Author: poetryfest

I love you like a summer day
Warm and easy
The sun soaking through my back
I love you like an ice storm
Blinding bright and glittering
Temporary, and beautiful
I love you like a fall day
As I mourn the loss of warmth I look up
The leaves are a rainbow and the air is perfect
I love you like a summer storm
Cool water a balm on sunburnt skin
Dark clouds a balm on squinting eyes
I love you like a snow day
Free and childlike
Playful and holy
I love you like the first day of spring
New growth in every corner
I don’t love you yet
But I will

I.

People live longer near the water, he says,
inviting the collapse of the wave to break

open something clogged and congealed—
a jellyfish jealousy flushing into a great sinkhole.

He swallows his sun-fried pride and feels
the tide coaxing the fluidity of his manhood

as boundary bleeds into the long flash of
sunset flush, the blushing boil of being unnamed,

uncalled, unmade, moored, and,
more to the point, bound to lap at the body

by which he is held alo. It is nighttime on
Slaughter Beach.

Cloak of the eyes closed proves a portal to
bodily evaporation, a holy perpetuity,

an acceptance of, whatever, everything,
nothing, who cares, who can care when

you can feel nothing but the everything
of yourself, a fleck on the continental shelf,

at the mercy of this great mother and all
of her gruesome glories made sharpened

and spineless and shaped to survive
the womb of the ocean.

The ocean is our greatest ancestor, he thinks,
as he opens his eyes to the Slaughter Beach

sky and feels the sudden measure of his brevity
equidistant to the distance of the stars,

and suddenly he cares about everything,
every single thing that exists now and never,

before and beyond and outward and into,
as above so below the porous crust

of the earth’s sun-warmed epidermis,
determined to hold the whole inside

of his sun-kissed skin shell so he is
filled up and filled out and bursting.

II.

People live longer near the water, he says, and
I did not question, despite detecting the growing

groan of a grounded flock celebrating the prizes
of the tide, knowing that splayed in their jubilee

lay the bones of a stoned man who last night lied down
under a night sky lit like light through a punctured pelt,

and when the sun rose, his lying had become laying,
just as objects do not lie but lay.

The squawking gawks of the gulls grew aroused
as we rounded the slope of a dune and

drew nearer. A weather-shorn shore stretched,
speckled with the flickering of the feast

as each head in the sea of gulls ducked and
bobbed and shucked from their shells

the cursed crustraceans, beached, doomed to beak
or to bake. It is suppertime on Slaughter Beach

“In a big country dreams stay with you
Like a lover’s voice ‘cross a mountain side.
Stay alive.”
-Big Country

In a big country you can lose
yourself. As easily as in a crowded
cityscape sidewalk. Elbowing
your way through Douglas firs
or pine trees taller than any main street
building and loan company
yet still dwarfed by the Redwoods
of ancient America. I could run
from myself only to collide with
my recalcitrant parts in an alley
of thickest brush, dirt pavement, fox hole.
Crawl inside. Hide. Emerge new, in flight
undaunted by cruelties of the world.
Turn my face, knowing suffering
never ends, though mine is now
a fable for the ages.

(Mount Melleary – February)

Today I pull on my Grandad’s woollen jumper,
the blue and green chevrons mimic the mood,
and wander the woods at dusk.

I see ash, oak and willow proudly growing
from freshly logged hillside
and fungi flourishing under sheltering roots.

The trees imitate giant apostles,
watching over pilgrims on secluded quests
who know not that these titans listen.

The colossus oak has seen man’s downfall
and willow has wiped the tears of lovers,
all while the ash stood sentry on moor side.

I scour the skies above, watching the leaves wave
and ripple as a flutter rises into crescendo
stirring all who bear witness.

