Shadow in the light
the fawning eyes to name
casting bones and scrubbing runes
not for shaman by the same
but for pretentious by its game.
Belief in self
twisted, twined, no longer paramount
a confession of the eyes
we named a pedestal of no account—
a devil’s playground at the fount.
Drifting through the gravel
the hero left to solace of the sand,
a world boxed in by seeds of its devotion
the drifting ides of foreign hand
hemmed us into falling land.
Image by © Chris Galford.
Darkness
Begets salvation.
–
Closed eyes embrace
Wide-spaced longing,
Riveted in fire like
Old angels lacquered
With the doubt—
–
The weight,
They will come to call it,
It lies heavy on the backs
That would toil clouds
To submission.
–
Naked passions
Circumvent the sense of it,
Armani dreams, Gucci heart
Wing-tipped longing stands
Fleshy and forgotten.
–
Icarus saw this
Falling.
* My latest work for One Shoot Sunday. Based on the images I provided this week when I graffiti’d One Stop. Yes, that’s right – my travels around Lansing have yielded a great deal of graffiti photos, and this week we decided to plaster this little offering of rebel-art up for all you fellow poets to pour over. So have a look, see what catches your fancy, and enjoy!
What is a man but
Flesh and bone gave breath;
Such mortal beast
To buck beneath
The reins of my imagination.
Cry out for me, ye bloodied hands
I am the stones arise on emerald hills
My flesh the graven gold
Of toiling back and grinding axe.
My blood be thee and thine
All rivers flow to mine
Call me God, for all I see is all I am
A fire in the earth
Tempered in the sea of sable madness
Yet to swim, yet to circumnavigate
My ambition, this thing of steel
No land might ever satisfy
The hunger of my soul.
All songs, they sing for me
Each note a dirge unto my memory.
Each breath, praise, for it is mine divine
Providence, they say, a god-in-man
Whoso could ever hope to say
I could not turn the tides.
I am the horse that rides,
I am the bolt that flies,
I am the child that cries,
He whom only fate defies.
Behold my majesty and yet despair
Of he who masters everyone
And nothing, and no one, still.
For the latest Monday Poetry Potluck!
Eyes open to the brink
I stand
Broken upon the edge
And though the sky is beating down
You are still above me
Always looking down.
Stretching for the dreams
Beyond your clouds
I burned within the strain
This arrogance has wrought,
And as the fire surged
I took it for desire
Obsession blinds
Focus the mind, focus the soul
Too late
All crumbling down,
The earth races
The sky screams
And I am tumbling through
This dear embrace
To something far more real.
The Waking Den 