"loosed" poems
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a ******
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.
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Lightly stepped a yellow star
To its lofty place—
Loosed the Moon her silver hat
From her lustral Face—
All of Evening softly lit
As an Astral Hall—
Father, I observed to Heaven,
You are punctual.
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I. Neptune’s Theater
A rock spins through the universal tumbler
and its warm blue pools calcify
as turquoise Neptune in his cloudy blue bath bath
builds a lace castle with his fingertips
Sculpts a submerged eden of crimson and emerald
where painted parrots chat up cardinals
butterfly and angel fry sway with wave pulse
and foliated coral fingers beckon from arched windows.
Neptune’s children are flat and bright, spined and notched
free yet entangled in lace mesh ecosystem
beneath an array of bioluminescent stars
as a gangly pretender watches and blows bubbles.
II. Sapien Siege
The hot acidic hand of death grasps
the mesh rends and tangles
the ecosystem shattered
reef’s loosed children scream beneath planet’s stars.
Butterflies impaled
cyanide-swooning damsels
mesh-tangled angels hauled heavenward
coral to potash, corpses to coal.
The pretender to the throne blinks
rubs blurry lenses,
kicks plastic fins
and moves on to the next show
Unseeing and unaware
of the luminous filament in his wake.
Self-appointed divinity,
deus ex machina.
*******************************************************************************************
Ann says: All of the animal and human characters in this poem (except Neptune and The Pretender) are named after coral reef fish. Coral reefs, one of the most diverse ecosystems, are expected to be largely extinct within one human generation. Deus ex machina is Latin for “God from the machine.”
Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 3:43 PM UTC
Métis, Themis, Ma’at, their banter was for naught.
All the tides and tithings wisdoms and their teachings, Daemonium forgot!
But the heavens cry manna as Nix cried out reprieve!
An act that loosed the flood, the chaos of her sea.
Her pain arose a champion to tend to all her needs,
Formed of Celestial Ocean he bore down on the freed.
A giant wave of madness, thrusting mist of sadness eradicating gladness... One led the ruthless breed.
Opaque in their beginning, formless shapes in twining.
Conjoined but not together, accompanied the weather.
Thalassa’s stringy tether wrapped them all forever.
Come or go in seasons, live or die in age.
No Spring to Fall in reasons, travailing of the mage?
Black tentacles the streamers, rooted into wave.
Witness the all-wise and snaking phantom phage...
Chiron watches while he prances, his dressage on the shore.
Arising liminal of beings wettened ambiguity of yore.
Even Iblis is impressed, such black rotten to the core!
Merkabah or egg, mountain, belly, tree they squabble.
All elements do I cobble, such are actions of the wobble.
Jul 16, 2016
Jul 16, 2016 at 7:28 PM UTC
Strong currents flow different ways
From where the bridge was, after the first plunge
Soothed the sun-burnt skin and the hay-splinters
Loosed the straw stuck in ears
After I left you under the porch light
Alone on the other side of the night
Where poplars reached for the moon and stars
And the cows chewed on bits of memory from when
In the cobwebs and calf pens
They were brought to life by your gentle hands
You crossed two worlds to find me in the darkness
But I was not the one you were searching for
You prayed for miracles while
God stood by, arms crossed
Just taking in the sunset and the clouds
Like an old tree beside a grave carefully fenced
To keep it disheveled amid tended fields
Thus the cancer had its way and I could not
Fill the void left in your heart or mine
With no more tears to soften dry leather
I put our hearts on skewers and held them
Over the bridge's burning planks
Too close and they were immolated
Not carefully spun to stay golden and warm inside
So I packed my own hollow heart full of nothing
Filled the passenger seat, until
There was only room for me and the steering wheel
And no way to turn
Mar 5, 2019
Mar 5, 2019 at 6:55 PM UTC
My neck noosed
My legs loosed
I witness the tragic
It seems so emphatic
I feel entropy
Enter me
Centering
Around love and pain
I wear gloves of shame
Toxicity taints touch
My reaction is to cautiously recoil
For I feel a great punch
When I expect them to be loyal
A tear rolls down my cheek
Navigating scars
Like a man who is meek
Navigating bars
It starts and stops
Then keeps going
The tears drop
From what I'm knowing
That my time is evaporating
Dealing with the exasperating
I feel I can be caring
I just need the chance
We'll see how I'm fairing
On the end of your lance
Penetrating deeply
The pain is unceasing
Like a thousand bee stings
While you stand there feasting
Making me feel alive
From the pain inside
I guess things could always be worse
Sometimes that feels like a curse
Because I have problems all the same
But it's true
The sum of our troubles equal this game
That we lose
Even though I'd rather deal with *** and silence
Than to be vexed by violence
They're all just ways of imposing our will
Whether it's through who we birth or ****
Conflict is how we get our fill
Every day a different fire drill
We hate each other
We date each other
We underrate each other
To deflate each other
Pain is used as a tool
Until blood lays in a pool
These things that annoy us
Are met by avoidance
These things compound
Until I can't be unwound
I live in a world of contending intentions
It's a world of our own selfish invention
A world that burns bright
So I can't sleep
When day turns to night
I hear death creep
Seeking to take me from a life I never asked for
But I'm grateful to have
Life is about experimenting with opening doors
And I'm stuck in the lab
Feb 18, 2018
Feb 18, 2018 at 9:22 PM UTC
I
Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles
To-morrow's diver in her ***** milk,
Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone
Bolt for the salt unborn.
