David McLansky Poems

You look at me bemused and with a grin;
Your brow furrows and your eyes express
Black moist sympathy
And so patient
...

Should you in dallience
Be the moon
Whose radience
Varies
...

I get up to go
For lately I have learned
That there is no promise
In this waiting, this exchange;
...

The liquid spells of the earth
Are chanted in the dark with mirth
Naked the jagged stone
In the moonlight on the loam
...

I sit upon Kay’s empty bench
And recite Villon in ancient French;
“But where are the snows of yesteryear? ”
Absorbed in the ground with my wet tears.
...

Mortals all,
Blind we fade,
The prophecy
Not clear in the cup,
...

The very air that passes through your lips
Those ruby portals wherein my pleasures found
Is pure ambrosia, on which my soul doth sip,
In heated reverie exchanging passions round;
...

The Soul seeks first autonomy,
And then it seeks fair symmetry,
And then selects economy;
So why has loved abandoned me.
...

Let’s have no more talk of death
No more, no morel
I hear its’ rattle in my breath;
My limbs fail me with every step
...

You wear me down with disappointment
Oh life, where is your soothing ointment
To compensate me for my grief
Why do you fail to bring relief?
...