"truant" poems
As the sun moves to the western horizon
Colors are skilfully blended in a palette
In an instant the sky becomes an exquisite canvas of art
Making even Van Gogh burn in jealousy
With the last glimmer of sunset
When the shadows chase the light,
The aerial folks fly back to their nests
Like black and white specks dotting the sky
With a dark drape stretched across the Earth’s face
The arrival of the night is a spectacular sight
Cicadas and crickets welcome her with their ceremonious band
And street lamps blink their eyes to catch a better view
While truant clouds still wander around aimless
The cerulean sky signals them to hurry
Stars slowly appear in the night sky
Like sequins stitched on to a blue brocade
The crescent moon smiles down
The empress of the night, proud and regal
She and her retinue keep guard over the slumbering Earth
The unpaid sentries of the night!
A gentle breeze makes a palanquin ride
Wafting in the scent of opening buds
The beauty of the night sends me to raptures
My heart exploding like foaming wine in a bottle
Yet I cannot but keep wondering
How many dark secrets
The night holds
Within her tenebrous folds!
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 12:52 PM UTC
a new blueprint to future improvements
truth and illusion, rooting down to it
using my muse to fluid the movements
i do what i do and only i do it
i choose true views, crucial exclusives
a brutal but proven fuel for usage
a fuse for a boom and a noose for a nuisance
tooting no horns and soothing no prudence
a truant from the school of muted students
an astute pupil when getting down to it
using pure fusion and never diluted
i do what i do and only i do it
Oct 13, 2015
Oct 13, 2015 at 8:00 AM UTC
I don't know what to think
when i'm staring in your eyes
more akin to speak
in blind lullabies.
than logistify
my heightened
surmise
in flight
to somewhere nice
if only for tonight
come with me this night
ignite
the cindered fires
of our desires
and incite
the throws of light
in **** obscurity
moaning through the sincerity
of our oddities
gleaming in the rarity
of our academy of lust
all or bust
entrust the accounting
of blaspheme
to the enemies
of poverty
and shove me
all the way down your throat
fill you
instill you
with the hope
of a million
grinning in **********
of the tangled mental merchants
of pretty lights and custom curtains
drawn at first light
dispersing
amongst cursing pedestrians
prior to ***********
of forceful ************
with an another human
lightened strikes the truant
in 9 months of fluent
agony
just imagining little Timmy
has me scavenging for a shimmy
to escape
its social ****
to a blind ape
still patting his head
don't be mislead
by ***** carriers
pack your own barriers
and prepare for the scarier
side of a mans mind
Sep 9, 2012
Sep 9, 2012 at 11:05 PM UTC
reverence in poetry. everything to every person.
reader claims they can a necessary skill for
uncover the reverence. successful hypothecating and
in the scripts that (buying)poetry-creation outta nothing,
life straight hands me, tell them what thy want to hear,
for collection & correction, and they’ll call you laureate,
secretarial transcribing, instead of good listener
binding, typo correction or just a keen observer-fakir
mundane are the tasks, just take what they give ya,
that’s all them muses ask, dress it like Joseph in a
don’t interfere, taken what’s given, coat of many colors,
bow, curtsy, show respect, don’t let on your plagiarism
treat its aspects/instincts correctly is all them, redressed legally
you’re just the pass through agent, true you, gotta be smart about it,
patient for no payment expected, variant spellings, swinging verbs,
be our adherent, not our truant, be discreet, they’ll call your script
we appoint don’t disappoint, a real keeper and give love or sun,
accept our patent, render legit mucho poem emojis accoladeya
as for this reverence thinge devil in a blue dress, walk the streets
if I do my job ok, on any day, grabbing snatches of overhearings,
any poem could save a life, pressed into a single tunic, you think,
if I get the commas placed, he a genius, knows my thinking,
just right, the periods period, exactly, what a great poet and
while obeying the speed limit con/hu-man par excellent
them muses so **** pleased even fool muses, too full themselves,
by this true confession released, muses who think we stink and
and self deprecation, couldn’t do it without them
they call me reverend, great pretenders by stealing
imagine them silly folk, everything in everybody and
calling a big fat liar. all thieves and cape riders,
reverend, duh, the end original liars, pants on fire
before midnight and after 3:20am April 7~8, two oh nineteen
any message you send becomes my intellectual property, fool....