The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled
Corrosive spring out of the iceberg's crop,
The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled
The swing of milk was tufted in the pap,
For half of love was planted in the lost,
And the unplanted ghost.
The broken halves are fellowed in a *******
The crutch that marrow taps upon their sleep,
Limp in the street of sea, among the rabble
Of tide-tongued heads and bladders in the deep,
And stake the sleepers in the savage grave
That the vampire laugh.
The patchwork halves were cloven as they scudded
The wild pigs' wood, and slime upon the trees,
******* the dark, kissed on the cyanide,
And loosed the braiding adders from their hairs,
Rotating halves are horning as they drill
The arterial angel.
What colour is glory? death's feather? tremble
The halves that pierce the pin's point in the air,
And ***** the thumb-stained heaven through the thimble.
The ghost is dumb that stammered in the straw,
The ghost that hatched his havoc as he flew
Blinds their cloud-tracking eye.
II
My world is pyramid. The padded mummer
Weeps on the desert ochre and the salt
Incising summer.
My Egypt's armour buckling in its sheet,
I scrape through resin to a starry bone
And a blood parhelion.
My world is cypress, and an English valley.
I piece my flesh that rattled on the yards
Red in an Austrian volley.
I hear, through dead men's drums, the riddled lads,
******** their bowels from a hill of bones,
Cry Eloi to the guns.
My grave is watered by the crossing Jordan.
The Arctic scut, and basin of the South,
Drip on my dead house garden.
Who seek me landward, marking in my mouth
The straws of Asia, lose me as I turn
Through the Atlantic corn.
The fellow halves that, cloven as they swivel
On casting tides, are tangled in the shells,
Bearding the unborn devil,
Bleed from my burning fork and smell my heels.
The tongue's of heaven gossip as I glide
Binding my angel's hood.
Who blows death's feather? What glory is colour?
I blow the stammel feather in the vein.
The **** is glory in a working pallor.
My clay unsuckled and my salt unborn,
The secret child, I sift about the sea
Dry in the half-tracked thigh.
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FIRST
Be it a girl, or one of the boys,
It is scarlet all over its avoirdupois,
It is red, it is boiled; could the obstetrician
Have possibly been a lobstertrician?
His degrees and credentials were hunky-dory,
But how's for an infantile inventory?
Here's the prodigy, here's the miracle!
Whether its head is oval or spherical,
You rejoice to find it has only one,
Having dreaded a two-headed daughter or son;
Here's the phenomenon all complete,
It's got two hands, it's got two feet,
Only natural, but pleasing, because
For months you have dreamed of flippers or claws.
Furthermore, it is fully equipped:
Fingers and toes with nails are tipped;
It's even got eyes, and a mouth clear cut;
When the mouth comes open the eyes go shut,
When the eyes go shut, the breath is loosed
And the presence of lungs can be deduced.
Let the rockets flash and the cannon thunder,
This child is a marvel, a matchless wonder.
A staggering child, a child astounding,
Dazzling, diaperless, dumbfounding,
Stupendous, miraculous, unsurpassed,
A child to stagger and flabbergast,
Bright as a button, sharp as a thorn,
And the only perfect one ever born.
SECOND
Arrived this evening at half-past nine.
Everybody is doing fine.
Is it a boy, or quite the reverse?
You can call in the morning and ask the nurse.
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We sat in the overlook above the Serpent Mound
in the heat of that garish July afternoon,
sunlight scorching our pallid skin,
like rays through a magnifying glass,
till we could endure no more and
sought the shroud of skyscraper elms ---
halfway houses of leaf, bark and cellulose.
Minutes before we'd signed our names in the visitors book,
like giddy high-schoolers autographing a yearbook,
recording our wayward lover's sojourn
to a site the Hopewell worshipped in celebration of existence.
