Sunday, July 12, 2009

the nugatory road

as there are days senseless
as spent shotgun shells

as nouns and verbs scatter
like so many autumn leaves

before the nugatory road
of my hunt

and my hands ache for wood
and my lungs to bite

the sharp end of winter
drained dry of purgatory

in the sweet sweat of labor
returned by gravity

from the pools
of my eternal salvation

found between corkscrewed
tresses

falling as daggers
from her quarter moon smile

5 comments:

Trée said...

the image is not mine and the creator unknown

Trée said...

edited from the end:

as rain upon the desert
this landscape I know

in the cold quiet
rejection

a glass without
water

a plate unlike
the others

set aside

tossed

shunned

damned

to

isolation

as we seek
what is known

and gather what
fits

matching this
to that

laughing at the
familiar

and eating the same
meals

visiting the same
restaurants

traveling the same
paths

worn lifeless
by unthinking feet

lost in the memory
of what never was

forever wishing that black
was white or white was black

that dawn was noon
and noon was night

Autumn said...

Each time that I read something like this, I wonder how I shall ever recover enough to move beyond it, and yet each time, I do. Somehow. Though in that moment when I hit the comment button, I have no idea how. Dramatic perhaps, but that is the thought quickstepping to the waltz of words. Reading your words is such an exquisite pleasure, the intelligence and the creativity, the poetry and the honesty. I hear this so clearly as I read it, crackling wood, rustling leaves, icy streams all present in the timbre of voice, warm, seasoned, both solemn and spirited. The melody so sonorous, as arresting as the words are, they become like echoes on the wind, and concentration is needed, achoring is needed so not as to get swept away by the loveliness of those subtle, deep vibrations, like a pulse beating.
Your edit at the end, of a different voice somewhat, here the words crescendo, roaringly solitary (in places), intense and consuming. The last four couplets are, to finish quickly in order to see the new post, outstanding, may have to devote an entire B to these.

Trée said...

Well, let it never be said I don't like being ridden hard and put up wet. :-D

Trée said...

By the way, I may need to read this one, for like almost all poetry, it is in the reading that the flower blooms and perfumes the air with the spirit of intent. This poem in particular is aging well in my mind, which is to say, I like it better today, having just read it aloud, than I did when I wrote it. :-D