POEM FORUM
NOCTURNE
The distant sea reaches us here
A tide of will to mane every call
Feeding search-mates to the tree branches
So no voice knows the air it moves thru hair
Sheared from dreams of a part-time
Nightmare working its way thru college
Into careers where full-time fears reside…
Far from the sea, whose mystery
Upon treeless branches
Combs the rays of its moonlight.
Note - Alternate title for this poem is: Consolatory Night
* * *
GRADUATION
The huge corsage of mums
Was a cruel joke
The senior boys pinned on
Glori, who nevertheless
Wore it with pride
On her graduation death-gown.
This poem is from Quintet for a Murdered Outcast
* * * *
PARAGON SANCTUARY
no others of whom i know
share this for stare
lying amidst still dwellers
inside forgotten fields
where grasses are wild as
windswept above their beds.
consolatory ailment,
facing near the budds
flowering pure as blinding
sunlight shone daily to soothe
abandoned dayton sea-blooms
of a truck lot only an accident
can dream in a find the found
contentment is a rustling
of those relics in thoughts
led by my entrapped eyes.
custodian of a solitary spirit
within this earthen vessel
keeper composed of garnered
multiples of the inanimate
inhabitants of an infantined mind
these lines flow from dictation
of some omni-directional quest
as insight sees my own high.
—————————————————-
MISS CLAIR’S CLASS
pupils behind closed eyelids are students of clairvoyance
————————————-
VIBRA-DREAM CURRENTS
Nocturnal notes arose melodious bars
Clouds fed intoxicant angels of solitude.
Sleep woke my dream to dance a suicide
Death-charm only the deepest secret knows.
How even the weakest of my breaths
Invest upon the void something with song.
Will music die or will it survive all these
Hip broken chords floating on night waves…?
Once my fall wed currents the moon said
Among resonators carry a perverse chorus.
To dream death while awake can often be
A willful rejection of what’s felt denied.
Lucidity prays in its sleep to rest ever still
Until this magic trance not break it awake.
————————————————————-
THE MUTE LEFT… NO FOUND NOTEBOOK
while he was here
he did not speak
did not we think
he could not speak?
his leave has left
a stay unknown.
—————————————-
ACCOMPLICE
The crowd
takes
aim and fires…
while I turn
my indifferent
face.
————————————————-
1938 FORD
The jalopy out back
Lulls me to raindrops
Tasting earth in its bliss
In childhood shadows
Where each sigh gives cause
For narcissistic nature
Stirring to breeze herself.
———————-
DIVERSION NO. 2
From a herd-flock overhead their calls
So under-heard by the heavy mooing throng
They swoop thru the dust to dine
At fresh hoof prints
Then go back upward to by
Dusty skies fly dusty trails
I heard the cowbirds call their own…
———————————
CARRIAGE FOR DREAM WORDS
Slumber lines sway baskets dropping omens
Stalking dark alleys into doorways of decay
That flick ticks and tocks from clocks,
And slap still wristwatch hands…
Immobile stranded moment-in-time wears out
The chair in destiny’s waiting room
Cloaked in linens discarded by death
Amorous always, plotting a tryst
For each split second, leaving what’s
Left further than ever in the non beyond.
———————————
STILL LOST: THE FOUND MEMO
Lambs in limbo kneel before a graze
I place your curtsy at stone eyestops
Menace sliding with amorphous sheen
Where near whose marina your cries
Hear their absence in the seafarer’s ear…
Firearms on lease have hired sitters
For their empty arsenals.
Nicotine invades plastered hallways,
Bastions of alabastard invalids who grind
Your wings in mesmerized foot slippers
Coaxing escape into an imaginetic field,
Its daisies drawn by magnets taking art lessons.
The smile of the crazed slips from my lips.
—————————
MYSTERY OF THE MISSING TRESPASSER
For a giant jellyroll the bear
Mistakes you in your bedroll.
Later, his camp covers your tracks.
* * * *
AN UNDONE MUNDANE
One native son rose in northeast Texas enduring
Seasons of sun and rain where our concurrent
Lives tread nurturing untold paths led heartward
Amidst small towns and boundless plains
Wet fields emit an intoxicant grass
And wild brush made fragrant by the rain
I often let always fight bouts lost to nostalgia
Some country music born of this region evokes
A remembered landscape
Where plaintive songs wear leather
Gloves and deliver rural gates their wide
Openings into the wanderings of
Paradise bedazzled in a common pasture
Oh throat vent of the hurt country boy
Tell countless turns and twists the yearns
Of a populace insist be with love tales told as
The long slow dance you behold romance in song
How ageless the pain - tears weep how endless
Your song. words notes wed so long now this night’s
Darkest passage weaves kisses unreceived its
Moist leaves in sorrowful refrain the hidden deep
Corners cover earhorns gone to vacant guides across
Our forlorn landscape where another’s bride
Came to us and stood fair fresh upon the gaze
Said wiltings writing stone
Her day’s own turn into a stare of veils
————————————
BUM STEER
Stray words have chased away
The rightful occupants they
Replace in misleading guides.
