Now

 Now,

I kiss ice

I kiss the wind

I kiss the wounded whose souls have rattled loose.

I have found

that brew is made of boneless angels

gathered from mountainsides where monkeys roam.

There was a time

when minutes spoke, gods lazed,

and I loved you, in pure honesty, like a novitiate.

Now,

I listen for leaves caught in river ice,

and run my fingers across the skin of a sacrifice.

My skin flushes firebrick red

from this cup which holds my fever.

I kiss ice.

I kiss the wind.

I kiss the wounded whose souls call from distant hills.

Printer's Devil

 

A printer's devil told me

(gesturing with his blackened fingers)

that the sound of your voice had been published

by moonlight on a dead crow's face.

Little starfish, I said, touching his beardless cheek,

return now to your watery home, that shell

full of mermaid-song out by the reef.

Poor Inky, no jagged cure can ever get him clean.

I returned to my clay and kiln, thinking that I might bake

some sort of Vodou plaything to give your tongue a palsy.

The waves down by the dunes offered their salt

and told me that the whole sea could be my circle. 

Of course you spoke anyway, like glue-sap in a broken bucket

from a storm-split tree tapped with a sharpened crucifix..

I'm leaving this damp-match town bursting with illiterate poets,

your half-dead friends, parroting smoke from the foundry of your good intentions.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--B Is For Bad Poetry. 

Vox Humana

 

My voice slipped out as I slept,

taking the path between rows of white narcissus

to the upturned boat, just port side and starboard side,

no deck, no keel, with the world below and beyond.

It had normally slept in the blanket of my throat,

silent, cupped in a chrysalis.

Now it went up and down upon the earth

filterless, making many enemies, there when I awoke.

I hid my voice inside a bell, but it was only louder.

I stuffed it in the pages of a newspaper, but caged birds repeated everything.

I set it in the hands of my lover, and my lover left, cursing.

I hid it in the sound hole of a guitar and it spoke in every language.

I taught it manners and it died of boredom.

I taught it doublespeak and it ran for high office.

I taught it sanctimony and it attracted a congregation.

I taught it flattery and it was beloved. 

Desperate, I taught it poetry and it lay down again in my throat

where my bones fell in love with it.

A doctor diagnosed the shaking as palsy

and prescribed a pilgrimage to Branson or Las Vegas.

_________

for Challenge #1 Desperate Poetry. 

Music: Leonard Cohen A Singer Must Die