Saturday, November 21, 2020

Previously Published in Epigraph . . .


To Spin Or Not To Spin

Static transporter taunts me
infinitely across a room of mirrors,
reminders of necessity.  Cold
motivators of perpetual movement.
Door closed, the only out is miles
away and in the exact location.
Prisoners present, assuming the position,
wait for instigative whistle.  Detonation
of energy, blur of sneakers, knees, 
sweat.  Somewhere blisters form, calluses
burst.  Nothing stops
but thoughts.  Body is reduced to motion's 
machine.  Automated
muscle memory propels past will.  Desire
to stop, exhaled repeatedly.  An hour
flies into another signal.  Release.
Door re-opened.  Legs hesitate, stumble,
begin to remember the feel of solid ground.




Previously Published in Envoi Poetry . . .

 

Hemophile


I am not vampire.  I do not desire
to taste or feed.  Disgusting
sacrilege.  I worship the vein,
the sacred vessel embracing brilliant
blue corpuscles.  The accidental cut,
oxidizing blazing red rivulets.  Running
ruins to be remembered, retracted
as effigies of the essence
of everything.  Renfield's eloquent
echo:  The blood is the life.  The blood
is the life.



Previously Published in Envoi Poetry . . .



Building a Braintrust

in a wallless house.  I borrowed conceptual
confinements from the depths of my past.  Disappointments
cling, lending their shallows and shadows.  Falty 
furnishings for future guests.  Guess
their solid
                 arity dissolved with my conscious.  Objections
to pre-conceived ideologies have been wavering
through the windows.  I recognize
their wanderlust.  Breadcrumbing
has no place.  Here,
the company line in mute
                                         able parameters.  Mark
your moments in chalk.
The outlines are soulless but significant.
Every body [of brilliance] must have a believable point
for provability.



Previously Published in Envoi Poetry . . .


The Chase

I tie a word to a kite, string
                  up
it, chase it       over
                                and through
sky's river.  Rushing
clouds batter, edges fray, fade.
Body begins to lose
ground.  Refusing 
                              the pull
                              of gravity,
I pen a new law, send it out
into the wind.  They meet, mate,
match wits.  Neither wins, but the idea
glides
     slowly                     back
                                         into my fish.


Previously Published in Ends of the Earth . . .



Tasting Feathers

felled from murders
of crows, I am Raven.
Beast of black.  Imagination's 
carrion.  I devour flock and
flight.  My vision,
crossed caws cruel.  Talons
torture, tearing tendons and beaks.
An amalgamation of claws defines
my throne, still bleeding.
I reign in their dark
echo, as a self-
appointed god.



Previously Published in Em Dash Lit Mag . . .



Hearing Loneliness

In bed I lie, feigning
sleep.  My mind, ever alert, begins
to pick apart the night.  It starts with
          a drip
          ping
          faucet
I cannot bring myself to stop,
merges with the metronomical ticking
of an alarm clock that has been
rendered unnecessary.  The not-so-
static noise of TV infoercials, that sad
semi-silenced soundtrack, a constant
din lulling me into complacency.  Groan
of over-sized springs, my side of a double
bed that knows no form
other than my own.
 



Previously Published in Em Dash Lit Mag . . .


Baby Turtles and [Busted?] Condoms


The perfect surprise:  soft green flippers
peddling past my toes.  So determined to get
their goal.  Like you, my serpentined seraph,
so feral in your pursuit of . . . everything.  You
desire the universe.  Forcing your own parameters
over and through the norm.  I am just
another niche you style.  Placing me
on a shelf [re-]labeled:  contained.  I forget
to mind that you forgot to aerate my lips.
I embrace the staleness of this slower suffocation.
Preferring its welcoming numbness
to the consummate barrage of [in]consistent
image projections:  your full frontal flashes
confronting me daily.  (Come nightly they haunt
me.)  Until I too am reduced to [focus on] a pile
of discarded . . . tissued . . . knocks.



      *Em Dash Editor's Choice Award -- June 2013


Previously Published in Epigraph . . .

To Spin Or Not To Spin Static transporter taunts me infinitely across a room of mirrors, reminders of necessity.  Cold motivators of perpetu...