An Afternoon of Lifetimes

I await the Changed World  –

Where there’s only one road from Here to There

Where snakes & scorpions line the curbstones

In teeming array…

My patience thins, then thickens

Images adjust to fit that scale

Crushing endless expanses with

Scenes from seashore jalousie windows.

= = = = = =

Starving Poets

Are not hungry of growling appetites

But ravenous for tgat sigh from another,

Famishing for a secret smile

As a poem hooks into that waiting Receptor Cell

Which did not know a space to be there.

Oh yes, we feast on saucy words,

On salted verbs & spiced adjectives,

But all these come together in the stew:

An imaginary aroma of what could be rising

To a thought sprinkled on the simmering pan.

So all my poems on foodstuffs

Are cries for only attention

“Come hear this,” I say,

“It is nothing you have perceived before

In this exact & specific manner!”

I awaken their hungers with stirring mine, so that

When I reach for the salt

They swoon to the table.

= = = = = =

A Scotswoman

I will be Scottish my next life,

Wrapped in Shetland wool.

A fire will burn in my hearth at all times.

I will read the runes on boulders, a language

Known to few: but I will know.

I will walk the edges afield when I call the sheep to me

Coming eager to my ululant cries,

Singing names, we join in bleating harmony.

I will revel in bald-cold starlight, feeling the chill on my ears & neck

Re-entering the hut for simmering stew

Held for heat before sipping from the rim.

My feet will be knobbed & salted,

My face rouged with lanolin,

I would be wrapped to shapeless, but clean beneath the cloth.

I would wear the aurora borealis for a boa

The colors awash over worn-gray grey.

A Queen by Default, ruling

An island studding the sea.

= = = = = =

I am a writer, I tell you!

Tamped down by folded dollar bills which take no ink

But much effort to earn!

My works pickle inside, prickle until out

Ideas sown in a breath & a glance & watered

By an appetite profound to remember it all

By writing it down in my own language.

I live on words, like bread risen with morning,

Wrapt in a coarse linen towel, slightly sweated with salt

To be baked in live fire.

I am a root vegetable, gnarling beneath the surface

Longing for the black northern sky

A gnarled hand pulling me into it

Laying me down to ply a potion.