For what purpose do we worship this ground?
I wondered as we walked beside the curving icon,
that undulated in rolled earthen coils down the slope,
sine-waves loosed from a colossal oscilloscope.
Are these coils symbolic of our future's meandering relationship?
Her exploring hand upon my ****
drew me from thought to evaluation of this unexpected caress.
But for the heat, I'd have shown her what idle foreplay begets!
*Great Serpent, this was not Eden's carnal karma
acted out in a second Genesis!* ---
though a symbolic egg spews from your mouth.
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 2:10 PM UTC
I am standing
at the mirror
loving every scarred
unruly thread unraveling
in this breathing tapestry
it wasn’t my fault
what happened to me
my patterns were scored
long before I knifed them in
over and over again
picking people and paths
to validate my false hypotheses
unworthy kept me from
letting you love every one
of these holy spastic molecules
until I loosed grip
on erroneous
self-loathing
and I am so sorry
I really needed you
but I couldn’t let you
be there for me
because I wasn’t
and now,
here I am…
scoping silver under glass
making silly faces for me
blowing kisses at myself
and giving a little wink
over my shoulder
as I walk out
able to embrace
the wild unknowns
that await me
Jun 8, 2017
Jun 8, 2017 at 1:26 PM UTC
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
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1
The chards rising. Am I the praying bird?
In the gleaming sun my bones are negative,
My flesh a cypher walking through the plains
As ghost I move, my dark lord, above me
Flocks swirl and spike. I stand accused,
Your pointed face divining oblivion,
And no redemption in the rains of my
Cliff walk days.
2
I see my shroud pinning on the wires
His legs are razored forks spinning my
Compass from True North. Your dark brush-
Fire wings, the swept wind, wheels and strings
My fate. Such black rhetoric in a burn,
Your caws, loosed perches, on the stakes, picks
My crowning grave. Black dove, your feathers finger
As they slice.
3
Smoke, the cardinal blood caries my teething
Bone, spades my hand without a flight.
Taut, the pulled noose my hooded one
I see my scarecrow’s reflexion, the scar,
Let blood, the seeded droppings end trailed
To my door. Feathers, ferry to carry on
Dowsing downward, black knight of down, to sticks
On extended wings.
Jun 11, 2012
Jun 11, 2012 at 8:38 PM UTC
There's no sullying its consternation of him in her,
her in him.
A downy black of exquisite precaution...pops its
ruffled heretofore and floats.
As if a night cocked back its neck to calculate the
trauma, longingly poised as a swivel of mottled
blood.
The black swan's eyes fork some bygone coruscation
to their very top...as if in the throes of demonic rapture.
Whereby reality's moments of lucidity seem to catch
frozen frames in want of editing.
Thereupon...as there it is, as there it goes...the black
swan subsumes, wears the guise of regal unnaturalness.
A betokened freak loosed...loosed...so...softly, at
maximum indifference...O black swan.
Oct 27, 2014
Oct 27, 2014 at 10:16 AM UTC
Heed these words, write them upon the tablet of your mind for I have returned.
When you finally come to the point in your life and comprehend that the dreams with which you have been bestowed are to be used as a blueprint, you then and only then will win remarkable success in what ever calling that you adopt. You will begin to visualize things with a much greater understanding and you will experience sights stranger than you have ever seen before. You will know that these new visions are all true, for you will see that you have been given the ability to pick out and notice clusters of confirmations and on an imaginary scale. The fear of premonitions and ignoring notable occurrences by dismaying them all off as if they are just figments of your imagination is to be avoided. It is not out of random chance, the thought that things are bound to line up from time to time and for no apparent reason or that evolution had a major impact on us to evolve into begins to recognize pattern recognition, but rather, it is to be construed as if you have been blessed with the gift of foresight and you will notice that you are able to think and speak things into existence. Never again will you live with the fear of the unknown for you will know all. The truth of all things will manifest themselves and be disclosed to you in a vivid clear contrast. There will be many people who will find it extremely difficult to interpret what is being explained to them and in the process they will then start to display that they are trapped within there own gridlocked mind and be confused with just your mere presence. You will find that people who do not understand you will then try to get you to conform to what they see, ignore them. Life is but an enigma, one that is full of complex-ed riddles, when you accept to follow your dreams and with an open objective you will then have the opportunity to harness all its power and in return all the pieces of the puzzle will be spread out for you for your taking. Once you find the first piece, you then will be given the license required to take part of this phenomenon so you can complete life's grander picture found outside the ivory tower. You will know with all certainty that you are not dreaming and that what you are witnessing is not a mirage, that is until, the silver cord be loosed, after that, when death finds its way to sting and the grave can then claim its victory, welcome and accept a Re"quies'cat In Pa'ce.
