Tag: poetry

squeeze play (20170525)

crow5 Comments

remember play-doh
the salty pasty smell
the unnatural colors
how it squished
between your fingers like mud or bread dough
the little die press that came with it
how you got in trouble
for playing with it in the house
because eventually
you’d drop a piece in the carpet
no amount of kneading
could disentangle it from the fibers
the disappointment of leaving the lid
off a can and finding
a little salty blob of stone

but the worst
–both an enlightenment
and eclipsing of some inner sun–
was mixing the colors
to make rainbow stars and cylinders
discovering too late
for your childhood ocd
that you couldn’t unmix them
that once entangled
they remained forever so

as an adult you realized
why they never bothered
to include brown in the set
since it was the inevitable
conclusion

raisins (20170524)

crow6 Comments

today is one
of those wordless days
when all the words
(and all the king’s men)
don’t do any good
remain buried
deep in the chest
like trying to pass
a hairball

from space
i have looked down
into the chasm
as it yawned
(here’s a bedtime story
and a glass of water)
and felt the void at my back
folded like raven’s wings

nothing stirred before
or behind
only me
in between
some kind of ridiculous meat bridge
between
thought and deed
desire and action
life and death
silence and more silence

here is one
of those wordless places
where the syllables dry up
grapes becoming raisins
under an invisible sun

something feathered (20170522)

crow13 Comments

she opens her mouth
a bird escapes
some magic trick

silent bird
with its beak
welded shut
by shame
by trauma

–haaaaaaaaaaaa–
the sound
you breathe out
through your mouth
the sound of wings

you can’t breathe and lie
at the same time, girl

——

for
dVerse ~ Poets Pub
dVerse Quadrille #33: Sound Off!

an impromptu visitation (20170517)

crow15 Comments

i hear a rustling
like dried leaves
caught in a hot wind
coming from the spare room

i surprise my father
in the act of changing clothes

though silent
he seems angry
mouth clenched closed
like a vise
eyes squinting in judgment

you know you’re dead, right?

next year
he will be one hundred years old
and has been haunting me
from house to house for almost
a quarter of that century

both he and the clothes
are transparent
and when i remind of
of his non-corporeal state
he loses the angry look

though burly in life
he shrugs his grave-thin shoulders
fades away
with the sound of a brittle page
of an old book being turned

scissors (20170516)

crow3 Comments

the invisible woman repeats numbers
like those soviet radio stations

my head fills with curvilinear
whorls of snail shells and fingerprints

the smell of cigarette smoke that is not
from a cigarette seeps into my garage

as i put clothes in the laundry basket–
–this night is coming to a close

and i am still knotted up like a boy
scout’s shoelaces

it will take a sharp pair of scissors
to release me

voices in flight (20170515)

crow7 Comments

consider the old saying
that every time a bell rings
an angel gets its wings

and think of all the times
you have heard a cash register chime
or the wall street stock exchange
or a fire alarm
or the low slow clangs of cowbells
as they are led to the slaughterhouse

what the hell are those angels making
their feathers out of
misery, greed, blood and fire?

i have always preferred birdsong
an earthly tune to be sure
unfettered yet surrounded by sky
even if it is all about territory
and sexual conquest
and where the best worms are