Apr 8, 2019
Apr 8, 2019 at 5:24 AM UTC
O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
Make answer, Muse. Wilt thou not haply say,
“Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay,
But best is best, if never intermixed”?
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how
To make him seem, long hence, as he shows now.
3k
Sable, the swallow rising
as it banks over the white conduits
of marrow in the body, rain
slashes through the honey locust,
along the long ellipse of its hunt
as savage dragonflies rise from stems
to cling, a deep sienna of doeskin tremors
over their sting, catkins,
an aftermath, melancholy to the skin
soaked in white calla,
its reticence assails
the sleeping orchards of the heart,
in its darkest sheaves,
to cleave apart the soft joining of lips
and silence me;
for eternity
is this moment,
and the light you give
cloaks me in a coat of flames,
the burnt locust of slaughter, taunt
the rubric of Christs hidden scriptures,
as I night,
the body, solely a vessel
of shadow, returning
through a field of windfall,
ripe with wasps,
echo you
in me,
a dream of a dream dream't,
in the dim recess of light
your lips close
like a sutra over mine,
a brutality of moments
ground out of thick pine,
as the fine agony
of cricket ballets rise
shivering, to stillness,
this silence is a lotus,
a blue psalm,
throttles the throat,
as a quorum of swallows
gather between the swathes
of sunlight and skewed shadows,
and lift as one body, subsumed
by our abandoned depths,
out of exile, you
have made me a homeland
of truant light and as I night,
lightning opens like scripture,
a black plea, poured over some sore refuge,
and so that I may never be restored,
cloak me in a coat of flames,
suffering an ecstasy of moments hardened in amber,
over the white conduits of marrow
in the savage body, writhe
a black throng of swallows,
assail the sleeping orchards of the heart,
in its darkest sheaves, to cleave
apart the soft joining of lips
and silence me....
Dec 4, 2012
Dec 4, 2012 at 4:05 PM UTC
"forever spun-out
to the downplay of
insensibilities
playing truant.
all for a taste
of the rush
of us."
~shoo.shu
Jan 5, 2016
Jan 5, 2016 at 6:39 PM UTC
At morn—at noon—at twilight dim—
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and wo—in good and ill—
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee
Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!
2.6k
Clouds, the clouds diffuse a sad and somewhat somber hue;
Wind, the wind bemoans her loss of reins and calm control;
Crows, the crows flee men of straw, sleeves slapping at the wind;
Grass, the grass defends with blades, impaling truant gusts;
Rain, the rain descends aslant from angry ashen skies;
Stones, the stones repulse the pearls, exploding tears of gloom;
Woods, the woods assuage the angst of misty brooding trees;
Leaves, the leaves desert their branches, dropping one by one;
Fields, the fields imbibe a quaff to quench an arid thirst;
Streams, the streams meander, hushed, to distant vapid shores;
Breeze, the breeze intones a tune, a mourning monody;
Sands, the sands, in chaos, dance across the dappled dunes;
Shades, the shades appear confused, alone in lurid haze;
Mice, the mice discern the dawn, their beady eyes ablaze;
Clouds, the clouds diffuse a sad and somewhat somber hue.
Apr 23, 2013
Apr 23, 2013 at 3:38 PM UTC
these faces on the wall that have no eyes,
the young children with blood escaping from their hands
as they pick up a mound of the Earth and throw at genuflected roses.
these battered men in parks searching for light
and my woman is no longer with me.
it’s all vaudeville: this obnoxious working of continuance,
these redundant flutings, these unprecedented fluctuations.
opening the yellow gates to death
as the automobile churns the last of its exhausted snarl.
we are children peering through glass cases
as death laughs at his hopeless clientele,
sad, desolate progenies in working-classes,
in parks, in factories, somewhere along Mendiola,
or just treading the waist-high hellish froths of Dapitan,
there’s always death in the nooks of the quiet
and from where birds stir in sidereal circles, death
with his hands resting on the cage, chases us back to our homes.
death the changing of the gatekeeper.
death the telling machine.
death the dentist.
death my next door neighbor.
death, this boorish broken-winged Maya twitching in front
of my dog’s shadow shot out of the Sun’s shameful recoil.
death, my loud and loutish muse,
death the truant,
death, the copious fog somewhere in Kennon Rd.
