. The Poet's Beat .

. The Poet's Beat .

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

In Threshold Repose


The devil in caricature await the streetlights
in threshold repose
as I do
cicadas clicking crickets chorus
in that brackish mixture
cocktail of air conditioning
and humid southern summer
maybe a cigarette on his black lips
following me in fantasy like a creep
   at the park

she beckons curling that long finger
scorpion bent tipped in painted acrylic red
spreads her knees and pulls me in
my lips mumbling wet stanzas
of her perfect pink poetry

purple evening
maybe a cigarette hanging from his
course black tongue
painted in the night bird's song
the neighbors drag trash to the curb
watch me dance in yellow eyes
yellow light on the street cast
bottles bicker and clank
carcass of warm beer
of youth
each an Atlas holding up his world.

TA

In That Moment I Fell

 


I am unwound
unaligned unright tonight
fishing in a catcher's clothes adorned
at day the sheep
at night the wolf
god grants wisdom
we spit it back into his
silly face
your moon bright
illuminate my midnight minute's pause
interrupted by the thesaurus
by the southern kamikaze
peeking window woman's eye
Sanskrit of her blood
on ice skates on wine
the russet flag
I peel myself away only to be pulled back
into the magnet
the orb of your magic
a radiant summer seduction
pontoons of blue hot lightening
bruises of purple thunder
I wilt
thinking of the ocean
bound to the threshold thrown
operatic arms akimbo
bone still quiet on the trail
that dark northern wood
ferns and witching whipping in between
ancestral sentinels
the tallest trees
the ocean
the long black road
your hard face finally asleep in my lap
never have I seen you rest

and that has made all the difference.

TA

Long Fingernails

 


Hercules crucified
sprung sawtooth jaws of a steel grey shark
the twisting serpent
Eve in her evening dress fig leaf lingerie
a corset of sun-licked golden skin
institutional quotes of courage
longing
and of loss
hieroglyphs in dried ink
black beneath her flesh

her chrome eyes
orb of playful passion and slick grimace
her astral plane
gathered cordage of fibrous being
fingering husk of her gauge deck clusters
this granted grace of the eclipse's shadow
a dark moon to forget the day
drawing star charts in looping script
in long red scores
across the firmament of my spine.

TA