as there are days senselessas 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
the image is not mine and the creator unknown
ReplyDeleteedited from the end:
ReplyDeleteas 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
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.
ReplyDeleteYour 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.
Well, let it never be said I don't like being ridden hard and put up wet. :-D
ReplyDeleteBy 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
ReplyDelete