April’s Heat, a Cruel Joke

I slept terribly. Here’s a rhyming poem about it.

 

In a sick minute’s tested tumult,
my angry night’s eye set a fault,

to punk and push madness to ram,
I shame my sleepless night hand,

for fire and fangs a frond a frown,
spirits, ghosts all shafts a gown,

with each clamor framed and sank,
the heat twisted my frame in shank,

and untoward my bedfellow raves,
into death’s grip and early graves,

I shudder and shimmer, gloss lite,
each day’s end and every sick night,

but I tell a tale in dawn’s warm heat,
lay close to love and shoo bad dreams,

for every loss there is always a gain,
even when pleasure comes with pain

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Crooked Teeth, Soiled, Dispersed

A blaring feeling, a dearth of dying
so loudly, a cat’s call kissing kith,
killing kin, passion like brittle
battles, saddened by the doorbell,
in the dream I had, which was real,
frighteningly playful, with each [sic]
gunshot, which tore my mother’s
belly, I stood firmly unafraid inside
the door jamb’s woody hearth, crack,
growing fungus, stacked, stuck, [sic]
basted in gratitude and greens, pus
collapsed, troubadours ohing and
ahing as their trumpets screamed in
my ear drums, the silence: klaxon
king, each moment recorded, lament
is very real, fulfilling nights rarely
bubble devilish, but rarity realization
for a star’s lighted pathway, will
kill/maim this sadness every time;
dreams are for faeries, fierce themes;
saffron ambition; but sorrow is a [sic]
staple for stirred up ruffians, drunk
on their own brains, carrion of lives
once lived, and lost all in on night

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Birds on barbed wire,
their sickly song
is sweet and subtle,
and as they sway,
we move along with them,
chuck key’s passive restraint,
angular and swift,
momentum in a vacuum,
so we mimic,
tools in a chest,
pluck the strings through
foul air, dance in a sequence,
hop and jump,
as peerless cohorts our sheen a
badge of boundless beauty,
as lovers, our joy a sightless
movement, but we persist,
our choice now fate,
and the birds dismount,
fly to the sun, and the walls
lack color this day, so we wait
for them to return,
and we write more
for our thankless voyage,
cutting deep into our souls,
nicking our hearts along
the way, each day
our songs speak like
foreign tongues, our moments
to translate, still forgotten
and heaped in muddy water.

Forest Hill Wedding & Reprisal

 i.

Enraged on a grey wedding day, Pearl and Eddie

grasped each other, warm and tight they waltzed

in front of burnt pews, languishing in each eyes

love, for in their home, the bombs ate each wall,

what are their hearts for but to love? after all, in

contempt, the mark read truth, and laughed in the

face of oppressors, down the road the pub stood

clear with a sign: More Open Than Usual; swept

clean by the barkeep, whose mood is bright still,

when each bird grew fat, plump from the grains

when commenced, the cars’ trumpets sang a song

of six pence, as each men poured a glass of rye,

in spite of St. George’s ire, that warm day in 1939,

when the dragon was slayed, just for one night,

ii.

in old pictures, I look dead-eyed, for fragrant soot,

and in the lasting moment, quietude: I lament for

each passing death, each watery gush, each small

time, lapsed and lapped up, drunk and sunk, for

time in languished swoop, swum and swimming,

brum is brimming, lands of time each soldier is

simmering, and simming, or for moreover, pounds

release hounds, and I refute and refuse to learn how

to spell, how to sell, how to rail in lines like this,

like it matters, when it never matters, and it’s a hole

in my muffler, it’s a night I can’t sleep, it’s a message

I never read, because I deleted you before you even

knew it was me, it’s a hole in my sock, incomplete

chapters, songs I skipped, and bombs that never fell,

and I ended it like this, like this… like this… ended

St. Valentine’s Shadow

And on that Wednesday, a rhapsody between
the sheets, when two lovers shared warmth,
for a time long forgotten, but even in the
years that each carried heavy in their heart,
neither could replace the other’s love, their
truest spirit a release of joy, like odes to
indescribable beauty, sung in tongues of dirty
dialect, twisted through each era and eon,
none other, no opus to cry out loud, yowl
on a fence in August, flounce in front of
their faces each season, no; no ugly forces
sit in governance, just trust and pleasure,
nothing ever to replace it, no wedge betwixt;
fair is the love of human animals who hold
passion above all else, no sickly void can
wrap its disfigured fingers ’round cherubic
encumbrance, sitting fat and proud on a
cloud in February, robust its arrow, so frail
the panted, opaque message it carries afar,
so dirty the town it ferries you from, to;
so merry the lovers that day, rapt together
until the ceiling come crashes down, and
morning tears the tape with one swift pull

 

A Songbird’s Heart

After the hundredth birdsong sung,

on a morning draped with fog,

a crow landed

on the chimney’s top

and chased all the sparrows to fly

away from home,

like bastards of youth

learning skills to earn their bread,

mustering troops to war,

beating

a drum in March,

when the grass will return

in spring,

and the birds will come

again to lull us into our morning;

evening twilight vocations;

mom and dad swing the hammer,

while

baby bird lusts over food,

swaddled

inside,

a warmth like a lung, as the

crows circle and wait,

distance is

a culling,

divine and serene,

but night has an evil way of distancing

hearts and numbing heads,

so take up arms

birds of song,

fights crows

until their beaks plunder no more,

and your sweet sounds call Easter

to the front of war,

singing the

praise of change as sweetly

as it has ever been done before

Twist the Blade

Once more, one more effort,

when the month ended, that

one year, I held the knife in

front of the mirror, five year

old shaver, thrust into adult

hood, collapsed below weight,

in a mouth of madness, no safe

nor sane person in sight, just

a slap, a push, ruffians ramble,

but in summer I tried, sunken

in tanning oil, through screen

doors, supplanted, my wits,

a crass game, summer trouble,

I’ll forget you one day, when

the mirror finally breaks, when

I sink, sullen blackened body,

gored like smut, moot at once,

flowers sink sweet, and die

in rhapsody, sick benign death,

vanity in repose, propose to me,

through smoke and fire, and

let me finally tell this story,

this romance, aloft on craggy

cliffs, asunder and burning

bright, no moonlight leading,

no daylight bleeding, and in

the corner, back to the world,

tiny body, tiny heart, alone.