From the inside of music I looked out far
The sky was cloudy, preparing for rain
Sir Rattle on the Mezzo played Sir Elgar
The air fumed sour like the dead champagne
I went for the memories, to see your face
In times when the sky was bright blue
But wherever I turned to, was just empty space
And the most annoying, not a sign of you
But why did you worry about me over time
So desperately strong - I much preferred
To come in the evening, to share some wine
Animated by your smile and kind word
Wouldn't you come, to forget me again?
Send me a note, if you thought to remember
Your teddy, who waits in the sounds of rain
Through the music they care to render.
.
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.”
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Waiting for the dentist’s assessment of my implant screw.
I watch Dogwood buds on dry branches rattle on the window pane.
Why did Shakespeare’s quote pop into my head right then?
while wondering if the bone graft grew,
‘every fair from fair sometime declines.’
The streets are quiet,
no waves left to break on the shores of the silent,
No blood on the curb to draw the stray dogs.
A stray wind blows through the darkest of alley's
like you it forgets where it was that you came from.
And the boarded up windows watch where it is that you've been.
Death doesn't care about your great name.
You think it was clean—
and as one door shuts, the other never opens.
But the dead don't lie still,
they rattle on in your head
when you bite down on all your immoral sins.
They creep through the purple walls,
Children eating lead paint,
Their brains soft as their forgotten prayers
grey hollowed out eye sockets.
You can't kill any of those dead,
but they can kill you,
if you would only but let them.
A mottled crab scuppers its sea legs
in fluorescent foam.
Blue pods rattle on green tides.
Bladder wrack, Mermaid’s Hair
washing tangled ankles.
There are voices in my open mouth,
they roll over a briny tongue,
intoning from the breath
of a luminous spray.
Where the sky hangs low,
gannet beaks gape
trawl the unseen upon a tossing surf.
Mother, father, stranger,
we are all here speaking
through a whirlpool’s gullet
we sink and surface, rise and fall
dished up on a roiling wash
never to find nor land.
A mottled crab scuppers its sea legs
in fluorescent foam.
Blue pods rattle on green tides.
Bladder wrack, Mermaid’s Hair
washing tangled ankles.
There are voices in my open mouth,
they roll over a briny tongue,
intone words from the breath
of spray and brume.
Where the sky hangs, gull beaks open
to scoop the bones of a shoaling surf.
My heart is booming
in a hollow seashell.
This is the Church of a God
disrobed of human thought.
This is the roofless house
of the sun and moon,
a place consecrated to the storm,
to the depths of darkness;
to the bright blades
of the suns daggering rays.
This night the rough
tussles with the calm
and they dance at the edge
of a clashing chaos.
Mother, father, stranger,
we are all here speaking
through a whirlpool’s gullet,
yet who has gone ahead of us
to express this sea-glow
and hat surfaces at the edge
of our own shores?
I scratch symbols out of a matted beard.
Fingertips as smooth as wave-worn pebbles
rattle on an invisible shoreline,
the sound is a kind of speech
a language that only spume and spray understand.
Seven days a week I listen;
rarely does the water translate
any intelligible meaning.
Nevertheless images rise
like dead half-eaten fish.
I pick at the bones and wish
for more impossible things.
Clear crystals eat iron voices.
The wind dies; its bones rattle on.
A stealing wind moves many loose tongues, but where?
"Where' is not the question but a movement,
a rapport pealing from somewhere.
When wind is silent, wind chimes listen.
Speech goes deaf when the wind rings.
A snow laden sky sings under our feet.
Icicles chime in the sunlight.
Tinkling is the light.
standing
playing a part
apart at the party
out of water
fish swim together
forgot that
there are no balloons
just arty talk
the occasional sing
at blue collar america
elbows sharpened
at the bloodless buffet
diamond rings rattle on wine glasses
ice cubes click teeth
talking into wineglasses
bowties circle – cackle
elsewhere
babysitters watching
as i do
I first saw Snakey in my flower garden.
I had moved a large rock and he was curled up under it.
There were some beautiful X’s in his pattern.
I did not want to know if there was a rattle on his bum.
So I put the rock back and let him continue his slumber.
The next time I saw Snakey, he was slithering in the yard.
He had dashed around the base of a walnut tree.
Going fast, traveling for what reason? Was he after a mouse?
I watched, but could not see at this distance.
I am pretty sure it was the same snake. Tan with a bit of yellow.
About a week later I found Snakey at the top of my concrete steps
They are in my side yard which lead up to my second garden.