death, in my hands through darkness and light,
death through troves of enigma,
death through undisputed clearings,
death the long line of red beads in EDSA,
death the gates of Plaridel,
it’s the moon following you, trailing your measure,
i hold my woman’s used shirt, pick up her photographs
and there’s no tender movement left but the still-seeking lion
prowling the jungles of my heart, seared by lovelorn undoing.
through the bottom of the sky and the unchanging roof-beam,
the weathervane ceases to a sojourn and the wind is trapped
in a place where we cannot utter any word between the gnashing
of our teeth – through the wasted years, through the sleeping in and out
of homes filled with beatings, to cathedrals swollen with tribulations,
and to the vineyards wrung out of wine, my lover, walking through fire,
sound silence.
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 9:20 PM UTC
times like this, the plenary moon
tonight wearing many faces,
the white-washed truant at bay
white-hulled still, the brim of the sky
to a full, on such a bright night leaving a trace
of say, prongs of fire on the kiln
the skin the soft breeze molests with a chill
flung from pinecone – the blackened spires of the
very heart of flame and the mullioned wood that understands
what the heat of placeness mints underneath
our skin – what silence remains a translation when the smoldering
remains are bitten repeatedly, aureoled in the moment of vital meaning.
we hear its threat, retained in clock-whirs
like a primordial word or the fluting of light’s bendable
rondure harnessing a truth we let in.
I fail behind the walled-up lip of laughter
because the weight of passing
is heavy on my back – like a bough dragged
by rainwater, or sound elected to drown:
the smell of poinsettia assaults,
lifting its slaughter against Kiltepan and Ambuklao,
past mountains lulled to sleep: the moon sleuthing
like a well-oiled machine. what do you hear?
we are aware of its full absence,
like that of our undulation after a fall,
or the wild sibilance of breath trying to utter something,
going back home with a song in between teeth,
without words.
Feb 24, 2016
Feb 24, 2016 at 6:56 AM UTC
Some 'others'
and so-and-sos
don't want to be found.
They don't want to be
solid.
They don't want to:
dematerialize or to rematerialize or to manifest.
They don't want to come into being or exist.
Some so-and-sos are vagrant and delinquent.
Truant vagaries of brush strokes
mushrooming in the tresses of dresses.
Indeed, some 'others' wish to remain anonymous.
They reckon it’s reasonable
to protect a human standard.
Their privacy a prison of unwatchfulness-
the walls closing in like they did for Hans Solo,
Chewbacca, and the princess...
like Indiana Jones or some platform pitfall romance.
The 'others' wish to remain alone.
How else would they be 'others'?
Anonymity is the preferred state of 'others'
and so-and-sos.
It is their church confessional.
Safe harbor to their ******
Oct 4, 2012
Oct 4, 2012 at 12:28 AM UTC
All the world's a *********
And all the lads and ladettes mere defecators,
Gratifying oozing exits and entrances;
And one man perforce enacts too many roles,
His acts being seven deaths. D'abord, the baby,
******** and ******* on his mummy's frock.
Then, the errant truant with his rucksack
And pock-marked wanker's face, creeping like death
Foul-trouser'dly to school. Next a teenager,
Panting like mad dog, with an oozing pustule
Dripping oe'r his girlfriend's pubics. Then a hoodie,
Full of strange oaths, and dressed up like a freak,
Lacking in honour, decency, and up for aggro,
Seeking the respect of loathsome peers
Even on the street corner. And then the adult
With bulging beer belly, and ample burgers stuff'd,
With eyes dulled by unfulfilled promises,
Mortgaged to the hilt, and indebted to Visa,
And so he wastes his life. The sixth age dawns
Before he knows it, bald futility,
With ****** in pocket, five quid a pill,
His youthful hopes well fuck'd, the world too much
For his ignorance, and his vain butch rantings
Reverting soon to teenage curses, coughs
And tobacco'd wheezings. Last we see him,
Ending a pointless and useless existence,
Clutching to his piss-stained Zimmer frame,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans pension fund.
