Phalanx of Wing
(After a line by Kathryn
Smith)
If time crashes broken on sundial stone
a speckled fly old
pallid skin seeks,
rain-dropped with
summery dew
the morning sheds
from eyes of grounded
poets:
then, finally to touch
us, their stray
fingers of ripening
windshear
like talons mired love
becomes
blackening old light.
You'll fly then
over the desert's
silvery sands
of lucky jackpot dollars
glistening
starfish-like, far beneath
the motions of swift
feet running there.
Dissolving moments dour
in heart-beating wings
of starlings,
we'll alight in angelic
air-pockets.
Just a distant fabric
worn by infinity,
the sundial lazily
exposes day's vanishing
for that avatar once
divine
out of time, sunlight,
clouds of flight
from fallen mankind's
disbelief
now an unwinged birdman,
forever mundane.
Street Music Outside Taco Bell
Now without listening, maybe
in the neighbourhood
comes my music
for you. On the
tarnished side
of my riddled psyche you
implored
with fallen notes
outside the Taco Bell
grayed by winter's
coldness.
We must leave these
suburban streets
the homeboys rant about
in rap
with big mouths singing
a spicy tongue.
Now without hearing you,
in the wind
you hum the whistling of
a banquet
cooked from that
raw-hewn language
dogs will bark at,
disquieting
our own once tuneful
ambrosia.
Now without taste, the
words
strewn bleeding over
hopes of many
still form old lyrics on
silent lips
the drunk nights take
from us.
I want to write how
monstrous
your hungry mouth makes
me feel,
how the curvature of
devoured bones
strikes my drum skin
for all deaf beauty
Broken Window in Winter
Does it sleep outside my window?
Whenever I imagined
winter-worn desires
melted by time:
The crenellated cat
blown by withering currents
fostered in natures'
unfathomable air
the dogs of pollution
will sour
with dire sullying &
pornographic sweat.
All we cull from leaking
fountains,
damned by a blind cat's
eye --
until I found you, white
shadow
of my drowning (inside
the hallowed
nexus of little gods
nestled in
warm rooms of hedonistic
childhood,
where I hid from
visiting predators
demanding my presence --
a darkness visible?
I waited for you that
one pristine hour
to slither in, reborn
through the wall
of crystal-faced pane.
Animal as any superhero
was, feline-quick
with what lurked outside
peripheral being:
Shooting across the
glistening lawn
of memory, your icy pale
vision
smothered my body of
innocence
only a whiskered hand
still cages.
The Alien Portrait
Do not hide your flesh
with the fabric binding
you,
like a wilted leaf
beneath a page
torn from your fallen
bible.
The death of fake gods
we worship
inside the museum of
obsolete art
depicted the fall of
humanity's ark
from a galaxy of
burned-out colours.
Do not cover your eyes
from the pigment of lost
desire
once inhabiting all
celestial beauty
before a bolt of
nature's wrath
vandalized our lunar
dreams forever.
Take the brush from the
spaceman,
whose skeletal hand
decays
with a saintly relic on
a ravaged briar
naked nuns still pray
before,
their obscene tongues
kissing
the last
angel-astronaut's remains.
All sculpted by
Michelangelo's spirit
free, at last, from sin
in starry fastness:
an alien god's moribund
face we paint
reflected anew now, in
the light
of some strange heaven.
Living the Dream
When grieving for shadows in the vane
of a simpler lifetime,
do you sometimes
see the wind push you in
one direction?
Far from the present
place, deeply
to an aura where the
weather changes
its petrichor of rain
weeping
on the dry dust of dead
lusts,
until finding you:
the right job, the right
babe,
the right wheels
exulting asphalt
down the road where the
destination
becomes the journey of
your U-turn
forever starting over
necking near Bob's Big
Boy burger joint
in the endless movie
dream crossroads
going nowhere in
life:
So don't look back, the
highway takes us
to Lover's Lane in a
streaming letterbox
where you're brushing
long blonde hair
in fragrant city
twilight,
smelling of toxic
exhaust, funky crap
moldering into a
wasteland of found art
my Chevy motor idles
crankily in
while inhaling toxic
carbon monoxide
we laughed overdosing
on waking pills
Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada. His latest poetry book is Particle Acceleration on Judgement Day from Impspired press.
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