Category Archives: poetry

Apparition 

In the dark of your room
Something cold from the tomb
Awakes you with feelings of dread
Seems to float and to hover
Then pulls on your cover
And sidles up next to your bed

Its image is fearsome
A face without eyes
An energy making you swoon
It radiates outward
Your hair it will rise
Like you feel when you rub on a balloon

Paralysis grips you
You cannot but shout
Your face feels as if it will smother
Someone turns on the light
And, there in the bright,
Stands (in costume)
Your wee little brother.

You missed Halloween, you dope.

Vedge Bad

I do not like asparagus
That rooty shooty plant
And you won’t really care, I guess,
About this silly rant
Its stems are pulpy, woody-like.
Its tips have tiny spades.
That look for all the world, to me,
Like mini hand grenades.

I’ve tried to cook it many ways
And give it proper lovin’.
I’ve boiled and steamed and creamed and braised
And shrunk it in the oven.
My daddy used to buy it canned
And put it on his toast.
I fancied him a true gourmand
And to my friends I’d boast.

But, now that I’m a very cook
(I’ve tried each recipe)
I’ve tasted all, and by the book,
But it gives me smelly pee.

Night wings

NIGHT WINGS

In Mercury’s merciless day I burned.
His night was crystalline.

On Venus,
I rode a ship of ice immutable,
thick in its soups of sulfuric rain.
My heavy zeppelin floated slowly
through landscapes of red vulcanism.
Well past the boiling point of earthly tea.
Things of sponge grew and decayed in comic time lapse,
waving in the crimson fume.

The Martian dawn was cold and arid,
but a true trickling could be heard in the canyon.
There were balmy afternoons
where icy hangings would sweat,
and in flat rocks I have seen likenesses
not coincidental to climate.
The rusty sand envelops.
In storms, it permeates all.

The Jovian giant
is unfathomable.
Untouchable.
Unknowable.
A cathedral of violence,
storms both ancient and permanent.
Shown forth in bands of glory.
God’s enigma.
Its girth draws the soul.

No further do I dare
this night.
For I am filled with flickering light.
The power and the glory and the might.
Shown me, this perilous flight.

A difficult delivery

By the light of an android torch,
down a pitch black path I went.
To a dark door, unsuspecting.

Fronds brushed my face.
I slowed, and stood in doubt.
Have I the right house?

Plucking up courage
from an empty store,
I found my feet did move some more.

I follow fading flagstones,
and there, in moonlit outline,
the door.
“Moria”, I think.

I move to step into the pale pool of moonlight,
but blunder into an unseen itchy web,
face first.
Snapping its strong strands,
I see, in periphery, its maker,
in seeming pensive regard of his prize.

I tremble.
The door opens.
A dwarf-sized figure appraises me, and giggles.

“Your pizza is here”,  I say.

 

 

To make you smile

Give me your hand.
I will pencil a pinwheel to your palm.
Does it tickle?
I make the @ sign,
start with centre.
Slow successive spirals.
There.

I will notice your yawns.
Tell you how to cure your hiccups.
(Tickle just in front of the uvula)

Obey your suggestions
as if they are commands,
because you know what to do.
How to speak.

I see you.

I will tell you that you are just like that girl
in The Polar Express.
One day, you will lead many.
And, I would follow you to the moon and back.

 

The listener

In the glove of twilight
Our man of twenty two
pads along the powder cow path road
to the last rise
above the grand grand valley below.
In a dreamt jacket of lizard skin,
shouldering a paunchy canvas backpack,
his threadbare desert boots with mended laces
make small dusty puffs
in time with his panting breaths.
Sits down, he does,
on an afterthought stump,
just at the lip.
His pearly whites illuminate.
Eyes are shining burning red.
Lips in taut crescent smile.
He twinkles above them,
they twinkle below.
The myriad thousands.
So silent through this slice of the airs.
They are here, he knows.
The seeds of stories.
Tragic, magic, triumphant, sad, comic,
Love, and Rage.
Tonight, he feeds.

 

A Head of the game

I went on a toboggan

And I hurt my little noggin

We had no helmets back when we were three

I played a game of hockey

With bigger kids, so cocky

And whacked me noggin once again, you see

One time when we went swimming

And the day was quickly dimming

I jumped into the lake so foolishly

And cracked my head upon a rock

I didn’t see was by the dock

They pulled me out and yelled “Emergency!”

One night, it had been raining

Upon the ice remaining

And everything was slick and slippery

My feet went out from under

And my head was burst asunder

(Or so it felt, when it came back to me)

I helped a lady build a shelf

She could not do it by herself

We hammered and we sawed ’til it was three

I went to stand up quickly

And hit my head so thickly

On a board that had been fastened over me

 

So, these are my excuses

If I seem like silly gooses

And write some ditties hardly worth a penny

It’s just this poor old noggin

And that nasty old toboggan

And the forty whacks I had were one too many.