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 4:54 PM UTC
she manages to twist things into a lifetime wonder
but life is made up of losses, and finally
the picture stuns with clarity.
that she is merely an inexperienced truant-player on a roll
a rather silly heraldist of mundane matters
an astounding figment of wonder.
she holds in her right hand jagged wedges of exquisite thrills
which she feeds slowly to the roiling storm
one by one - by one.
on the edges of the larcenous cloud, she sits and waits
while throwing down pebbles of trying events
all soft-cloaked in secret mirth.
she grips in her left hand a galaxy of recalcitrant injuries
that, two by two, she lets orbit off into space
greet them in serene farewell.
S T, 10 May 2013
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 4:52 PM UTC
can’t tell at all if these thoughts are even mine, smoothing my hair out
on the lawn while the sun kisses our skin and we lay around
Spring is getting swept away and the asphalt is as hot as you
heat circumventing every shade of skinny leaved trees
and our truant is every bit of rebellion i need to escape myself
these neon signs are open and i still want steal time with you
just like the weather did and be full to the brim of light
want to dream again if this day is one, and daydream all the stinging away
Apr 24, 2018
Apr 24, 2018 at 5:01 PM UTC
Its the feeling you get when your mind is a war zone, a warped home where grimmy thoughts roam, with no guidance or support zone, your so frightened to fight it on your own. More poems of suicide and self harm, you ever dreamt you died and felt calm? Just a truant mind with health crimes, help cant cure a ruined life in Hell's palms. You fell in to a ditch and because of it popping bottles of pills that you mixing your ***** with, then nodding off a bit picturing god and all of it, a doctors on the phone telling you to ***** it. Consistently monitored, the alcohol, the quiting , the six, seven seizures, its the moment a schizophrenic freezes, hearing a voice that whispers when it pleases, the vigilant bulimic, the obsessive and compulsive,the bipolar mood swing and stomach ulcers. Its the hidden issues that the medicine alters. Its the judgmental that the depression repulses ,the anxiety, the psychs with the notes, the post traumatic stress and the vices to cope. The prices of dope,the ice in the pipe that you smoke. The knife the rope, the temptation of slicing your throat. Its the stigma determined to scare you, when the bourbon your served is your urgent repairer. When not feeling nervous becomes rarer and your mom quits her job to become your permanent carer. Its the psychotic episodes, the days that you lost seeking help, but being crazy isn't something I am ashamed to admit, so stay strong anybody who relates to this, please.
Mar 9, 2018
Mar 9, 2018 at 9:58 PM UTC
collected
by absence
his body
a truant hobby
pursued
by career
my father
built himself
a darkroom
where he’d often
retire
to adjust
the variances
of a single
delay
to pace
as perfectly
as the many
visitors
he was wont
to follow
with a great
and private
affection
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 1:14 AM UTC
You play three.
Me, seven.
Fifteen for two.
This is where I lose you.
Your phone vibrates,
You leviate
Sitting across from me,
Making me an unwilling audience
To all the drama.
You vibrate. Your shoulders droop
Like the gape-toothed village idiot.
You gesticulate,
Fading in and out
In a semi-conscious awakening.
You're trembling under stones
Sitting on your chest.
It shows in your tembling hands.
*Twenty, for two...
Twenty-five, for six...*
I overhear your child is truant,
Another wants a ride,
Another a car, doctor or lawyer.
You're shuffling in your seat.
Not to worry.
Affter the stones are lifted,
And you're properly pegged
In the stink hole, the game's over.
Thirty, for twelve and a go. Game.
So deal with it.
Aug 2, 2014
Aug 2, 2014 at 10:41 AM UTC
Born the war drum
I was beat until the cries became the sub-audible pounding of a thousand marching feet birthed of beatings.
Truant was I to the current flowing like the wind that leaves the leafs chasing that end from which they've stemmed, rather moving to the inner drum beating out my doctrines engraved on skin, a prescription through inscription it allowed me to see through jade eyes and experience my near life experiments. The temple trapped within I tore the doors off of to find the one I could love, only to be left with hands stained of (His/her) blood. Bleeding the gods of Din and (w)Reck on in(g)sides work against the world I'm in, the perception deceptive eluding the corrections of that War Drum originally beat, the per(cus/sua)sive force of that forced message left lessened in the face of realities newly perceived, though still accepted in universal truth. The heart beats new root, a tie-in to every action bourne of a falling hand drumming out that beat of every thousandth fallen feet.
