Part I
The night, no moon in the sky
The wind, full force as to fly
The cold, as to numb the blood
The trees, shadows the vision flood
The night, dark blue in the water
The wind, of rose is the howled attar
The cold, close to freezing the lake
The trees, static dormant to a shake
The night, solitary is the dark
The wind, momentary is its mark
The cold, nearly settled is the doubt
The trees, silent is their spout

The night, the wind, the cold, the trees

A Swan glides with an asynchronous thread
Feathers in the umbra, the heart partly dead
He has lost his dearest, his alluring arch
Spring isn't coming, no September or March
Once there was another swan
To make the lake shimmer with dawn
Their courtship was the core of the pond
A rare gem of opal coloured their bond
Unlike gems, though, be crushed love can
And it was time's deed right there and then
She now is in a new safe haven
And left was him with an egg of a raven

In the midst of this midnight dreary
The Swan was forlorn and weary
But the clouds of metal became of cotton
The grey marsh sudden, was brief forgotten
A shred of light, two lions glowed
Their manes of fire their passion showed
"What a scene" the Swan had thought
"That's the fervor my heart had sought
Forever bound by a curse of ice
I am void and there's no price
To unlock me from the eternal dream
And let me find my lion gleam"

Still, the sky is yet so white
And the past gloom cannot him fright
At his right the Swan stare
Intrigued by the unceasing flare
A piglet and a spider, what a scene
Why are they ringed by a sheen?
In the night, they play like friends
Fight, discuss and make amends
A web of favours and support
Parades of gratitude are never short
"Oh, is it fondness what I am lacking?
Is this why I am ever cracking?"

Now the display is certainly over
And the Swan hopes to find his clover
No more than ever he is so keen
To live anew and be serene
The night enjoys the happy mood
And let the moon stop its brood
The clouds, at once, no more than mist
An ethereal cast, will this be a tryst?
The moon glitz on a past reflection
A female black swan of mystic complexion
An owl hoots afar and is dismissed
As the hero sings after being kissed:

"Where have you been, my dove?
Why did you leave, my love?
I was so lost in here
Without your voice to hear

Without you to kiss me
Without you to bliss me
I was just a shadow
Missing the rain and the rainbow

But now I can see life
And each thing is so rife
I will give you my heart
So we won't fall apart"

Part II
Night, the moon is sublime
Wind, tame like no other time
Cold, feeble against heart's motion
Trees, mere pawns in this ocean
Yet silence cannot much contain
The disturbing growls of owl disdain
It thrives with strength, to fill the lake
To **** the love and pleasure take
The Swan, still, has just eyes... no ears
So to halt death from ousting his tears
Joy runs his body with iron vigor
His love denies dearth of such rigor

The courtship swims with celestial sync
In an opal ballet of black and white ink
Lastly, his arch the Swan can complete
With a dubious promise of endless heat:
"Our past is antiquity and shall be erased
The future, fertile, a wish to be chased
Let us embrace and with nature be one
Me and you, the rest will be none.
Though, I will only expect your happy devotion
No fear, no sadness, no other emotion
You are my minion, and mine in exclusive
Is this what you craved in your hope elusive?"

The Swan is soon hesitant of the deal
His novel grasp masks her appeal:
"Your words of ice burn down my feathers
Your crooked intentions prevent us together
I was foolish in you to trust my belief
Your offer won't stop my desert, my grief
Love can't ever be monochromatic
Yes, there are moments one's ecstatic
But endless joy is not the way
It will prevent freedom and will me betray
The value of love is shallow without anguish of partition
The bones of love are brittle without a conflict's remission"

The eyes of the black swan fumes in red
The clouds, the moonlight they shred
A tempest thunders over the misty lake
Out of the haze, the bird is now a snake:
"Your faith is missplaced in a callow profile
Your passt came closse to you beguile
You think your luck in love issn't departed
But you are full of sself-pity, fainthearted
Honesst love iss the piercer of my power
And IF you find it, I will to you cower
Yet you have nothing; you're dessperate for ssomeone
Had welcomed the deal, you wouldn't be undone"

The water spreads cold with every heartbeat
The quick rime sings Swan's defeat
The snake reveals its fangs of ink dark
And bites the Swan, a sanguine red mark
All seems lost to this tragic hero
A heart's betrayal in the absolute zero
Until a hoot echoes through the trees
And the bird finally the owl sees
With claws of steel, the snake it slashes
In response, lightning flashes
It breaks the ice and the reptile sears
The Swan is now saved, but not from his fears

A boy wakes up in a nice little room
With a painting of the lake and a flower in bloom
A bee buzzes around about the place  
And in the White Rose, lends with grace
Both make a sound akin to a chatter
They seem happy with their talking matter
The angered boy, annoyed by the insect,
Into the painting, the bee he projects
With a new aspect thrown away
He burns down reality's display
And when a dove finds its way out
The man its wings brake and his out route

Phantom Fierce Pierce

For Sally

Do have the courage of fear?
What!
You heard me.
Admit that we are all inhabited,
Admit that we are all inhibited.

