From The Poets Laboratory
Wings are eyelids.
A mind can be left aside on a workbench
while the brain teaches the sky to sleep.
Mother lives in a jar in an old curiosity shop.
Father enters the world bringing extinct words
he has found in the future.
Your child is not yours; it is a god you found
in a self-help book. You create symbols,
give them meaning, sell them for nothing.
Invisible pennies drop from the hands of a beggar.
The laboratory smells of lilacs it is your mothers
favorite color, purple gives her a headache.
You build talking machines, they march up and down
on spindly metal legs, their feet tap-dance.
Here you are a family of one, the solar system
lives in one eye, the other is a deep space
where poetry births its many ghosts,
they arrive as a blue flame when you ignite
the rocket fuel in your Bunson burner.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2023
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