Marvels Redux

I made my refuge
in the company of youth, who can be here
and not be here, their minds a world away
I searched for a place to be held, not as a prisoner
but as a child in a parent's arms

I yearned to confirm that a message
had been received,
even if the answer
was by smoke signal or telegraph
Even if it's the honking of mad geese overhead
or it comes from a box of Cracker Jacks
or from a dream I once had
It's still an answer

Anything but silence, the echoing silence of
crystalline rooms
where someone who purports to be human
prods you without a touch, uses words
like a pair of forceps
When you don't need to be
born twice
You just need something like noise
once in a while.

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This one is a rough draft, and I'm not sure what to
do with it. Thanks for reading, and giving any thoughts or
suggestions.

Untitled

I can't afford to lose what I gain
So I cover it with love

I keep it a secret
so that I can savor it again

I make it a hammock
so that I can rest
A soft, wide sisal rope
Embraced by curved,
sun-scorched pine

Shaking your head
in confusion and sorrow
That is how you'll read this

But I win, not because you lose but
because I can't lose anymore.

-debuted on Full of Crow radio show,
3/7/10. See below:

(http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lynnalexander/2010/03/07/full-of-crow-weekly-poetry-hour)

Alien world

Outside my bedroom window
in the morning
The sky is a milky wash
in reflection

The trees look like Venus
emerging from the sea foam,
Gloriously alive,

with limbs like
unfamiliar flora
On an alien world,
greeting her visitors.

(Debuted on Full of Crow
poetry radio show-- 2/14/10)

All Marvels Cease

Everything the world makes to impress
ceases
In the quiet

When the curtain’s torn down
clever words cease, broad dreams cease
Nothing’s amazing, nothing’s exceptional,
nothing’s bright or beautiful.

Once you place them in the hand and peer at them,
They’re all just noise.

The placid audience waits for its encore
but gets none
The curtain ripped from its rusty moorings
There’s only music to walk out the doors to

I wrestle with this noise in the absence of light,
where all marvels cease to impress the world.

You who can
carry me through the darkness,
leave me
soundless on the doorstep.

(Orignally published in Outsider Writers, 2007)

I saw the sign again today

Outside the Conoco Tri-Mart
With your name
& Welcome Home
You came back
out of nowhere
To wreck the silhouettes
That I’ve constructed


Your jeep tires spun
endlessly
I see them in the cold
Bed-sheets
Wide awake but dreaming
you gave up


But they still gave you that ribbon,
Mom crows with pride
But what will you do
When the egrets don’t recognize
this man you’ve become?


My brass tines
Rake the surface in unison
Like this year’s goslings following
Along after their mother
Trailing triangles of swirling sunfish


But I know better
Than to look underwater
Where algae gather with pride
Like emerald scum
I am a sunfish, too
Thrown back after every catch


Where will you go,
your sword of lilacs
Splintering every rising sun
with a wink?


Now, stand tall by the gazebo in
Pekarna Park,
across from the ancestral log home.
Hold me close
Then tell me
what it is anymore
that we fight for


Oh soldier mine
Take this gun from me
Unload and
Make it safe


Only one thing I promise
is true:
That you can’t pass time
like the others do,
breathing through shadow gills,
Once you hear those brass tines
Strumming.

(Originally published in Outsider Writers, 2007)

Invisible

Not everything has to be visible
To be seen
You know this from
Honeycombs inside the hive
Where drones buzz around in circles
Shining in amber amber
armor
You hear only their song
But know there’s something more

The ticking of a clock
isn’t just making noise
It represents some unknown
quantity made manifest
Made into a form we can use
Bite-sized history
Spread out in human terms

For human hands form coliseums
with this tool
Arcades and mausoleums, too
We depend on it
For human hands work with time
and waste it

I admit, I waste as much as I spend
Being sure, getting comfortable
Inside my own skin
Getting set on the starting blocks
for this race
I'll never win

Race against time
And you lose.

(originally published in Outsider Writers, 2007)

Why Seek Ye the Living Among the Dead?

a painting by John J.R. Stanhope

[courtesy of--http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/stanhope/paintings/3.jpg]