Fear, the eleventh plague visited upon the Egyptians,
Nothing more paralyzingly complete.
Walking down an average day, an average street,
A median day, a medium day that a
Black disease from whence unknown,
And you are a froze shadowed chalk figure
Drawn upon the concrete, unable to move.

What would you pay, anything,
What would you give, everything,
Cleanse it all
Cut out the incisions
That with precision
Haunt your every
Waking and sleeping moment.
The deeds that did not get done,
The deeds that cannot get undone,
Both your undoing.

A plague on both, a plague on me,
My plague, unique to me,
Free me from this whatever the cost.

But it can't be arranged.
No devil to sell back the things
Of which you are ashamed,
No stain stick extant to guarantee success.

When the hollow is so great
You feel non-existent.

But you do not see what I see...
Courage, raw and plain, admits
These phantoms are not phantoms at all.

Those figures try to break you.
There is a beach, a path, where you know,
Safety.

Not easy to get there. The bus schedule unpublished.
But the bus line exists.
And you have the courage to wait, patiently
Until it arrives.

There is value here, if you read between the dashes
And the dots.

I see you for who you are.
You are the phantom fiercer piercer.

Shown us the way.

My sister howled with the dogs at the end of the street
her teeth looking more canine than theirs with her jaw-hinged open and her gums shining
as she became every house in our neighborhood
fingers woven into a chain link fence around her ankle
as if to create a barrier between the throbbing and the cool stroke of the air.
I couldn’t decide if her ankle looked broken-hearted or dumb,
slumped over like it was on a bus, snoring and dreaming of the stop it had just missed.
The sky slowed down to melt into navy and rosy tie-dye at the same rate as her ankle, although her face got there first
and I swore I heard the sidewalk crack lightening into her bone as soon as she landed,
I brought it up every time someone knocked on the door or dropped a dish until she wasn’t there to bring it up anymore,
but her hands always kept steady when she said she never heard a thing.

In the car ride to the hospital my skull trembled at the high frequency of my sisters screaming.
I crossed my fingers that she would stop, but not too tightly
remembering that ripe carrot snapping into two sound
acutely aware that I had never felt my own bones living in my body until now
how every pothole made them tingle and catch fire
and I sat ghost-still until we got home.    

I am a spread of limp appendages on a cold metal table when I get my first piercing.
I imagined that I looked a lot like my sister when her ankle fell apart
or each time she made sure to draw out her goodbyes as our mother fell apart.
The piercer clamped down on my belly button with an instrument that looked like something you would use to snap stubborn lobster legs
my belly button dangerously residing only a few skin creases away from my rib cage
skin seeming too thin to protect bone when in the process of perspiring,
like paper that has soaked for days.
I hoped that rock won against paper in an alternate universe.
Breathe in he said, like my sister couldn’t that day,
breathe out and it was over and I was closer to understanding what it felt like to have a bone double over
but I knew this wasn’t it
it wasn’t even close.

When my sister died
I tried pulling back my pinky until it collapsed in exhaustion from fighting back,
but I couldn’t finish it off, couldn’t put it out of its misery.
I wanted to know if death or a bone breaking hurt more.
Sometimes my body flushes with the thick shade of shame at the thought
that a shattered pinky could hurt more than the empty spaces,
that I would trade my sister’s dead body for the safety of my own,
that if I hide from broken bones in the soft confines of cushy couches and toddler heights,
then what does broken feel like when it defines more than limbs.

3.
Picture:
smog pilfers
away some stars;
some cars
my words

Silence:
like a pinch, a piercer,
a piercing

Little winter:
a pistachio
salty, sweetly
confined a bead
I crack the door open
I eat it up

