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MeanderingHardly a mountain, though on lowering days its head sits wreathed
By the mists of a passing front, aged and befogged as bygone elders
Doddering about – before there were names for the malaise
That hazed their thinking
And from this modest crown there slouched and sloped
A long shoulder, meandering down to meadows below
Pausing now and again to coddle a pleasant hollow
Casting a sloping pitch – enough to rush a torrent
After a sudden shower
Seldom pooling
Its glint and glimmer burble among the stones
To join a rill and plash and swirl and putter about a root
It's there I'm apt to wander

Not much of a path, hard passed a

Dawn StarAt the east window the gentle rasping of tongue engaging fur is only interrupted by an occasional ritch-ritch-ritch of teeth rending a burr or tangle. Finding a place of peace with one area brings a brief moment of introspection before limbs shoot out at unlikely angles and another is engaged with equal focused purpose.

fledglings scatter
having learned their songs
the day greeted

QuestionsWhy do we settle for ghosts?

Giving lip service to heroes while villains dance

Where are the historians?

Where would we be if we marketed Socrates

like we do Coca Cola?

If zealots had not destroyed Alexandria's library?

If we could sit down with our great grandfathers

to learn how to stay away from where we are now?

If we said "NO" to the pharmacology of propaganda

If we said "NO" to poverty for profit

America; I want to put my arms around you and

hold you, and comfort you, and tell you my story

I want you to listen; I want you to know me

Understand me because we are not vestiges quite yet

We are not ghosts, quite yet

ParamnesiaI've tasted the richness and emptiness
Of forever,
Hacked my way through abstract forests,
Somehow it all made sense.

A scene gets deleted,
I'm looking out and watching myself
Walk backwards like a Hollywood ghoul:
I hear you say,
"Only hummingbirds can fly that way".

You are binding stars to everything,
You tell me it is sunlight catching on dust
Particles.

My self-taught body can utilise these fictions:
Irrational numbers which bend in arm-crooks,
Closing eye beams, who shrivel fjords
And shutter planets;

A wicked, living dissolution (without a will,
Without successors)
Defeats the twin which light has dreamed . . .

SOMETHINGWhat smoky poltergeist has lit out

across the dusty plains of my mind

and left no footprint?

A contrarian alchemist turning

my gold into lead and taking with it

all my illusions of clarity

Those wizards and sorcerers hawking

their false incantations and last right lies

I sense another curve in my future

Something just up ahead

Notes To SelfItchy grindy nervewracked jitter
Blinds closed against the July sun
Awake, alive, annoyed with the world
Note: need beer, now, later might be
too late

Show me something good in the world
Something not monstrous and vile
Awake, drained, attuned to the noise
Note: see shrink Tuesday, call doc
re pain

River monsters deliver yesterday's news
I can't help but read again anyway
Over and over in a circle of sorrow
Note: hear the river's secrets, discuss
next class

Why's the day so bright and warm
Without you in it, should be dark and cold
Coming apart at the seams, twittering gibberish
Note: stay out of the river, causes
insanity

shallowit's not your beautiful face
that i love

it's how you ruin it

nowadays,
Autumn mornings can be like this: near to nothing.
they do not sing
exactly
or hold to land
but mangle in the chimes
as gaslights huddle for permanency

and so, failing.

where have we left our-
selves?

i feign allegiance to it: eyes and dreams
and life, as dyes turn glass to hollowware
and wax to fruit,
as brindle on these bones
makes me your passersby.

but somehow, i still believe in you
like fragments of a mythos
which have calcified to faith.
you’re lingering in setscrews that i cannot touch,
waiting in the code of loins and blood-belief.

and as sudden as October sun,
you will rebloom from every pore
and bleed from

Existence in flux,
on the edge of becoming
or ceasing to be.

StarsFat and fuzzy stars tonight, baby blue comfort
Singing lullabies, soothing through the cold clear night
Promises of spring;
Windowpane lookers, abandon your sorrow
Wide-eyed children, believe that tomorrow
Unseen, the stars
The stars still sing

newshours no longer whittle into days
strangled and uncalendared;
forbidden rituals of a new dark Eros
clothesline sheets and bed throes → blunders in a blue face
collapse
and sensing your reversals, i’ve grown and grown impossibly old;
god’s bad math:
infinities as remainders.
however they lapse
i spend the better part of them
burning through the flyleaves
for mandalas sealed in hell bank
notes
for ashes of your epilogue
for the end of throats
in songs and news.
no one can regret their past
but of futures . . .
like when planets will re-purpose you
into interstellar fruit bats or thyme pulled from the brink of comets
and you’re wondering why i'll never find you
when datebooks write us in the living.

