Poverty

Poverty

brown

drifting on desert air

cries:

Let me down, sand,

bury me!

Cover me deep!

Drop me, wind!

I'm tired,

you support me-

not enough-

yet you never let me go.

Stand!

You push me,

My feet are broken,

my legs collapse.

I fall.

You give me grains.  (They pelt my burnt skin raw).

But none to eat.

I ask for mercy.

My thoughts they burn a mouth already dry

and churn a stomach

bloated

Out!

I don't want light.

I see too clearly now.

Darkness, death,

to die,

as December ice,

winter shade

blue.

To lie thick then thin above a creek,

consoling

rolling off to sea.

Swan's Song

The train and wind

pass swan upon pond

spreading wing in flight

over field of grain-

waving.


Waves shifting sands,

England's

hands of her fields,

catching rides on wheels-

waving.


"The term is through.

You see that steeple there?

My home town's people."

I see them too-

waving.

Silence sighs,

sights die,

others fly-

waving.

Ars Lunga Vita Brevis

Children wearing white,

costumes turning bright,

under an evening sun,

ring around their statues

spinning kisses,

smiles run.


Cool water,

flowing fast,

laughing past,

deepens in a pool,

still as night its other side

already blue.


In the branches hanging low,

pipes sound notes unseen.

Silence steps.

Shadows grow.

Silken threads reflect the moon.

Gold Coin

If only...

Let us imagine,

You and Me

That we have intrinsic worth

That others like the chicken,

man

and the pack rat see.

(We kindle a fire deep inside their hearts.)

The pack rat stores you in his nest.

The chicken pecks and pecks

and finally swallows me into her feathered breast.

And man...

of all the creatures he conceals you best,

he rips out his heart and puts us there instead.

He lusts for us and seals his fate,

not ours,

he's dead.

Dictating Mid-Night

I wake up the night
to write
a manifesto.

I wonder
if they wonder
Why?

I ask if art is dead?
Is the world dying?
What are we waiting for?

The weather slams its fist against the glass.
The light traces shadows,
writing letters.
Questions mark the time.

A part of me that seems to know
it all.
An indescribable spirit of vastness beyond control
transports me through this house of mirrors
each reflecting seconds
years.

I see artists making mirrors of mirrors.
Are we looking?
Do we see?
Or do we lie,
amazed,
amid a thousand images of self?
Do the reproductions sell us to sleep
and dream of deep eternity?

The weather slams its fist against the glass.
The light traces shadows,
writing letters.
Questions mark.
Time remains.

How come?
Where from?
Tomorrow?

I grope and reach for the light.
Another night.

Metamorphosis

There is a light that glides along the siding of our house,
then slips into the dining room and pours itself all out.
It enters not to steal or break, but comes to open wide.

So wide
that it no longer needs to take, for it becomes
the oiled, wooden floor,
the antique chair,
and there-

Underneath the window seat the kitten plays a game of hide an' seek.
She boxes with an imaginary foe,
(a braided rug of rusty reds and grey-mare blues),

That too.