Clock:
a pistil
in it
time incubates

This lamplight
is like a pineapple
I want to write, write, write

I AM THE WEDGE

O blackguard or fellow. Arise!
Nay.
Bridge that light that bridges all.
Nay! Peace…
What peace!
In sleep’s blue rictus, borne naked, supine—I am…roused.
Opine!
I exhort ye:  know thy fine.
Be bold or benign, be ****** or divine.
But know thy fine.
Exhort? Harbinger:  we are One!
Ye are cloven! And these be your bridges:
Worms.
Sss!
Maggots.
Sss!
Bigots, charlatans, sycophants, thieves…
Ignominious leeches all!
Ssssss! Ssssss! Ssssss!
Yes, yes, yes—ye art ethos without sinew,
Eloquence without spine, witting captives of World’s design.
Ye are carnal, mundane:  ye are sane, sane, sane—
Sane beyond redemption, sane beyond profane!
Prithee peep, prostrate. Now behold:  ye are Mine.
O piercer of nights!
I am he.
O dasher of dreams!
I am he.
Truther! Augur!
I am, I am.
I am all ye allege.
Be still!
Nay. I am the wedge.
And ye shall labor and love with accountability!
Ye who menace the frail shall burn.
Sss!
Ye who lie with same shall burn.
Sssss!
Ye thick, arrogant, groping,
Proliferating plumes of flesh…
All conformists shall burn! And burn and burn
And burn afresh. Within thine own World, where Virtue rots—
Miscarried, misnamed, unrealized, unborn—Nay!
Do not cosset possessions, nor flatter the beast!
They are myth, they are illusion. They are soulless.
It is not death…it is soullessness I scorn.
O be caring. O be kind.
That one egg might bind, all sons must bleed.
Womb and grave lie equidistant.
******, madness, sorrow, sickness, are seed.
And I am fecund.
O Life!
Hypocrites.
Ah Love!
Hypocrites!
Peace! Peace!
Hypocrites all! Blind as cadavers are ye,
Running in lockstep, sniffing thy self-serving,
Snuffling peers’ rears; disdaining the night,
Succumbing to light. And I? I?
I am Neutral. I am Gray.
Then name thy vein.
I am he who severs One; soldier’s specter, specter’s son.
Of faith and compassion mine fibers art wrung.
Ye living die a thousand deaths, yet remain in arrears.
Let thy live corpses lie a low while longer.
Sweet coma, black drug—
Beware thy Pale Master’s tongue!
Blasphemer! Vigilante!
Vengeance is poetry. Vigilance is mine.
I am he who doth sunder, to center from edge.
Thou art…Comeuppance!
I am the wedge.
And this blade ye ride be thine own design!
O Sunlight save us!
Save? To cling to the light, heaping woe upon woe,
Forever hurtling downward, smashed outright, yet still crawling?
Broken beggars bleeding, drowning heartless, gutless…
To, on dying’s cue, lift thy shattered fingers in brine
And be born anew?
Assassin, then!
Thy logic is *******. Have the greatness to be mute,
Suffering seaward, to that brave expanse where all salts art borne.
But we—
Unwitting? Never be!
The same tide shall return for ye:
Aweigh, forlorn, into the ravening
Tempest torn; a million billion testaments—
Defrauder!
Am I? Consider the beast:  electric pastors preaching,
Merchants plump, in line, beseeching.
Still ye puppets slumber, too rife to number,
Too fay to vie; strutting for thy hollow “Maker’s” eye.
Whirling, jumping, twirling, pumping;
******* random shapes and shadows,
Prancing in tandem, dancing solely to die.
Nay. I am the wedge, both hawk and dove;
Neither This nor That, neither Either nor Each.
Descending, I rise, thy facade to breach,
Mine soul well-bled of light’s lovely lies.
To the vortex, then! From one whose essence
Waives assimilation.
No grace! No peace shall ye posers reap!
Lash thine ears, thine eyes—Run, lemmings! Leap!
Preen thy prettified husks, let Inspiration go!
Or rip out thy roots and…Grow!
Sacrilege! Make public thy shame!
Shame? Shame? Ah…Ash, conceive us!
Brief spirit cede, sweet Flame relieve us,
Sunlight leave us lie.
May ye ****** and ye wicked
Fall to thy knees and cry.
Through gates of naught I lead ye,
Bleak day, bright night, precede ye.
Butcher!
There is black! And there is white!
Between extremes lies only gray.
Nay!
Said stain bleeds left and right:  less black, less white,
On that stage too deep to fathom,
One dapple distant, one ripple wide.
Outrageous!
’Twixt solace and horror,’tween torment and balm,
There ye will find me, in rages of calm.
The wise man hath his discipline, the lunatic his ledge.
And I? I am he who doth sever, I am he who doth cleave.
I am the wedge.




(Sorry about the missing italics and indents. I don't run this site.)

Copyright 2019
contact Ron Sanders at:

ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com

monochrome tragedy
scene-piercer see
shock eye

by cube’s dawn
hand of flight
drown fire

with petal of light
ashen funnels
double phantom

from sword splinter
flower birth
trampled soldier

prism-chasm
horse nostrils
quotation mark

baby pale
for anguished mother
vision droplets

pyramid ear
white bull
dagger-tongued

Tony Hoagland later revealed himself as problematic
On issues of race and empathy
But what a wit
What a talent
What a social observer
What an analyzer of narcissism
What a chronicler
Of Bible studies, jet fuel imbibing and America itself
What a piercer of the illusions
Of blue-haired college students with tongue studs
And aversions to comfortable homogeneity
The spiked collar of strip malls and spoon-fed mass entertainment

How do you
Separate
The art from the artist
Do you
Should you
Can you

Where does the conversation stop
Where does it end
Where does it loop back
Where does it germinate
And begin

Dream-Like
My Life—-Eyes wide
Asleep.


I wonder if you’re proud of me.

What’s it All About
Here!
Still tryin’—-Living.

Is the Sky in my skull
Not imagination Heaven?
Oh Soul
        Snow Piercer
Oh Life! You great monolith
I climb
Your pyramid
A backdrop of red
Fires, Angry Suns.
Nature can’t save us over hungry
We ate & sealed our fate

I wonder if You’re proud?
I am of your Love.

Forevermore.
That’s unreal! —
My Love.


Dream-Like
My Life—-eyes wide
Fast Asleep.

Oh Forgive me. Oh!
Forgive me please...