Serpent
Star light, star bright
First star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have this wish I wish tonight
Simplicity.
mother is cutting carrots in the kitchen
Upstairs, the little girl sighs and coos clapping her hands to
petition for a baby sized handful of moonlight.
There’s a slick of dew on the window sill.
I’m wary of intruders in the wood trying to invade
my weary and besieged home. A hollow bastion, refuge from
slander and creeping plague; my dried unshed skin.
Watching TV, my mind is precariously idle, my
Callous hands unusually limber.
The house smells crisp and fragile
As the space between predator and prey.
I slide down to the cellar for a tool;
I’m hungry for innocence again.
I’m tired of scavenging a ripe and a rotten belly.
I search for enlightenment but settle for sublimation.
Star light….star bright…
Upstairs, she gurgles and blows wishes into little bubbles,
Hung in the night like juicy peaches.
Sine Qua Non
I split myself this morning
putting away knives.
I paused to let the blood scramble out,
And in one liminal minute
The light show, the fanfare, lasers and fog
Went dead, and god was goddess.
She was unconquerable on the throne usurped
By over-endowed bulls; mighty and concordant
Behind the scenes. Resplendent in silver, silk,
Ambrosia, she offered a goblet of tears
– not blood!
for making
All things new.
As I drank she turned, and was all at once and always
A chambermaid delighted to arrange,
Prone and in minimal linen
Undiminished for all who stoke apathy.
I hoped to be a bird on her shoulder,
Giving no thought to authority,
Sold to the discipleship of possibilities.
The knives away and wound bandaged,
I went to the park and sat under an oak to wait for her call
Among the multitude of homeless faiths.
A Tikrit Carol
Complacent at the bottom of the ocean,
Subtle notes, minor chords.
Stuck in a minute’s diameter
Briny water gurgles and wordless;
The meadows of the abyss:
Never came home again.
Sunday noontime, sun crowned,
a dubious assurance of clear skies,
Evacuation by the television,
lunch delivered courteously by the microwave,
Suckling the newspaper for pessimism
Vexed by Catholics home-bound (and stridently).
The kitchen sink iconography:
The tensile power of steely immobility.
A belly full of snakes, or of deepest praise?
Post-church, no depth to sky, lackadaisical on the brink.
And kindling to get the fire going.
Quarter-to-one;
A knock on the door
A ghost in the eaves
Unchristian blood in the snow, in the desert, in red states.
Noël, noël for the unbelievers.
Complacent at the bottom of the ocean,
Subtle notes, minor chords.
Stuck in a minute’s diameter
Briny water gurgles and wordless;
The meadows of the abyss:
never came home again.
Gravity, Defined
happiness is placement
the arrangement of space matters-,
outside the door of the hospital
where asphalt ice-crusted
and bleak sunlight make headway
i would be
down.
here,
it is another kind of matter-,
there are mental health geomancers
who have provided feng shui for my cortex
i am well, all is well
since things are pinned down
and i cannot lift a bottle or a knife
Well love, that’s mere art
a lie for telling some truth
but i have this scrap of thanks
you gave me love
you gave me
gravity
Sonnet 3 (Yellow House)
Out of the blue came burden to people
Living in a yellow house. Someone left
With shadows, someone broke a solemn creed
And left behind a candy coated cleft.
It regards you like a defiant smile.
A bucket and scrawny cats strain to hear
What chipped paint and garden tools left outside
In winter declare so eloquently.
The windswept yard harbors a biblical
Lamentation, a dolor mourning the
Black mistakes painted over with blonde fill;
A case of fence posts where milestones should be,
Like a breath of snow going out the gate,
Like a yellow house unconsummated.
Naturalistic Fallacy
For a single
good reason
to be me,
I go on
searching
the state parks
near home.
I suspect
I will find
something bigger
than myself
bigger than
an acre of depression
docile – maybe –
as white pine roots
solitary
as a hermit’s shell
tempestuous
like the
woodpecker’s beak
and driven
as a sliver in
skin
to remain
the living
America, Are You Street or Sky?
She sits on the bus.
It’s the last day of a mawkish month.
One more day waiting for the handout
And her bags are threadbare
A tin of hooves for the kitty,
a pint of whole, a pork neck on mark down.
Someone down the aisle wonders
if Florissant is ashes by now.
The clouds: they see nothing. A worried boy
at home takes the day’s first shot of gin
And clears the creases on the wall;
his shoes stink of bleach
but they’re new again. School thinks
it matters. She’ll cook the neck
and praise the sneakers, so white. The table
will welcome them as dirt does a fresh turn
and when two glasses are mostly filled with
milk, the window will flicker only once
the clouds will stay blind, the bus will roll over cinders,
and the earth will be no better
for clean sneakers walking on it.
Shoreside, Crystal Pond
It’s dawn and the water’s white and clean.
I pick up a pen and put my feet into the waves.
There are no boats to interrupt the trees in morning prayer;
Houses hunker down and hold the snoring stores within;
Still the lake takes my toes like
It has a fetish, its kindness knocks
Me over,
Supine, I can wallow in the sky.
It’s twilight and the water is right and clean.
I think too, you, see the cormorant, the snapping turtle,
And marvel at their potential.
We feel and see the grain of a good wood,
And with pinched fingers
Make a minor church.
I rest my pen and put my feet into the waves,
And minders mind their waterfront property,
Berth the boats, ignore the trees in prayer,
Hunker down in boring houses scored by sin,
And it’s long past night, the stars give up their long dead light,
And the water is bright and clean.
Jace Paul 