poetry – Aremyfeetofftheground

Rhonda

~ I felt the x-ray blue of ghost bones as you stepped into last night’s silent dream. I knew your glow: the afterimage of my blinding from your sun. Poems I write, so often nondescript, come back to you in the end, and you will never know, my friend, for in your afterlife you wander far.~

Knowing

We have met old men on the sidewalks.

One lay prone, half on the grass, and, reaching up, said “Thank you for my coat. Thank you for my shoes, and for the air- my food.”

Behind us, one day, we heard a scraping and a shuffling, and we turned to see this one man who was dragging a sizeable branch. We, perplexed, said a pleasantry, but he said only “I am going home.”

A third sat propped against a young oak and smoked something that was flaming. Its fume was fragrant, and he smiled and wrinkled his nose.

And this old man feels a dwindling in his heart, a barrel in his chest, and walks on tin man joints. The brain and courage dwindle too, but the smile is knowing.

Apart

Night splints hold teeth in position,
I believe.

There is a baseless fear of dismemberment,
of awakening without the sum of one’s parts,
like the cave of a missing tooth.

I lie in bed running, and too fast.

Of what do predators dream?

Tempests

Having come from the seas of your storms and decades of disquiet, I step, directionless, on an unmoving Earth. Being tooled for havoc, I despair of knowing what might fill this brazen peace, this wild surcease.

[Art: The Ship, by Salvador Dali]

Womb

Do not speak of it.
Do not see me.
Give what you have to give,
willing or no,
and don’t mind the scars.

The remnants of your gown,
oft removed,
keep us coming back for more.

But, in time,
you will womb a tree
that reaches to Heaven.

***

[Art by Zdzislaw Beksinski]

Jolly Roger

I saw a UFO last night-
Looked like a pirate ship.

But, soon as I turned on the light,
it vanished with a blip.

Must’ve seen me- was it shy
of being talked about?

“Come back!”, I said, to empty sky-
My light, I turned it out.

[Art by Francisco Fonseca]

Blindness

From birth, his eyes were like baubles of glass—ornamental. Yet, he had been given a second sight like a vast array of solar sails, fanned and latticed- a sure conduit to enduring memory and the airs of the world. He authored colors, and spoke them into life.

[Art by Francis Picabia…The Joy in Blindness]

Delinquents

Our innocence lost in slamming doors and thrown crockery, we ran, jacketed, into ready offerings and prurient teachings. My brother, you did not live long enough to forgive the teachers or cry for the warring giants.

[Art by Hugo Simberg]

All asunder

In his hurried dream
of effervescence,
of disintegration,
our man had a knowing
that his neglected heart was more than the sum of his parts.

***

Art: Paul Klee, The Man of Confusion, 1939

Firefly

All the days that I knew you, you hummed while you were working. No one ever had to tell you what to do. Most of us smiled as you bustled about. Some rolled their eyes, but I thought of you as a bee going from flower to flower. You made a song, and the angel was in the details.

***

Art: “As the Volante”, by Remedios Varo