As always, Welcome to the show!
Jan 7, 2015
Jan 7, 2015 at 11:05 AM UTC
[December 30, 2016]
A brilliant statue of golden illuminated scales dances effortlessly in the sky
Twisting and turning like a bird changing air currents as if it were alive
Enormous in it's stature it blocks out the sun with powerful wings of luminosity
Flames of a dozen colors lick the air, sizzling with a hint of animosity
An evil shadow shrouds the village as the gemstone serpent soars overhead
Roaring with a thousand echoing voices, the world turns silent with dread
With a sudden shift in posture, it dives like a freshly loosed flaming arrow
The people scatter like ants beneath its hungry gaze, calling for their hero
Like a meteor, the serpent crashes into the earth with an explosion of dirt
Tendrils of fire stream from the crater as the houses erupt in bursts
Unseen mangled screams of anguish fill the scene from covered smoke
With a flap, a gust and a roar of fury, it separates air from choking cloak
Villagers stare in awe at the legendary creature standing ominously before them
Scales of crimson ruby glisten behind a furious glare of murderous intent
One brave villager steps forward, adorned in polished silver mail
The hero draws a sword, raises his shield and prepares to fail
The dragon charges forward, lashing out with tooth and claw
The knight lunges back, narrowly missing a bite from its maw
It spits fire of molten lava, melting the armor to his skin
Burning alive inside his armor, his flesh sizzles beneath his grin
Defeated and broken, he places his sword into the earth
Stumbling and shaking, he limps to the burning church
He returns with a large ruby stone in his trembling arms
He places the egg at it's mother's feet, safely unharmed
The crimson dragon solidified into a glimmering golden statue
Caressing her ruby egg against her breast, love forever true
The legends tell not a tale of a ferocious and unstoppable creature
But of a gemstone serpent, who wanted to protect her piece of nature
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 6:34 PM UTC
Love thy neighbour, so the Bible says
But dont covet his wife it will get you in strife!
Don't look at her body when she calls
Ignore her curves and her beconing calls
Your wife suggested you helped her out
Does she really now what its about?
That day you called when he was out
It wasn't those tools it was all about
All so innocent till she touched your chest
It went downhill and then to bed
A frantic tryst one afternoon
Cries off passion and moans were heard
Then hubby came home and saw you there
The game was up amongst other things
Two marriages ruined and a family split
All for the sake of a bit of "it"
For the wife had watched and often seen
The postman or the huge marine
She had plans all her own
And saw the means to make them so
Sow the seed and watch it grow
A perfect plan to get divorced
All she needed to pull it off
Was for them to be caught
A perfect plot
She hadn't planned on the neighbours anger
When he saw another bang her
So both barells he loosed into them
And sent upstate for ****** two
Far more than her plan had ever required
And now no alimony as hubby died!!
So love thy neighbour is all well and good
Just don't get caught if your stupid enough!
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 10:17 AM UTC
as the sky closed daylight away
her magic box came out
a few loose threads soon wound themselves
into carriages fleet of foot on the forever road
delivering love and quick boys with
with stout hearts and steel eyed resolve
a few loose potions spilled and away flew mysterious birds
loosed upon the bright eyed world
free to fly high among soft clouds
a few magical words spilled out too
and thats when i found you
you were complete from the very beginning
you danced delicately along the sweet musics
and then you smiled at me
knew i was yours didn't you...you weren't wrong
now look at us
an enchantress made us in some long ago
to be here together
made for eachother with loves thread
made with passions potion's
for eachother forever
fly away with me now
lover sweet lover
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 1:22 PM UTC
Howe's Final version
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His Truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.
His Day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
'As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.'
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his ***** that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
2. Howe's First Manuscript Version
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the wine press, where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.
I have seen him in the watchfires of an hundred circling camps
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
I have read a burning Gospel writ in fiery rows of steel,
As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal
Let the hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Our God is marching on.
He has sounded out the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He has waked the earth's dull sorrow with a high ecstatic beat,
Oh! be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet
Our God is marching on.
In the whiteness of the lilies he was born across the sea
With a glory in his ***** that shines out on you and me,
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
Our God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave
He is wisdom to the mighty, he is sucour to the brave
So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave
Our God is marching on.
