Fickle, flaky, Freudian in
the way of a nasal winter –
hiding on a park-bench
pidgeon’d hole o’ Gram
pa’s forgotten stash.
Dive, dive, dive, oh wing-ed
wonder, wallowing on the shell-
crusted beach, almost in
noon-sleep, snoring through
whiskers thick with doubt.
One can only shiver
against gulls, gobbling
a breakfast, marooned and
still. Shout at their noisy
music, with sea-shanty poker-
faces. They may be raucous,
but at least they choir.
Morning bones, cracked at the seams,
splice themselves into subway-tag poetry.
Ignore the crowd, they’ll trace
their own lines
back to when the post-
man knew where to go.
Still damp letters in stilettos
march and fall through city
grates that can smell soar feet.
But these feet write semaphore
that only sing
when you read backwards on
pages wind-blown forward,
east of the garden.
Words, stolen
from other people’s lives, hearth tales, fireside
songs, thirteen-year old misfit
adventures crouch and whisper their
secrets
out from
the corners, feed
a hungry pen, growling
for colors on gray paper.
Once you can no longer smell the parchment,
eyes adjust,
and life begins.
The ghosts are hungry for more.
But chiming bells overflow the glass
and teeth chatter in the gray sun.
There is music in the gravel tide,
washing up like red medicine –
bloodied capsules of cotton-talk,
gauze-word, suture-see. It only
gags the throat of a traffic laden wood.
Clouds crippled by the old songs, are still
just clouds.
Can you taste the buds of blue, jagged
sweat germinating tomorrow’s winter
garden, stuffed in a teapot on top of your lone
May Pole? Maybe the French kiss
nightmare taught a thing or two about that
unnamed wishing well world?
With hunched-back scar-tissue tongue
you lasso the last, unlucky
stragglers from the playground of ordinary
sights, you suck the juice out of the sunlight.
No more wrought-iron tail feathers for
this sidewinder peasant.
Suckling the teat of frozen landscapes, you
always forgot what nourished most
until they circle back round and
stump you from behind –
where all the best tales are.
Image found here
Bent shoulders squeeze tight against the
seven-layer’d Sheol, curtained against
a world, upturned, and studiously
oblivious to a two-breasted sparrow,
with shark-teeth and winter’d schemes.
Words, like rainless clouds hopscotch over
solemnities, trinkets, experiments, names.
They jostle for supremacy with other shelved
things, like those good ideas, old friendships,
and Dad’s breakfast table dreams – the talk
of little boys of unwhisker’d pedigree.
Watch a man’s skin curl under
flame while doing your nails, and then shrug
away the smell before answering
your phone. It could mean playground
talk, pajama time, and networking to
stop the voices.
Still, hiding there under the clock,
breathless and stoic, that pushes only red and
black and the carbon of sweaty
palms, are the patient lines on an ambivalent
face. Come the creaks and queries and
counting petals on the tired
sidewalk. But garden variety promises, wrapped
in gum wrappers are stuck in pigeon shit, refusing
release into the Cadillac morning on a
farm truck day. So, flow down trucker
tears, leathered and unbidden,
like remembrances of the somnolent road.
Those kind of tears.
Image: Circe by Wright Baker
There is a place,
under the porch where the rattlesnakes are snoring
with one eye open, the other one hungry.
…
There is a time,
when the lush day-damp dissipates into a certain thinness
of corduroy dreams pushed up against unpainted walls.
…
There is a place,
where the shadows have darker shadows
and light is the unwelcome uncle, drunk before drinks.
…
There is a time,
after 1963, when the streetlamps meant something
more than the start of a restless evening.
…
There is a place,
where rye ‘n water and pickled herring and asparagus spears
shared secrets to little boys of parent parties.
…
There is a time,
sandwiched somewhere between lunch money and
shit wine in a coffee cup when dime-store dreams were enough.
…
There is a place,
of a certain ripe solitude, a kind of naked jamboree
when conversation stalls but silence takes over.
…
There is a place. It was not then.
There is a time. It was here.
He ran out of words right about the time
his hope hit a wall like winter in June.
Lucidity escaped through loss, and
a life runs its twisting course
beside another’s parallel stream, just out of view.
Where to the waning West became of
words that once transfixed golden-souled,
silver-penned pirates of the journey?
They scaled the hull of pitch and yaw ships
laden with gifts from the sand of distant shores.
There it is again, once song of the Muse,
now the Siren’s cry like a whip of lustrous thought,
piercing ears, thirsty for the music of sojourn.
“Listen, listen,” she sings and, by singing, hopes
to be free from something that never bound her.
He would answer but his voice is drowned
in the shriller insistence of a mermaid’s lonely tale.
A single wave-tossed rock provides her stage.
But loudly though she sings, louder still the waves
that divide. All others are silenced against her solemn tones.
Laboring under misapprehension of invisible dangers,
she notices not that all ships have left. The song she
knows well has merely chased all hope of rescue.
Soon, her shrinking solo speaks no longer to gods nor men,
for without a voice, there are no more voices.
Picture found here
Silence, except for the insistence of ocean.
Backdrop for seabirds, arguing in a grumpy rain.
I let contemplation keep company with
a stubborn fire warming wet wood,
hungry for more than it is willing to give.
Morning.
These mangy hills, full-cliffed, sprung from
the deep places of the earth,
thrust their faces out to greet
a colorless sky, too dark to laugh,
too green to die, but not too proud to cry.
Spring.
There is a stooped and bent feeling,
cast abroad in the air, breathing heavily.
A tangled scene, untimely brought,
coils itself, unprotected against the beauty of
a moist, unsatisfied wind.
Oregon.
You may feel sweet and affectionate to the touch,
sporting so pungent and perfect a fragrance,
look inappropriately wild of color, heaven-hued,
in your pinkling glow of impish immaturity.
You may wink but an eye, lilting out
your childish humming in Spring-borne perfection,
and sit, alluring and still, batting new-soiled lashes
in expectation, summoning your lovers.
You may catch us staring and return a wink,
a petaled exhale, whimpered and whimsical,
breathing deep your own headiness,
oh silly girl, so boisterously quiet.
You may be all of this and more,
but to kiss your lips, folded and full,
is to kiss the longing lips of heaven.
It is God teasing us with a daffodil.
Picture found here
I see you, eyes cast down in pocked and weathered faces,
cheeks sunken from polishing what could never shine.
Your overseers, harsh and bloated with their assumed fame
cast a sneering glance, a gaping maw of greed,
lusting for lust’s sake, all in the name of (g)od.
I sat at your tables, supping with your sons, your daughters.
I touched your withered, your lonely and broken castaways.
I drank of wine, once pulled from a well, but
unsatisfying for those who just wanted
to celebrate a little longer.
Yesterday, the smallest steed walked on branches and twigs
heedless of the hypocrisy, of misunderstanding, of misapprehension.
Those same roadway gifts will soon be yanked away
in favor of heavier trees and a few nails.
Oh, how you would have been better to keep your coats,
to water your palms, to soak your dirt-worn feet
than to waste such extravagance on a lie.
Now, I look out over the dim Jerusalem skyline,
so large of breast but small of heart –
and weep.
Image found here
the stones know something we do not
their tears now stain a palm-laden street
and cries reserved for a different day
burst out unsettled unstoppable unreserved
for today only the stones understand
who rides upon them
Image found here
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
