Tag Archives: free verse

Holding the Moment (a cento)

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Little Birds are hiding,
where statues remember me youthful and blessed.
No birds. No blossoms on the dried flowers.
So, art thou feathered, art thou flown?

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a grief that may not die.
When night comes on gently,
the larks like thunder rise and suthy round.

This entire poem uses lines from other poets.  However, I did replace Yeats’ “sadness” with “grief” in L6.
L1: Little Birds (Lewis Carroll)
L2: Summer Garden (Anna Akhmatova)
L3: I Don’t Remember The Word I Wished To Say (Osip Mandelstam)
L4: The Fledgling (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
L5: Sonnet 30 (Shakespeare)
L6: The White Birds (William Butler Yeats)
L7: Dream Variations (Langston Hughes)
L8: The Autumns Birds (John Clare)

Flying Around My Back

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A down and out vagrant, silently singing the
blues through scarlet eyes, weeps upon this
lustrous silk lap while we wait for her highness, who
sits on hands dripping with egg yolk.

Painted cheeks and impeccable hair—nothing short of
an illusion.  We perform for them, for you, and for
us, but not for me.

Never for me.

:::when I stop:::

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Thirty-four before seven, but
twenty-six after six.
In a bewitching mist, bodies
are exchanged, old for young,
clean for soiled–male for female.
Half past six, but
thirty before seven.
Shoulder blades come undone.
Ankles turn into fat drippings.
Water, flushed with flesh,
absorbs bucolic knots, along
with the sweat that girdles them.

Household Songs: The Brief and Unremarkable Life of Joseph Clarence Strauss/XII

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Hands–puckered, pale, and patched–
slowly grow stiff
in the geometric sea that once kept
them warm.

All branches are struck by
time’s uncontrollable thunder.
Incomplete trees line landscapes, clinging fiercely to
shifting earth.

Broken Bars

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Empty as David’s seat, a befouled mouth shrieks
at high Sturgeon Moon, gasping for air–what
little can be had–within an offensive red sea,
which swirls malevolently throughout multitudes
of calloused feet, taunting us with decades of
dying heads.

Wrenched from ancient jaws with unremitting
brutality, sovereignty–smoother than pink root
and whiter than snow–gallops away from smoldering
earth around thick, sinuous necks.

Faithful soldiers, once unyielding in their loyalty, vanish
into a sylvan embrace, forever silent in their surrender.

to the meadowlark (that I would like to be)

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Rain’s lyrical cadence haunts him (Whitman and Eliot too) – but,
it doesn’t dare deposit its wrathful hands on me.

At present, grass is drying (as I lie sighing) beneath a lemon-hued
gorge, overflowing with endless jubilant, unconcealed song.

Clover eyes (blind forever) tumble down over my swarthy skin.
Index finger knuckles brush them away.  Tears remain.

If I stay silently through the night (may it last forever), will you
harbor me within your celestial enemy voice?

phobia theory

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Moon fingers laugh with remarkable lucidity
but weep when the rains of April come.
Wrap me in spheres of calcium, flowing fast.
I will not cling to thin vibrating barriers.

Memories implode through convoluted pathways
(forget me not, but ring around the rosy) – what
folly, what fun – yet, if I may, must I repeat
myself (girdled in shame) as you demand?

Household Songs: The Brief and Unremarkable Life of Joseph Clarence Strauss/XI

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Her magisterial gaze ensures that
two inattentive eyes
remain in the dark, polluted streets of
Lantern Yard.

Winged lambs, daubed in bronze,
flit past plasmic
lace organelles, waging a shameless battle for
restless minds.