MIDNIGHT ROMANCE
Enveloping my love surround midnight
In this evening I found you fair favor
In romance under the moon bathing lights
So obsidian charcoal as laver
Blacken as a beautiful drink absinthe
You are the ashes of roses red lead
Your lips of ivory and porcelain
A corporate vision of crimson red
Heat blazes air love fire eludes smoke
Come allow me to bestow this Sable
Dark sunsets cerulean then dark smoke
I place it on your body such beauty
It's your beauty still yet the sun gone rogue
Oh! darling, allow me these chance words light
10/14/17
You Texas Cuspidata!
Not you, and not a curse:
Taxus cuspidata, for Japanese Yew!
So, don’t confuse a plant with the Ibex
Ilex serrata – that’s Christmas Holly
Or Japanese Winterberry
Butterflies, butternuts, a Buttinsky?
Shut your eyes, it’s Conocarpus erectus
(Pastor here is only saying "Buttonwood" in Latin)
Meanwhile in nature, the pines of Japan
Are dwarfed like bottled thunder:
Pinus thunbergiana
The Christmas Spirit is perennial in China (?)
Schinus terebinthifolius
(Again, Latin for another plant: Christmasberry)
Try to bonsai gladly;
A creeper in your home or villa;
Haha! Bourgainvillea glabra
My dad called this beauty, Pride of India!
Myrtle set me right, but India won at the end:
Laegerstroemia indica
Neighbors, boyhood buddies, international relations?
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry? No plant connection:
Just Hackberry named Celtis sinensis
(c) Modified 20170417, Deo. This poem was previously published in my book in 2005 (UnAmerican Education: Poetry and Politics, by Red Lead Press)
The paint recalls, layered and petulant, groans
mindless in its ground, it decomposes.
Granules of hematite, pale traceries of gypsum,
the crevasses of cave wall are soot soothed.
Layered and petulant the palm of man appears
charcoal dusted, amongst the antelope and bison.
Do you hear the drum’s call, the hollow
wail of bone flute, the slap of bare feet,
the drone of chant?
Red-lead or orange crystalline roars atop
the gummy white in Pharaoh’s tombs.
See the deathly desert and the blood of power
as it paves the way; ochre, gypsum,
copper blue, groan mindless in its ground.
Do you hear the drums call, the hollow
wail of wooden flutes, the rattle of the tambourine
the clink of bell, as bare feet dance entranced?
Decomposed, composed, each grain
calls to mind pale traceries of the ages left behind.
Soot-soothed, charred coal outlines the faces
of God and man upon the walls of time.
First Published by Mused 2013
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