Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

Out on the high "bird islands," Ciboux and Hertford,
the razorbill auks and the silly-looking puffins all stand
with their backs to the mainland
in solemn, uneven lines along the cliff's brown grass-frayed edge,
while the few sheep pastured there go "Baaa, baaa."
(Sometimes, frightened by aeroplanes, they stampede
and fall over into the sea or onto the rocks.)
The silken water is weaving and weaving,
disappearing under the mist equally in all directions,
lifted and penetrated now and then
by one shag's dripping serpent-neck,
and somewhere the mist incorporates the pulse,
rapid but unurgent, of a motor boat.

The same mist hangs in thin layers
among the valleys and gorges of the mainland
like rotting snow-ice sucked away
almost to spirit; the ghosts of glaciers drift
among those folds and folds of fir: spruce and hackmatack--
dull, dead, deep pea-cock colors,
each riser distinguished from the next
by an irregular nervous saw-tooth edge,
alike, but certain as a stereoscopic view.

The wild road clambers along the brink of the coast.
On it stand occasional small yellow bulldozers,
but without their drivers, because today is Sunday.
The little white churches have been dropped into the matted hills
like lost quartz arrowheads.
The road appears to have been abandoned.

...

i want her tin skin. i want
her militant barbie breast,
resistant, cupped, no, cocked
in the V of her elbow. i want
my curves mountainous

and locked. i want her
arabesque eyes, i want her
tar markings, her curlicues,
i want her tin skin. she

...

oh look at this beautiful fantasy
I stand upon this splendid field of gold
maybe there will be no calamity
Oh This world a wonderful story told

Oh this a wondrous land that lies within
oh The sky above me is orange and red
Oh yes The world around me wants to spin
Oh my for i feel that i lost my head


...

Strange that I did not know him then.
That friend of mine!
I did not even show him then
One friendly sign;

But cursed him for the ways he had
To make me see
My envy of the praise he had
For praising me.

I would have rid the earth of him
Once, in my pride...
I never knew the worth of him
Until he died.
...

Shirtsleeved afternoons
turn toward leather as the trees
blush, scatter a last
few bright, weary wisps across
the great bruised heart of the South.
The spirit cup drifts
down the pond's moon-sparked highway.
Far laughter, shadows.
Love or poison? Your turn. Drink
to the star-drenched latitudes
...

Because I forget everything
I forget what is my name
My name that is nothing
But just hungry for the fame.

I forget what is my gender
My gender that is physical
In the false pride, they wander
And the human, becomes invisible.


...

Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!
...

I cherished my non sequiturs
spent more time out of my head
in half-baked theorising
or a vagrant continuity glitch
and some gawky deaths

like, the sex-drugs billets-doux
of a simple girls-night-out
that transience, routine backdrops
tracks up and down stairs

...

I wrote a letter that you'll never read,
Folded my heart in every creed.
The ink has dried, the words remain,
A silent song of love and pain.
If only time could turn around,
The love I lost might still be found.
...