Le paradis n'est pas artificiel …

Talisman

posted June 7, 2010

Forget yourself – really
walk with your feet
on the goddamned dirt.
Tangle moss in the crowns
of your teeth; lick dung
like gumdrops and draw
draughts off the lips of
the dusty wind. Taste that
smoke. Walk with broken
feathers in each hand, sylph.
Stretch out your arms and live
just off the grit of your shadow.

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In a Belfast Arcade

posted April 9, 2010

I saw a black boy
in deerskin and headdress.
He wore moccasins on his feet,
beads about his brow.

Young and working
for the wild west, he was
hired for his dark skin,
in another's for a while.

This was his break.
Spurred by the moment,
he trod among Saturday strollers.
Shoppers stared at the Indian boy.

How they became him,
his skins, fringes and feathers
like foreign letters for the sacred
or absurd. Magic was bound

to him, however cheaply.
He had no time to lose. He strode
through, easily now, then danced
a conjurer's dance away, smiling.

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rendezvous

posted March 19, 2010

every time we run
into each other, it turns
out you're beautiful

hi, pretty lady,
you say, and I'm too awestruck
to interrogate

for irony, since
you were beautiful straddling
my upside-down bike

that day, smudged by grease
as you built the blue-gleam frame
I could ride and ride

or the stormy night
we came in rain-wet by chance
to the same hotel

but especially
the day we met and I did
not see you at all

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Up & Down

posted March 18, 2010

In the end, I've learned to write
like a waterbird breaking
off water into flight, after hours cowering
at the tread of invisible beasts,
amidst decoys, false-calls. Nothing more
to be done, I burst from the reeds, finally flew
straight into the buckshot and was taken
powerfully, gathered lovingly, rendered down.

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Neon Green

posted March 17, 2010

[first draft]

my old teacher told me

I was young once, hitched
all the way to New York City
as a boy from West Virginia

heart leaning lump-like
rough white clay toward truth
he felt uncolored, unexplored

my old teacher told me

I travelled east with a guitar
to New York City's zen center
and on the steps I met a monk

and a green lotus-posed statue
of the buddha burning green green
so neon searing that he asked, Why?

It turned green when the bomb hit
Nagasaki, and has been so ever since
said he, then laughed and laughed

and I've never learned another lesson since.

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