——————
HAVE NO FEAR
If one
of us
survives
the other
all
our love
will stay
alive
inside
our one
remaining
heart.
————————————
SOCIAL STRATUM
In order to view their victims,
people who abuse animals
look upward from their lower rung.
————————————————————
BEYOND THE ACCOLADES
…far into quietude grows
joyous my sorrow’s muse.
————————————————
SUITE OF EXCERPTS
From trees a feather brush scene leaves clues
Wailing choirs have cast in robin hues.
*
Once my fall wed currents the moon said
Amidst resonators carry a perverse chorus.
*
Lies are bearing falseness upon the void
Near why won’t lie your purest heart.
*
Quite comfortable in his thug skin
Outcast harbors far past the end roads
Enfold the cold absence of remorse.
*
Faces confound gear in packed straw.
Her manifestation hides among models
Talking mannequins to sleepwalking cars.
*
From school each noon swiftly
To the daily knelt devotion
Until newsprint images of a mute
Taboo led sorrow’s morning
Dew into a quiet rapture.
*
Only what’s inside her walls
May glimpse Garbo
Stillness at a leave robbing
Every breeze its breath…
*
Note: The stanzas above are taken from
the following poems in this order:
TAKING OUT THE HEAD, VIBRA-DREAM
CURRENTS, DELIRIOUS DIVERSIONS,
GRAMMAR SCHOOL REMEMBRANCE,
UNTITLED POEM,
THE VINE-COVERED TRELLIS,
YOUR SPREAD OF CARES SHEARED OF SUN.
————————————————
THE CAPTIVE SONG
So long held silent
Under lock and key…
Who will fall captive
To his song now free?
—————————————
STAY AWAY
I have been called a cat but I am not really that!
neither feline nor canine
I also do not belong where you
would lump me with the species “hue-mine”
so ghastly well-known for its unkind deeds
known for spoiling all the world
if you are among so-called humankind…
mostly I stay where you seldom see me
high in the mountains, a Llama grazing in peace.
(Stay Away is a declaration of species
by the poet Ima Llama)
———————————————-
WITH MY OWN OSTRACIZED KIND
Someone please take me
To where the loathed
Ideals take refuge.
———————————
THE UNKNOWN MISSING
They are kind to the head-count,
Glad to give slated numbers!
What need of the searching comb?
Here we hear nothing at all…
From where strays never call home.
———————————————-
CONVALESCENCE
Turnabout split foghorn muzzles twilight kite patrols
Rummaging their plunged eyes digitized snoopers.
No more passing you always wake distant ores for my
Every captured note’s escape plot to seize at sundown,
Holding curtains of a morning certain to follow wave-indented
Water betrays its unspoken course for consolation.
——————————————————————
RESIGNED TO IMPLOSION
Hear ye the world groan, weary
Of her trashy tenants we.
—————————————-
KILLER ASSEMBLY
As their language of preference
Under a revolving spell cast
Iron turns upon assembled rims
They encircle spider-webbing
Assigned a non-speaking role.
The black veil of no avail will play
Tragic mishap’s mourners courtesy
The widow maker. we call back
Whichever cast spoke truck wheel.
——————————————————
HENRY
It seems a perfect place of honor
So fitting for our valiant Henry
Lying next to the stately lion.
The brave fight his to own,
Sure to lose, so surely as
Angels see how playfully
Heaven bats the cat’s
Presence back to me.
Henry once more above
The soil wherein I wept…
Soft, feline attendant
To my aching loss.
————————————
NIL’S NUPIALS
I stay by the wayside.
Where else to witness
Unfailing union?
The now forgotten
Weds the never known.
——————————————
REMORSE
When first I saw my worst misdeed
(I closed your eyes)
—————————————————
VIGIL
Nightmares have cured my addiction to sleep
Spawning into this fear of lying down.
—————————————————————
VACATED FROM WILD ABANDON
Of all the must-see sights of we 3 vacationers,
Mine alone proved to be the only lonely one.