Night splints hold teeth in position,
I believe.
There is a baseless fear of dismemberment,
of awakening without the sum of one’s parts,
like the cave of a missing tooth.
I lie in bed running, and too fast.
Of what do predators dream?
Category Archives: poetry
Tempests
Having come from the seas of your storms and decades of disquiet, I step, directionless, on an unmoving Earth. Being tooled for havoc, I despair of knowing what might fill this brazen peace, this wild surcease.
[Art: The Ship, by Salvador Dali]
Womb
Do not speak of it.
Do not see me.
Give what you have to give,
willing or no,
and don’t mind the scars.
The remnants of your gown,
oft removed,
keep us coming back for more.
But, in time,
you will womb a tree
that reaches to Heaven.
***
[Art by Zdzislaw Beksinski]
Jolly Roger
I saw a UFO last night-
Looked like a pirate ship.
But, soon as I turned on the light,
it vanished with a blip.
Must’ve seen me- was it shy
of being talked about?
“Come back!”, I said, to empty sky-
My light, I turned it out.
[Art by Francisco Fonseca]
Blindness
From birth, his eyes were like baubles of glass—ornamental. Yet, he had been given a second sight like a vast array of solar sails, fanned and latticed- a sure conduit to enduring memory and the airs of the world. He authored colors, and spoke them into life.
[Art by Francis Picabia…The Joy in Blindness]
Delinquents
All asunder
In his hurried dream
of effervescence,
of disintegration,
our man had a knowing
that his neglected heart was more than the sum of his parts.
***
Art: Paul Klee, The Man of Confusion, 1939
Firefly
All the days that I knew you, you hummed while you were working. No one ever had to tell you what to do. Most of us smiled as you bustled about. Some rolled their eyes, but I thought of you as a bee going from flower to flower. You made a song, and the angel was in the details.
***
Art: “As the Volante”, by Remedios Varo
Gently, gently
Though my bones are broken,
I will stand erect for you
while you’re in this room.
Would a nicer house help us?
One with rooms further away,
but with furniture placed more warmly?
Each day,
the headlines grow more stale,
and I despair of a gentler world.
***
Art: Litzlberg am Attersee, 1915, by Gustav Klimt
Goodnight
Mister whiskers, curled up in dream. You, in the faded recliner, the motors of your snore like a cheetah’s purr. The TV on mute in blue aquarium light. Outside the window, a borealis of feathering snow. And I, in a sated sigh, put my feet up too. We go gently into that goodnight.
Aremyfeetofftheground 