And I am left to (Him/her), that hidden god of Din, and I am left without that temple once held within so I may decipher that left upon my skin, that forgotten prayer I begin,
"forgive me father, for i am sin…"
Aug 17, 2012
Aug 17, 2012 at 11:05 PM UTC
Feelings masked
Under a boulder of
Suppression
Painted with smiles
To hide the frustration that was
Bubbling, bubbling
Inside, never escaping
Because it shouldn’t, right?
Fatality:
The consequence of a mistaken exposure of the
Achilles’ heel,
carefully veiled by
socks or such something,
Shrouded by indifference and a pretence of amnesia.
And yet, yet sometimes, sometimes
At the sight of the clear blue sky
Where two dreams had once soared together;
At the sound of the synced rhythm
Of the bell-like laughter
that still echoed
In the present silence of an absence;
At the memory of numbers,
The date of union,
The date of parting;
At the smell of small things -
Coffees and teas and wet earth and flowers
The preferences of which had been tiffs
Time and again, time and again
In a distant past;
At the taste of tears of another loved one,
That seasoned the bitter sorrow of loss
With tangy flavours
That left not ever the tongue.
Just sometimes, sometimes,
Even at the gentle
Trickling
of
rain
That had once inspired a
Melodious dance of a now-truant soulfulness
Somewhere, something, sometimes
Cracks.
A hint of sheer pressed down sorrow
Visible in the gradually extinguishing eye
Heard in the reluctantly cracking voice
As one breaks
Shard by jagged shard
Falling out of a patched up soul
Like petals of a flower, counting:
Missing him, missing him not…
Missing him.
And a now porous wall
Leaves a gaping peephole to expose
A separate world full of hidden memories,
The reminder of which still always
leads to such an
Unprecedented
Moment of weakness.
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 7:42 AM UTC
The world’s smallest basket lies tucked away
Inside a jar for field-trip wide open
Eyes of wonder to chew on, settled in
The drooling smiles of truant minds like most
Sticky wads of gum that hang dried to the
Undersides of every desk throughout the
Pine Belt area of Free State County,
And all that surrounds circled about one
Solitary clandestine blade of grass
Tucked & woven into antiquity
By enchanted hands, & no doubt the work
Of Ma Universe slippin’ her divine
Fingers inside the dirt-caked skin she’d
Herself sewn onto one of her very
Own living/breathing marionettes,
Borrowing the gloves of ancestors called on
All the way to back to the first blade of grass
Plucked, & the first dreams that woke young shaman
Poets mad with visions streaming like
Images from celestial antennas
Into intricately knit blades of grass,
Sharpened on dewdrops & the unforgiving
Wilderness of frontiers, like a sea of
Green knives crashing their piercing waves on prairie
Shores while dull eyes attempt to draw blood with
Sharpened pencils on a sketch of its beach.
The towering sandcastles & woven
Baskets & cosmic canons are canonized
Eternal in that magnificent
Fireworks show behind tempered glass, in that
One simple blade of grass.
May 15, 2013
May 15, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
MARION! why that pensive brow?
What disgust to life hast thou?
Change that discontented air;
Frowns become not one so fair.
’Tis not Love disturbs thy rest,
Love’s a stranger to thy breast:
He, in dimpling smiles, appears,
Or mourns in sweetly timid tears;
Or bends the languid eyelid down,
But shuns the cold forbidding ‘frown’.
Then resume thy former fire,
Some will love, and all admire!
While that icy aspect chills us,
Nought but cool Indiff’rence thrills us.
Would’st thou wand’ring hearts beguile,
Smile, at least, or seem to smile;
Eyes like thine were never meant
To hide their orbs in dark restraint;
Spite of all thou fain wouldst say,
Still in truant beams they play.
Thy lips—but here my modest Muse
Her impulse chaste must needs refuse:
She blushes, curtsies, frowns,—in short She
Dreads lest the Subject should transport me;
And flying off, in search of Reason,
Brings Prudence back in proper season.
All I shall, therefore, say (whate’er
I think, is neither here nor there,)
Is, that such lips, of looks endearing,
Were form’d for better things than sneering.
Of soothing compliments divested,
Advice at least’s disinterested;
Such is my artless song to thee,
From all the flow of Flatt’ry free;
Counsel like mine is as a brother’s,
My heart is given to some others;
That is to say, unskill’d to cozen,
It shares itself among a dozen.
