Turn Right, Go Down the Stairs

Turn Right, Go Down The Stairs

A baseball cap

makes a pisspoor halo.

A feather tongue-glued on a tailored shoulder

will never pass as an angel's wing

nor that grating stream of spite

shake a celestial harp to sing.

The curved and cutting beak 

and steel-clawed feet,

the avid greed with which you feed

on flesh of the damned and weak

are marks of something different altogether.

For the fall of the fourth year,

the vultures gather.

~September 2015

Top photo, courtesy Reuters 

American Black Vultures at Carcass  source 

Manipulated. No copyright infringement intended

Flying

Flying

Stars are hung

so mute, 

a dazzle-gloss of pearls

mistletoed on slippery branches,

clustered as the gaudy callicarpa.

To catch the laughter

of a single one

is footling as

a grab for just one raindrop.

I see nothing. 

Keyholes don't

when old gods stoop and squint

 a wavering richness,

titan eyes teared in light's life-juices;

I see myself,

the nothing, hollowed

gap that sets the key,

void upon the edge:

the dryer the husk,

the less pull on the wing.

Callicarpa americana   google image search

~September 2015 

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Words Count

Top: Untitled, by Jean Cocteau, fair use via wikiart.org

Low Pressure System

Low Pressure System

There is a mist

in what you say

each droplet a word

around meaning obscured,

each sound a dulled echo

of something forlorn

wrapped in pale softness

as blank as its warm;

a fog to disarm.

There is a snow

over what you say,

a blanket of blur

for a hiding away,

a mask as white, as smooth

 as its cold,

as gentle as numb;

I need a new sun 

for when your words come.

 

~September 2015

Image: Sparks, 1906, by Mikalojus Ciurlionis
Public domain via wikiart.org    

Mulling The Sunrise

Mulling The Sunrise

When 

the sky's afield

in dandelion-dead stars

shot faded pink from

 a peony moon,

you petal-drop down

with your cardamom eyes.

Your 

reaper's scythe sighs

full of cut, rubbed like nutmeg

on the rasp of night,

spicing sunlight for day

each cider-stitch from was to is

stabbed gapped and rough

but strong,

strong enough.

~September 2015

 posted for    real toads

Flash 55

Image: A Study of Talliores, 1939, by Leon Dabo 

Fair use via wikiart.org