Go fly fishing.
Immovable – vulnerable
Locked in form.
Near the river bed, whilst heavy head rests
fear engulfs you – digest.
Wild animals lurk – Your eyes dash
Be amazed that you made it through the night without a scratch.
No broken knee caps
No heart attacks
Lift a latch. Open a door.
Check the floor, under the rug, for the booby trap
Under the stairs, behind the washer, deep in the junk drawer,
top shelf of the fridge – way back.
Hung on the rack, to the left of the closet, in the garage, search the whole flat.
Don’t exhaust the mirror looking back.
For you won’t find more than what you already see in yourself right now.
Time has a funny way of doing that.
Right now, the seasons are changing.
Right now, you grow with the buds
Right now, the ice sweats and melts into the glass
The meaning is only meaningful to few: perhaps to you?

Measuring the weight and worth
of unborn wildflowers
riding the horizon slung wide on winds
clutched in starling beaks
a confluence emerging from
chance graphs of sunlight
plotted points of rain showers
carrying fragile starbursts of amethyst
unfurling painted tongue blossoms
dying back to form silent instruments
shattered scattered seed songs
calculatingly complex
quadratic bursts of potential
freed fractals crushed underfoot
spilling to broken earth
churning multiplication of the finite
loamy crumbs and verdant blades
thrust between equations of twilight and dawn

The flute against
a stone wall where
it plays, celebrating

Hopi pots
and necklace art
of fertility in beads;

Kokopelli plays
a trickster tune,
holding a horn

higher then low,
legs keeping pace
with the dance of animals.

Outside is the wind,
Inside is Queen Jane’s Painting –

In from the sea the town is washed in browns and deep blues,
The buildings are hidden, their lighted windows gone when the wind blows.
The fog hangs over,
Twists in alleys,
Creeps under the doors.

The dock is lost in the dark,
Only vague outlines, a splash of color –
The moon momentarily comes through and lights the wooden railings,
Before they’re gone again.

A glow from out the windows, yellow and poor,
It spreads across the water,
Growing weaker as it leaves the shore,
In the dark the waves lap gently with no one to see.

Greatest sharks dripping in and out of eye sockets
Thrashing against rusted panels of brutes
Unequivocally intimidating in my self-made habitat
Hunters marked me by my callousness–I’m it for the season
Charlatans parade on their boats for just my apparition
Breaching to show you my undisputed domination
Beware the Deadliest catch! She bites!
You sought and saw my imbedded scales
Snatch me from freedom’s waters with a love lost bait
Man’s despotism inflicted over my poached body
Your hubris allows one perfect bite on fleshy familiarity
Suffocating in palms of air as you debate torture regiments
Heart of sigmoid behind my eyes near the brain
I think you’re seeing it now
You admired me in the water to doom a quick love
Thoughts of preservation come second to your ego
Feed by my thrill
A seashore rarity but queen of my castle
Drag me atop your pathetic boat to plan my fate
Finning isn’t suitable, taxidermy is your speciality
Bowels in or out?
Pulverized with seasoned mallets my blanched meat
Hollowed down to the least frighten parts
Count my teeth as lesions on your leg
Dumped on the lip while touches play with my skin
Smear my predatory gaze with pocket knives
Malnourished while fish hooks link in my ribs
Display me upside down in a humiliation ritual
Empty mouth dangling open
Curate my appearance to fit an unfulfilled lifestyle
Just let me be fucking cool
My legends outweighed my existence
Valuable as a gilded trophy to sit upon a hunter’s mantle
Have I made you a wanted man?
I was violent it was the right call
If you hadn’t captured me I would have killed you to prove I could
Becoming the prolific sadist that slips inside your skin
Puppeteering you with each nerve ending
Being your prize will cost my vitality
Live without my life, may my body suffice.

These deciduous paths
I have known for two decades
Keeps me grounded in the hills
Of ancient Appalachia
And I fear that if I venture
Farther away to new paths
And new lands
I won’t find my way back
I’ll be lost forever

To the hills, the trees, the forests, the people, the culture
That raised me, that taught me
To appreciate everything within my reach
Everything outside our windows