Marion, adieu! oh, pr’ythee slight not
This warning, though it may delight not;
And, lest my precepts be displeasing,
To those who think remonstrance teazing,
At once I’ll tell thee our opinion,
Concerning Woman’s soft Dominion:
Howe’er we gaze, with admiration,
On eyes of blue or lips carnation;
Howe’er the flowing locks attract us,
Howe’er those beauties may distract us;
Still fickle, we are prone to rove,
These cannot fix our souls to love;
It is not too severe a stricture,
To say they form a pretty picture;
But would’st thou see the secret chain,
Which binds us in your humble train,
To hail you Queens of all Creation,
Know, in a word, ’tis Animation.
1.3k
Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow
Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear,
The hunter of the west must go
In depth of woods to seek the deer.
His rifle on his shoulder placed,
His stores of death arranged with skill,
His moccasins and snow-shoes laced,--
Why lingers he beside the hill?
Far, in the dim and doubtful light,
Where woody slopes a valley leave,
He sees what none but lover might,
The dwelling of his Genevieve.
And oft he turns his truant eye,
And pauses oft, and lingers near;
But when he marks the reddening sky,
He bounds away to hunt the deer.
1.3k
Titans clashing
In writing classes
Sessions
To profess progression
Or
Progress to professions
Blessings
Brought through the lessons
Learned
In College
A student as truant
As undeserved triumph
In the form
Of a form
That says what he’s worth
Diplomas
Handed out
To show
You’re on the road
To success
The rest are asked
The ultimate question
Of “Why not?”
Embarking on the quest
When the ultimatum
Is failure
Fail lures in
Those with no ambition
Men *******
About getting papers
To show worth
Working with no
Apparent purpose
Versus
Being apparently worthless
Pairing the two
Against the view
Of a *****
Who stares at the moon
And gives a ****
About the bull
The one
Whose wit
Could split
The tightest knit
Brain
And undue the sutures
Of skulls
To undue
Their mundane
View of success
The *****
Who calls himself
A *****
With more pride
Than Aryans
Carrying his opinion
Higher
Than the mass vision
Just to show
How low
They truly are
Arrogantly ignorant
Ignore rants
Of others
And smother them
With the truth
Of knowing nothing
And understands
They’ll never understand
Overstepping the boundaries
Without
Diplomatic immunity
Yet immune
To the qualities
Of the Hippocratic views
And sees
To seize the future
You must
Tackle the present problems
You must blitz
To get you’re quarter back
If you want
To make a change
And sport all the qualities
That seem to them
Strange
Deranged
In the range
Of misunderstandings
The illusion of progress
For humans
Are usually
Said in words
And never
Set in stone
So I will throw
Sticks and stone
The stupidity that’s grown
Words hurt
But actions hurt worser
For example:
Worser
Isn’t a word
Until I worsen the
Worst situation
I’m waiting
For my chance
To blow up
So I can dumb down
Your intelligence
And smarting up
Your ignorance
If you can’t understand
You’re either too smart
Or too **** ignorant
If you’re offended
Then you’re opinion is unneeded
Because the truth
Will tear your *** to pieces
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 1:43 AM UTC
If I leave for Africa and take the bus
to the edge, if I step on an animal mine
and write inside the bellies of snakes—
with an alphabet that’s ruined thousands
of years of evolution—dirty letters
to Mr. Rogers who rubs his pockets for candy
then bends pink-mouthed girls like matchsticks.
If I crawl through Kampala and find our bones
lined up like crayons, uncovering themselves
over years and hundreds of years, sifting upwards.
If there are questions behind those
question marks, more soggy appetites whetted,
more curvy rib bones bumping in a soup pot.
If I run into a man who holds an empty bag
up to his ear and takes it at its word,
if this truant god—your cup and handle,
held like a pistol, love like a nail hole—afraid
to be the villain or stay longer
than an atlas, more afraid to hold than jump, chokes
the bag that won’t shut up, snuffed on camera.
Nearer my god to thee. He will take care,
will last out the cave. Hands sewn like armor,
fingernail mosaics and a propeller under each arm
to carry the faces that fell
away, curious as ever, hiding in museum cases
not in the glass but of it, not taking up spaces.
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 8:20 PM UTC