Young lovers watched from a roofless car
The full moon kissed the Northern Star
May slides through winter roots.
It comes like a wet dog to your table,
stays to dry itself, turns into a canary.
It is an old man riding a bike backwards
into greening rainbows.
May dangles on a washing-line
of billowing clouds.
May is oil
for the broken engine in the barn,
the motor that has not worked all winter,
but now you hear it
purring softly in your dreams.
May is a new whisker on an old mouse,
a roofless church for hoot owls,
it grows sunlight
on the sleek backs of river otters,
then comes to basks on your porch.
The summer was lush with death,
it turned the hare into a twirling dervish,
the raccoon to a pantomime villain,
forced mice
to sing in the jaws of predators.
The woods are bare now,
trees rattle,
birds clatter twiggy wings,
briar tangles
in the bare throats of scarecrows.
October gourds glow, there serrated grins
reflected within the eyes
of late stalking cats.
Nocturnal winds sweep in,
bone corseted myths
ride upon the cracked racks
of desiccated lambs.
Petticoats hang from gristly limbs
much tattered by thorns.
By December, the skeletal woods
crunch inwards like roofless catacombs.
Reckless children are lost
in a leafless maze of fairytales.
Mothers tag the young
like puppy dogs, vaccinate them
against dismay.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
reent edit
Her limbs bloomed first
then her long sleek bones
formed angles
that seemed to touch
a roofless wonder.
The earth painted her
in a dark room.
A suggestion of starlight,
just an impression
flowers on the verge of her
when she is seen
as an instant memory.
A dark woman,
her soul as lightless as creation
before the light blinded us all
to the depth of God.
On late summer evenings,
or upon winters chilled looking-glass sky
reality will change its mask
just for those who seek their place.
For a few magical moments
space and time will unfold its sheltering tent;
and the margins of light and dark move apart
from each other.
A person whose insight is often an out-sight
may discover his or her lane.
That path will not appear,
it is only seen by the lamp of mind
when it searches for its purpose
within an infinitely expanding atlas.
There in that roofless instant may be glimpsed
our onward road and upon it our compass-finding soul
traveling back to where all lanes began.
The wise will breathe in deeply,
gathering a tidal swell of gratitude to them.
The thoughtful will know for certain
that their lane has been mapped and charted,
and that we are all journeying
to a home we never truly left.
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?
In a small Russian village
the people speak like animals
and their animals listen like humans.
Deep in a Malay forest
there are apes that love God
with a slow burning love
that turns their hair orange.
They are called. "old man of the forest"
but they are as simple as children.
In Borneo head-hunters used to eat tigers
but now tigers eat their fearful eyes.
In a Derbyshire village
they once threw stones at strangers
they knew that the newcomers
were bad news
but they had not the words to say so.
They spoke a language of salted manure
combed through the wool of a native tongue.
Foxes have dens, and men have hearth and home,
but the earth translates best that which is not said
a a roofless voice all may understand.
Sorrow climbs
its roofless tower.
Descends to be gut deep,
genitalia deep.
Now it has the weight
of rain clouds.
A smoked umber
moves through
an invisible throat.
Fine hairs
are stroked to arousal.
A somnambulant wrist
pushing a whirring hand.
Pressure rubs saturated sounds
though probing fingers.
The belly of a curving drum
thrums, moves us to a place
where nothing matters
but the next note.
Saša Milivojev
THE STRANGER
(Weary of World’s Pain)
Stranger to the audience.
Stranger in the community and the family.
A stranger to one’s own mother,
A shadow to one’s own shadow,
A foreigner in the country of one’s own,
in every land he has been in
In the town he was born in
Abandoned by hope
in every town worldwide
on every planet one could find.
A worldwise vagabond,
With disheartened face,
targeted by murderers and madman alike
Across distant deserts and seas
Windbourne with no goals or dreams.
Betrayed by everyone,
Abandoned tranquilly
“friends” fiends,
He has forgiven them,
Perished to the infinite
Never to be back again.
For noone will ache,
love or forgive,
man is a machine with nothing to give.
All life in one suitcase
unsettled, macabre
soaring across dreary universe
homeless, roofless,
with no dreams or aim,
weary of World’s pain.
Translated by Ljubica Yentl Tinska
www.sasamilivojev.com
There is no roof on my house,
The water pours in when it storms,
The sun shines when its beautiful,
Still I live in my roofless house,
Always awaiting the sunny days,
The days when I lay and bask,
Always awaiting the rain to stop,
Yet the rain is cold, sobering,
And the true life is shown,
Only in my roofless house
There she is, she’s grown beyond root and branch,
at peace despite the incontinence of an unlooked for
wisdom.
And there I am,
of a sudden snagged by her knurled spell
as if she were the Virgin Mary, and I
a stumbling beast wandering through her world.
I want to keep my silence
let only my hot breath snort
but there, on a creaky bench a crone radiates,
as a young girl would
holding her newborn joyfully up to the heavens.
I surface from my reverie, my mood rocketing upwards
to a roofless place where the ages, are all still babes
rocking in a shining crib.
Shoulders back and head high I stroll past her.
“Good morrow mother,” I say with a light-head
(the archaic phrase seems appropriate, as if now
were already tomorrow).
“Good morrow good beast, will you witness”?
“I shall,” I reply,
“for am I not almost an angel, part conjurer,
part diviner, part beatific daemon,
a human thing, growing to be ever ageless?”
Together we both laugh out loud
as children may do.
I live in a roofless place
I do not have an expensive fur
You might not like the way
I feed myself
And I know, you neither like my presence
nor my appearance
as I'm
drowned with muddy paws
on a rainy day
juddering with runny nose
on a snowy day
and roasted with shiny dirty coat
on a sunny day
Yet under this already darkened
brightness of the sun
I'm wounded with heavy pebbles
and threatening rods
and the voices showing disgust.
I'm a stray
But I have a life too.
There it stands, desolate and alone
That roofless shell where the winds
Still whisper of the past
When scampering children's squeals
And wheeling seabirds' cries
Rose thinly through the air.
A thatched croft from which a healthy living was scraped
A shirt-sleeved man, braces showing,
Bald pate bunneted against the sun,
Bent over to tend his plot
An aproned woman cheerfully shooing away the hens
To collect the eggs for the evening meal
Beside a silvery sea stretching
To the horizon
Hiding the city lights and its imagined pleasures
Until those dreams drew the young away
Watched sadly by the elderly pair
Their exodus damning
The island to its desolation
Where still the birds' cries squeal
And the wind through the grass softly whispers
Surrounding the now silent croft
In the salt sharp air
What homely pleasures such a life once offered
Now the graveyard of fading memories
While the once busy city streets
Stand empty drained of life
As the virus continues to take its toll
An endless journey I took
to find you beyond the darkness of illusion,
searched for you in the maze outside,
but the path ended at the edge of time,
on the precipice of despair.
The pursuit abandoned
in the labyrinth of confusion,
I returned home disenchanted,
discovered a new door inside unlock,
leading to a roofless room,
opening to the cosmic aura,
and in the lighted stillness of bliss
I found you defined for me.
June 28, 2020
Contest : Strand Completely New (2) Any Theme Any Form
Sponsor : Brian Strand
Sorrow climbs
its roofless tower
Descends to be thigh deep –
genitalia deep.
Now it has the weight
of rain clouds.
A smoked umber
moves through
an invisible throat.
Fine hairs
are stroked to arousal.
A drowning wrist
above a whirring hand.
Pressure rubs saturated sounds
from probing fingers.
The belly of a curving drum
thrums, moves us to a place
where nothing matters
but the next note.
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