It was a sunny day. He was curled up in a fetal position, soaking up rays.
I decided to go a different way that day.
I was not afraid, but he looked incredibly comfortable.
I did not want to disturb him.
It snowed last night;
taking out the trash,
there I am, dozing in a garden swing set
deep within July.
It could be another year.
July in a London park
lying next to her,
wisps of gentleness in a public place,
dandelion seeds parachuting upwards.
Snow falls onto my eyelids.
The trash I am hefting
is from Madrid
there are straw hats and the ruins
of several cathedrals in it.
It should be heavier
but the Iberian condors add a weightlessness
to all things too heavy to bear
across a snowy backyard asphalt.
Chill bones rattle on the swing set,
icicles weep from its wrought iron frame.
She is singing in the kitchen,
coral lips savoring what she has yet to cook.
A skein of geese are crossing over
heaped frozen spires.
Summer shorts and a T
rustle in a summer breeze, then freeze.
standing
playing a part
apart at the party
out of water
fish swim together
forgot that
there are no balloons
just arty talk
the occasional sing
at blue collar america
elbows sharpened
at the bloodless buffet
diamond rings rattle on wine glasses
ice cubes click teeth
talking into wineglasses
bowties circle – cackle
elsewhere
babysitters watching
as i am
In a warm bath tub, you and me,
bath salts,bubbles,perfumed water,
naked together, knee to knee,
trickles time, faster and faster!
Touch of soft skin in aqua warm,
passions aflame, forest fire,
thunder, lightening, rumbles storm,
lips on lips, bare chest, live wire!
Skin to skin in timeless embrace,
fingers tips trace contours of mind,
heart wanders in unguided daze,
where love can see but death is blind!
All of oceans unmeasured depth,
expanse of the limitless sky,
Love can fill with a single breath,
may be we live or we may die!
Half lit forests with crescent moon,
howl of wind shakes denuded trees,
unseen danger lurk in sand dunes,
undeterred we love, carnal peace.
Lets live this moment, moments last,
a few more moments until dawn,
to be swept, buried in times past,
loves farewell, before I am gone!
Guns rattle on in distant night,
abandoned lanes and broken homes,
in a lost cause, no wrong, no right
I journey soon to where death roams.
“The night of passion and desire” poetry contest
5th placement
sponsor Faraz Ajmal
Written 07/09/2020
She is older now, so I let the small things go.
She’s not wiser than she was, yet how the stories flow.
I let her spin them out for the fifteenth time today.
My ear grows tired of the noise and tunes itself away.
She’s more needy now; she wants me to clean her toes.
She even asked me once to pop the pimple on her nose!
There is always something, always another demand.
I grimace a bit, then comply with each of her commands.
It will soon be me, Queen Bee with all her powers.
I won’t remember anything, and I’ll rattle on for hours.
I hope my children will be loving toward my fragile frame.
and have kind and gentle hearts as they watch me slowly wane.
In the kitchen she sits on a three-legged stool.
She died in the living room,
her heart burst, and out flew
all the skills of her hands.
Now she cooks the twilight between the days,
the dried fruits of yester-years.
I watch her thoughts take shape,
how they sway to the music of Glen Miller,
another memory she gave this space to.
These words are partly hers,
the flavors are mixed. I pay a rent
as interlocutor.
Room corners are still planted
by her broad-leaved thumbs.
I water the old ferns as if I were
the curator of her old friends.
Kitchen cups rattle on their hooks,
chipped china chimes upon moonlight jingles.
In life we never did meet, but at night
she polishes my eyes.
Spits on a yellow duster and gently wipes
until something shines in me, and I know her
and she knows me.
Faces come at me as stricken
as graveyard moons.
The supermarket hangs heavy,
laden as it is with neon anchors.
The aisles are runways for empty eyes,
a few sections contain searching bodies.
She turns to me at the check-out,
she has me tagged;
wine bottles from the mark-down bin
rattle on the moving counter.
She clutches a red plastic pocketbook.
Brown knee-length boots, dimples.
Gold button earrings - worn-out pretty;
hard liquor in soft bottles.
There is just us, and the
shuttling hands of the shop-worker'
She has to talk. "Sorry," she says.
I wonder if I should apologize also?
I think we are just forgiving each other
for being here in an awkward moment,
in the late hour, exposed like this.
Outside, the car park is lifting off
into the night.
A thousand aliens are leaving
to search for salvation.
I can't look at them,
each face is a small moon shining.
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