dream of elegant beautyIn my mind you defy gravity.
Floating in silent beauty, high,
the wind kissing your bare skin
and cooling your flesh, your limbs, thin
and graceful, moving in a dance
of subjective seduction that drew me in
and lifts my feet off of the ground to follow
as you merge with clouds and myths
of a long-haired star, riding the skies.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Warmed - without wordsWarming trend - passion's cheek, kissed once
Latin lovers, rhythmic

(I've too much wine to dance with skill)

Casting my seduction;
Primal, woven without words

Substance building
Satin on lace, rustles... dropping

The tune, long in memory
Frequently practiced, plays out
In the night

Warming TrendThere sits a single dark freckle in the center of his nose, just between his delicate pink nostrils. He lies there purring deeply, his chest and side elastic with the sound; cheek against my thigh, whiskers bowed, eyes closed to slits. We are at peace.

autumn's chill
sheltered – friends find comfort
warmth beyond skin

The Hummingbird's Shadowblinds, half shuttered, shield bright eastern rays
yet through the finely measured gaps and through translucent blade
the mornings pushed aside the dark and blushed her beams subdued
and lightly on that furnished here, her shadows sway this stage
from leafy boughs and floral pots and humming birds at play

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More from *rlkirkland

Upon a Summer EveInhale the summer scents that ease one’s cares
Watch robins dart and hop to capture prey
Each mottled back and brick-red chest so fair
They nurture young ones nigh this close of day

The staid observer sits in chairs of ease
Awhile the feasts of nature grace his eyes
His rapture was forestalled - a freshened breeze
That drew his gaze above to turbid skies

Upon the earth dark shadows flit and swirl
and canopies of trees both rock and swell
Beneath the gloaming haze the hailstones hurl
Chill raindrops pelt a rhythm wild as well

Now haste may foil a hostile drenching fate
To shelter, swift, through Eden’s garden gate

Arboreal HymnRaging storms will bend great boughs
Causing them to sway and dance;
Loosened power – decreed a hymn

Writhing branches sing this hymn
…Amazing feat for gnarly boughs
To sway and swing this woodland dance

Our tempest's howl and leafy dance
Regaled in splendor – crowned in hymn
Through root and trunk to thrashing boughs

For boughs to sound this hymn will dance

Peter Piper's PerjuryPresupposition - picking 'pickled' peppers!
What a preposterous proposal…
Pray, ponder this pernicious perjury purposely perpetrated on our poor public,
a pathetic proposition of eye-popping proportions.
It is propitious that we have persuaded a profoundly plausible person to purvey proof positive the particulars pertaining to pickled peppers.
Please pay heed –
Properly, pickling is a PROCESS, (purportedly performed at a packing plant), providing picklers a (probably pitiful) paycheck.
Please provide proof to pesky Peter Piper that his picked pecks are 'pickling' peppers.
Pronouncement of this precep

Outre sight _ outre mindBeatniks, hipsters, hippie “Hair”
Flashy, faulty, fashion wear
Tie-dyed "tees" and lime green “bells”
Burning incense covered smells

Cryptic language, outré coiffed
Out in public, clothes were doffed
Paisley printed flowered shirt
“Peace” their credo, no one hurt

Counter culture, protest bound
Whither now can they be found?

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Submitted: May 29, 2012
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Cloven

by *rlkirkland, May 29, 2012, 10:58:48 AM
Literature / Poetry / Nature / Free Verse

The river birch
distanced from its namesake
weeps amber tears,
dripping leaves, like blossoms casting petals;
pale upon a verdant field.
Approaching summer
bears no consolation.

Clovenby *rlkirkland

Literature / Poetry / Nature / Free Verse

©2012-2013 *rlkirkland

The title is derived from from the separation of the tree from its sustaining river.

The poor tree, lovely with its peeled-paper bark, is far from a water source. I suspect that it goes through periods of stress during heat waves. Regardless of the cause, it drops some of its leaves at times late spring throughout the summer.

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*SylvanSmith Jul 10, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Very nice.

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*rlkirkland Jul 11, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thanks!

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~chadwood Jun 6, 2012 Writer

Like a perfectly times macro shot... the little tells a lot

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*rlkirkland Jun 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

This is a style that I enjoy - snapshots of the simple things that add a dimension of wonder to my life.

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*somnomollior Jun 3, 2012 Writer

That's a lovely and moving image.

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*rlkirkland Jun 3, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thanks

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*halcyonshores Jun 2, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

So beautifully written.

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*rlkirkland Jun 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

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*halcyonshores Jun 3, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

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Mood: Love

~GilesWatson Jun 2, 2012 Writer

Lovely poem. There is something of the Anglo-Saxon riddle in its economy.

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