief, Adam Schnell.

Emily’s parents came back home,
Sat in the car, and cried,
‘I told her that Goth stuff wasn’t good!’
‘Too late! Our Emily’s fried!’
They filled it in, there’s a parking lot
Where her parents had sat and cursed,
I’d like to bet, they’ll never forget
Their Emily’s Twenty-First!

David Lewis Paget

I. the breathing of human nature

her poetry weaves a chimera
through ontario maples,
ghostlike songs intoned in late november breath:
*i don't really want to be a pretty girl... *

whispers of woodsmoke fall from sky
(sky, pink as cochineal, pink as avarice
sky, blue as bruises, as jazz, as tropical waters)
she steps from the fog and ash into the beckoning trees,
seduced by leaves,
an autumn saturnalia of honey, flame, amber,
nectar, pistil, anther.

she is cupola and chalice,
budding fuchsia and iron cherry--
but she writes and breathes
as if something more than a woman
who knows all the names for the ocean
stirs and struts inside her.

II. the statue and sobriquet

piano wires melt into statues,
heat steals rusty bottle caps
and bends them eerily into muses.
butterflies perch astutely on their shoulders,
violet, violent, a mosaic of shredded lilies and shellac,
paris in flames, flowering tea-houses,
the mariana trench, a thicket of morning glory.

nature sculpted this metaphysical tribute to her
for all that she has done, for all that her bent fingernails
and snow-covered lips have given
to inspire solstice and equinox--

in the night-songs of the crickets,
crystal bells and rustic chirps,
she was lauded.


III. declaration

she feels the songs in her eyelashes
and writes of wine and palest bone,
fragments of bashful moon,

roots her fingernails into the tarnished canadian willows
and finds her way through magnolia clouds and sea-spray sky;
after all, she can soar.

60

Like her the Saints retire,
In their Chapeaux of fire,
Martial as she!

Like her the Evenings steal
Purple and Cochineal
After the Day!

“Departed”—both—they say!
i.e. gathered away,
Not found,

Argues the Aster still—
Reasons the Daffodil
Profound!

Light illuminates
my dis-entombed thoughts
on gilded kite

prodding dust patina
mellow mote drifts lilt

hoping not to puncture the membrane
– I run –
attempted lift

fresh soil turns under foot
tread and gait escalate
pocked path reverberates
my insistence to avoid puncturing

Deceleration
Halted earthen assault
I ****** with machination the aerial apparatus
prior to complete stagnation

Decrepit deceit eschewed
Again – I run –
taut paper snap
sheet lift
weightless message intones
in knotted vertebrae, and closed palm

my chest lifts in unison
diaphragmatic sigh punched hollow
rhapsodic finesse

privy to atmospheric secret
my hand translates the ethereal
smooth fluttering undulations
oscillating tugs, dives, and slay

Calligraphic flourishes echo the linguistic menagerie
Byzantine illustrations
Pellucid canvas drunk with dye

Evinced in muddled thought
The ink bleeds down the twine
indigo echoes of entombed vein 'neath flesh

Translucent pulse haunts taut string
furling arc – tensed tissue
acrobatic hydrofoil
tugs – glides – taunts

Ostensible horror conveyed in clenched palm
The ether curtly responds
Swift redirect

Sliced palm
Tethered scream evocation
cochineal deluge concedes

Deep purple liquid clings
Congealing - between sodden twine and palm

Whispering currents furl saturated line
into fresh groove, disturbing the clot
The wound bucks as flotsam

Relentless onslaught
I yield -
I release you

Your ethereal message tattooed into my palm
Some things were ne'er meant to be restrained

Floating
engulfed in penny light

the coppery-brine amalgamation penetrates my mouth
swallowing
viscous globe of blood-riddled ***

the shards of shell
spines split by the tide
echo my sentiments

current eschews shallow alluvial grave
cognizant cicumvolution
ambient gyre
diffuses carapace shrapnel into my calves

gulls enigmatically screech-stripped
slap briny padded patterns into the shoreline
pausing only upon my primal glottal stop

toes curl about inundated sand
clouting divets shift
dilatory run – slammed inert by invariable wave

cochineal effluvium plumes lilt
crepuscular rays refract further distortions

Neath the water I blindly ***** my body
Ridged projections jut from smoothed flesh
Puckering at my own touch

I sink beneath atmosphere
liquescent folds embrace promptly
I drop beneath chaos

Bare palm dig into viscid terrain
rung after rung demanding presence into the depths
I claw forth onto a sand bar

emerging
shard flanked form
eyes blazing
cuticles numb

pulse flit
patina of blood and grit

Fulgent tread propels
Upon shore
I walk back to my residence
A warrior - mortal
plated in copper and brine

You cast your name over
like silted reeds in the river,
on land
a thick covering of daub and wattle
sought your intention;
the wish to encase others in your space.
Such foolhardy fascination bears a cost,
like ubiquitous cochineal dye pools
Your dreams harbour barriers
as wide as your course strides permit,
the wilderness of banishment beckons
for as long as your  fortitude remains

"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts"
-Shakespeare, As You Like It

Panic flocks to an actor's lip:
my perch and cackle cauldron eyes
grow to zeroes at the bed-end of this,
the only stage & staging of my play.

The plot unknotted shows that
money's short and friends are few,
the body betraying itself busily:
an absurd third act.

The audience talks over my lines,
ignoring the tree tops exploding,
the neighbors *******, the heavens
& the hells standing empty.

Yet they hush when the curtain rises
on mosquitos haunting a Brazilian cafe
dotted in cochineal - Aperol spritzes
scatter along a failing, darkling rail.

We can't pick our audience;
neither can we deny that they
can only do their best within their needs,
nothing else or more,

& midnight confessions, truest
& heart-rent soliloquies, are nothing now
but furtive scrawls across a torn ticket,
swept up when the house lights come on.