Four Poems by David Leo Sirois

Cinnamon Winter, Ginger Spring, Sugar Summer, Chocolate Autumn

 

In the nautical night

I was captain & captive 

of my own windblown ship

The Apocalypse

 

I hung onto ellipses

of empty early hours

steering the boat of my bed

until it crashed into the absolute 

madness of another morning 

 

Half-dead with dread of alarm-clock-red electric tick tock terror 

of having to be somewhere

at some serious accurate minute

for alcohol poverty money

 

Lost on Boston’s bank clock face 

Lid of all official offices

 

Panic attacks in bathrooms

hidden from The Team 

 

Anxious against-my-will work contracts meant

Cork Stuck in My Green Glass Gorge

to stopper all opinions visions solitude silence freedom & time

with only the faux-liberty 

of the lunch hour to cheer me 

with its bland unpaid taste of vacation

 

Sated sadist grimaces

of plastic bastards who cut my check ~

one quarter of it cut off 

for my fat illiterate country’s illusory liberty 

plus hospital hospitality

 

How they savoured

muffled power laughter

when I stepped through

the always-open closed door

 

My heart-shaped face

stuck out like a second moon

lost & looking for the sky 

on the corporate hypocrite horizon

brow bare enough 

to reveal real feeling

& confidential doctor’s office distress

 

Stress of refusing to report for duty

in a casual cardboard outfit  

paid to have my face painted beige 

 

Depressed undiagnosed days passed

I called in sick to drink at home 

 

Fast forward to France ~

at ecstatic spoken word gatherings

I sang poems on the stages 

of open secret séances 

 

Stellar cellar fevers 

of Poetics Begin at 9 O’Clock

in the crowded good company

of my one true family

Artists Writers Orphans Lovers

AWOL in the basements 

of penniless Paris

weekly poetry parties 

 

Eternal student 

attracted to every soul 

on the stage of the Spoken World 

 

Paper face of Earth

 

Brothers Sisters Children 

of In The Beginning Was the Word

do what makes you feel God

in your closed closet chest 

with a wrenching in the heart

like falling in love 

 

Sweet silences between the lines

of every honest Song of Songs 

 

Seven rounds of cinnamon Winter

ginger Spring

sugar Summer

chocolate Autumn 

chased down with cheap sparkling wine ~

bubbly & bitter at the same time

 

Sons & daughters of days with flavour

let's give this life thing a whirl again

dammit because the beat-up bass drum

of our own persistent heart ~

hearth of humanness ~

keeps its beat 

freely as a forgotten clock

 

I must shut up ~

it’s time to sing in verse

for a few minute minutes of warmth 

wrapped in the rapt attention 

of fellow human beings         

in love with meaning

 

Music made of words

Soundtrack to the quest for 

silent contentment

 

The fluid fluent breath 

of Song-intoxication

whispers blissful liberation

 

Do you mind living in a haunted house?

 

“Were it not for your love of the Light,

you could not keep your home here,

in the sunless house where

I took my own life,”

said the ghost of my belovèd friend,

star singer who could not live

with her own mind ~

I could hear her

through her old closed door,

which my wide-eyed cat

obsessively wanted to enter.

 

“When you sing your Sanskrit prayers,

as you did with my dog on your lap,

you clean & clear this air of despair.

 

“I couldn't taste the type of silence

that sings your strange & sacred songs,

but I sang the most inspired electric music,

while I leaned on anyone I could find,

as a thin lifeline.

 

“David, please forgive me & let me go…

I'm so sorry.

Do you forgive me?”

 

“Helium eased the breath from my bones,

rather than fill birthday balloons.

My car could not contain my pain,

& my hangings never held.

 

“I am glad I could light a smile inside you the night after my traumatic, dramatic, exit ~

asking in a dream

‘Do you mind living in a haunted house?’

 

“Thank you for keeping these walls

alive with song.

 

“Your life is strong.”

