3 Poems

I have blogger's block. So today I will be a poet.

Culture Craves A Wanderer

Culture craves a wanderer
With two hands up and out
A forward-thinking astronaut
With wings

Culture craves and we yearn for and squeeze dry
Comes back
Clairvoyant and well-connected
A silence hits the room
A curtain laced with gloom
The end of the confederacy
Has caught up with our darkness

The bomb burns a hole
Terrible and deep, sweet like slow decay
Time lapsed and put up
Worthy of our love, misplaced by our honor
It’s beautiful (it’s not)
It’s beautiful (you are)
The carnival said to the town
“Is there no one better than us?”


Before the Parade

There won’t be a rustling of leaves
Or a pulled string of pained expressions
Or light bulbs left on inside the monument
But there may be dusk
Followed by a night
When weepy people find a way
To mark time with indecision
To make fine art with pencils
To make all the little sorrows
Big
Whole
Brooding

There won’t be a decade left for dead
Or an energetic healing of the lifeless
Or an antsy angel fidgeting away
But there may be a pageant
Followed by a slight
In which absolution of morality
Is a game to play with knives
Is a carol sung by owls
Is the big whole sorrows turned to
Brood
Melt
Flicker

There will be a moment
Before we leave the room
When the hint of recognition
That we will leave the room
That there will be a moment
Makes us stay


Maritime

I shake my hair of all that gets me troubled
But I am too close cropped for it to matter
I wring my hands of all that makes me weary
But I am too flaky dry to falsify my ways
It’s all in the movement of the system
That generates and rubbles to a pile
That forces on the weight of seven years good luck
Not touched, not taken, unwashed

So there you have the sorcery and spells
The kindred brushing up and bruising skin
The boats at harbors never seen and squandered
The heights of sin and loveless maritime

I want to tell you secrets but the truth hurts
There’s nothing there but surface and it isn’t smooth
I want to give you memories of the fancy months
But faith is shorn of all that’s written out

...those optic nerves...

And why I made it home that night I don’t know
I should have slept the desert through the sun
But even if my eyes had seen its glory
The road to home would still be made of glass
The skin on bone of flesh and stone
The stirrups faint with scent of maritime