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if he is not made of them wholly, branches, he will be soon. they are everywhere, and he steps on them, and they are arms from hell. he wears a child’s football jersey, torn at his size and his sorrow. he reaches into it and pulls out his heart, a red balloon given the what for, inside of which he blows his nose. he returns the heart.
a yellow adherent hangs from both nostrils, as two ropes being cut at and then loosed from his brain. the first keeps an arm from heaven; the second he catches and loops twice to put on his neck. one is never out of the woods here, and he knows it, knows here is Baltimore, Ohio. he has watched the people, some of them, leave; their happiness would be better called remission.
he is giddy when he comes upon a man wearing only a barrel and he tips it with joy and makes better his headway home. the rolled over branches shriek and wake the man who nakedly bails. the branches up their shrieking.
his mother he has no dementia of his time in her womb. why for **** the despondent are given captions like ‘blank look’ he can’t say for in his mama naught but canvassing eyes. she’s what he calls ‘at grocery’, shaking a coffee can she’ll buy because a done melon can’t hold pennies. she often at the neck is saddled with two toddlers but in his projection now there is just one making miracle of not kicking the coffee can into another’s back.
any girl that occurs lets him take her with his tongue only as she seems to know he was circumcised and after that much paddled.
he starts thinking on dad and dad’s laughing when mother’d say boys be home before dog because that’s how it sounded from seizures and of course rock candy in the summer. the barrel splinters beneath him to be forgotten and his legs go to bleeding stilts.
his last things by his face are insufficient; rock candy, barrel, and twin. I talk on the barrel, I don’t need it, not anymore.
Jul 1, 2012
Jul 1, 2012 at 1:34 AM UTC
LET me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord.
Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool,
on a child.
To-day, let me be monosyllabic ... a crony of old men
who wash sunlight in their fingers and
enjoy slow-pacing clocks.
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She came into my life
a karmic explosion
over a pristine
midnight blue
upstate New York
lake,
its breath
damp and warm
and sweet.
Gasping,
labored efforts
expelled a preganant breath,
a prelude to
life.
Blackflies engaged in rutualistic seance.
Lethagic mosquitos emerged
from the evening's sweet mist.
But then raged into frantic spirals,
squealing out futile messages.
Timid pines,
guardians of the ancient site,
loosed their rigid stance,
Prickly spines shivered to the ground.
Anxiously, they awaited rumors
that would quell the fetal dread
that flowed through veins,
invading their bliss.
A bulky mass stirred from somnolent state
in that mud-lined basin,
releasing brown ribbons of agitation,
and inciting a ravenous hunger.
Friendly galaxies,
former guides in his dream state,
abandoned his cause,
flickering a vague adieu.
Having cradled him for so long,
the slick muddy floor now sent him flailing to and fro,
an ungainly dance,
embarassing to watch.
Where once he thrived,
he now gasped for air.
Sep 10, 2012
Sep 10, 2012 at 12:10 AM UTC
A cropped haircut, remembrances of time
The best way to reduce cuticles to bone
And forget what dances behind eyelids
Loosed teardrops and wavering dependability
Useless porch light, shameful gas tank
With shadows which count seconds
Stretching over regrowth
A cropped haircut, remembrances of time
Oct 21, 2010
Oct 21, 2010 at 2:28 AM UTC
ON the one hand the steel works.
On the other hand the penitentiary.
Sante Fe trains and Alton trains
Between smokestacks on the west
And gray walls on the east.
And Lockport down the river.
Part of the valley is God's.
And part is man's.
The river course laid out
A thousand years ago.
The canals ten years back.
The sun on two canals and one river
Makes three stripes of silver
Or copper and gold
Or shattered sunflower leaves.
Talons of an iceberg
Scraped out this valley.
Claws of an avalanche loosed here.
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The ranch-bound bovines, in dehydration,
yet wary of Kool-aid, declined to drink.
They grazed in wonder, cowed rumination:
where does “beef” come from? A herd tends to think
of pasturage, water, and basic needs.
Ranch-hands assured them all was in order;
privileged guests enjoy the finest feeds.
Cows, content on this side of the border
try Buddhism, yoga – or simply gaze…
though things in the distance loomed ominous
(those lots at the edge of the well-hoofed ways)
– and a stench wafted into their consciousness.
Yet calves frolicked on while the bulls mounted heifers –
dreamed vegan dreams as they nibbled grasses
some earned doctorates, others went clubbing;
all loosed sustainable methane gases.
Soothing their calves with fables and stories
where cows are the measure of pastured life
they deflected the gist of the young ones’ queries,
affirming that Truth means avoidance of strife.
“It’s best to just graze. Don’t ask questions dear.
We’re on this planet without any clue.
We evolved. From just what is a little unclear –
but Cow Science has proved that it’s true.”
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 8:35 PM UTC