 

Heart-Rust

 

Gone is the rust of the heart that clogged so long the visions in my veins

Shaken off the reins of failed rules I’d made to cage myself

Free indeed yet everywhere in chains & mind-forged manacles

I raged with ragged attempts to control the flow of raw shapes around me

 

Gone the dust of moonlit thoughts  

Night’s violet room fallen mute

 

Where is the prodigal son of the sun  

The golden boy I thought I was

 

Lost is the frame that held everything  

My pages of past years

held in the hands of the mind  

But still in sight of highway fog

so dense I barely let my wheels roll

 

“Slow down & behold your own heart”

I heard from within

 

I remember the atmosphere

of the huge blue-light meditation room

where my Other Mother said ~

“Visualize the golden column of light

that extends from the base of the spine

to the crown of the head”

 

It is said that the world is real

by blind ghosts who can’t see past

the bricks & blocks & plastic trucks

on this toy-strewn playground on the stage of Earth

 

A relentless heaven entered my head & made me sane

for a few momentous moments as I sat silent

vibrant ocean of calm

next to the lamp I had had to close

since I’d used it poorly to paint my room

in muted tones of habit seeming solid & long familiar

I couldn’t see a thing or notice I’d grown blind

from listening transfixed to the rattle & prattle of my mind

walking the holy road to nothingness

with a radio strapped to my skull

 

Self-crowned Napoleon of poetry

Well-dressed prince of nowhere land

now careful what I hold in the hands of my mind

that flail like aimless dancers with no partner

 

What is the bandwidth of my consciousness

the impedance to energy in my body circuitry

 

How long have I gone without knowing I know nothing

 

I feel the heat of my heart the hearth of my body

& hear the echo of my own deluded words

 

A sign to fall silent & still

 

from Words Heard or Seen in Dreams

 

IV.

 

“How I learned to write a sonnet ~

a bird sat in my heart pocket.”

*

“I am a magnet for every kind of creative success.”

*

“And what is the cash equivalent of these feelings?”

*

“We just have to confirm that our numbers are correct.”

*

“All this is the News, so pay attention.”

*

“Who’s going to light the fuse? It has to be you.”

*

“Light is might.”

*

“Ecstasy in stillness.”

*

“He raised them from the bed.”

*

“Alone is he

who waits madly

at the door of sleep.”

*

“I’m falling into heaven.”

*

“Crystal tranquility

can be found in the spine.”

*

“Someone left this map of everything

right here on the table.”

*

“The town gave us the honour of oblivion.”

*

“I pray that I be present

in the real world,

not just the spiritual world.”

 

“There is only one world.

Just as you are present to nature,

be present to the Light.

Just as you are present to the Spirit,

wake up & sing the song of breath.”

*

“If it weren't for SpokenWord,

I'd be sitting alone in the corner

of a garage, writing by the light

of a single candle.”

*

“What words do you have to contribute

to our human journey?”

*

“I want to play some music.”

“Does it have a beginning & an ending?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah, then I don’t want to hear it.”

*

“If you don’t write for Now,

how will your words endure?”

*

“I talk, & yet worry that you’re trying to speak in my mouth.”

*

“Why don’t you speak the truth?”

*

“Pain is the highest insight.”

*

“I’ve decided to finish

the mountain poem,

climb up

the slope of words

to the circle of sky.”

*

“You ask me, & I immediately know after ~

I draw myself by kindness.”

*

“The ones that come out perfect

are the ones holding anything at all.”

*

“Did you want to know the answer?

You should dance with her.”

*

“Hold the c(h)ords between us.”

*

“The poem goes off at noon.”

*

“I’ll give you some dust.

It’s free.”

*

“Why did this wisdom come to me?

I didn't know that much.”

*

“B is the key of blue.

Be sharp, it’s up to you.”

*

“God is the only thing that’s real,

& holds this whole dream.”

*

“The show must go on without a curtain.”

 

 

David Leo Sirois is a Canadian-American poet published 127 times, in 20 countries. His work has been translated into 12 languages (Hindi, Bengali, Nepali, French, German, Czech, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Chinese, Turkish, & Doric). He hosts Spoken World Online, the Zoom continuation of SpokenWord Paris. His first collection is called Humbledoves (poems to pigeons & plants). He won Third Prize in Winning Writers' Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, & his poetry has appeared in journals such as The Bombay Review, The Poetry Village, One Hand Clapping, Indian Periodical, The Sunday Tribune Online, THE BASTILLE, & Terre à Cièl (which also published his translations from the French). David is often featured at global events, such as the Panorama International Literature Festival, & 100 Thousand Poets for Change, as well as in many international podcasts & interviews. He is also a singer/songwriter, radio DJ, & a film/TV/theater actor. He is currently submitting 5 finished manuscripts for publication, & writing several more.