Fresh Oranges

8/14/2019 Fresh Oranges

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Up to bands of tin,The rungs laughed,Since dread sung heartful:Ears round the gaudy chillFlopped into still.

A foot pointed shoreward,A cap of red plumes,A hands stubble fingers,And purposeless gills:Not vengeful, sticking,Thirsty, patched with curls,But bobbing like motiveAnd bent to a slow world.

Foam swells to a sponge of krill,Fizzled and sprained blue seaStrained through baleen,

Then dense hoards of shrimpCrumple into a peach human mouth.


3/27

The white mug flewOff the tableAnd fellInto the heavenlyFlecks of the floor,

Sharding the skyWith fragmented flowers,Orb-shell splinters,And modern sculptures.


4/27

This chigger was coated in hair spray,As a man would be brass-cast,Frozen in life,Unable to eat or drinkAccumulating death.

Gritty, brown dirt slid down its stiff legsWhich vibrated free a fraction of spaceTo clamor its body againstThe plastic casing of its prison.


5/27

Heartbeat:

Two railroad workersIn a wind tunnelAlternately drubbing

A rubber slabWith mallets.


6/27

Lets find a field,Lets find a fieldAs yellow asA YIELD sign,

And watch stars wink,Watch planets blinkAs constantly asDONT WALK signs;

Then harness beetles,Ride on beetlesAs glossy asRed Mustangs

Across the forestsTo find the riverWhose pitch is like

A sparrows twang.

Then after a jaunt,Head back to the cityThat teems likeA silver mead

To climb the spires,Scale the spiresPointed likeWhittled reeds;

Then board a train carAnd ride in that carLike writhing alongIn a snake

Out of the cityAnd into a garden,To finally stopBy a lake.


7/27

When I first saw her dancingIn the crooked sided streets,She was in the shape of a loaf of breadTwirling in a wide spotted sheet.

I strutted up to her and we spun together.A popsicle stick and the freshest of bread;The stone buildings that encased us gyratedWith a slight wobble- I was eating the crust of joy.

Old tin cars seemed like the slats of a mill, and we the hubWhile lonely voices rang out from the old wooden pub


8/27

Upon the hedge-lined nightI hadnt a sight decreed,Only cats yowls, gunshot cracks,The moans of orgies

The rumbling wheels of chariots,The fluttering fruit bats wings,The unruffling of maple trees,The patter of crawling things.

Silent boats glide out of port,Fairy wings they flitter,Lone violins grind out their songNear candlelights that flicker.

The rise and fall of a couples songLike passing Indian canoes,The broken cracks of maddened men

Who tap-dance on their boots.

An abandoned wife wails away,Her husband crinkles night,From dwarfed wobbling drunkard stepsAnd ghastly winces of fright.


9/27

The sun leaks onto meAll the disconcertingSubtleties of lifeThat go by unnoticed,And I pick up on their properties,

But not without magical fees-Many I fail to write.They never occur to me twice.


10/27

Lasers shot rose fields from a fortThat could hit a mile away wart.Even when twenty orgied in Marys lea,They would cut by the blue cityUnfazed by voices 50X lower in speed-

Cheetahs dashing through a slothful mead.


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Girl I girl I girl I cantFind the meaning for this rant,But if I thought that I could stop it,Take a silver pin and pop it-Id take you on a twilight cruise

Treat you like the endangered moose,Pin your ears with dangling treasures,And let the waves ring out their measures.


13/27

Is it possible? Can I sing to RigelFrom a promontory not yet formed,But only now creeping out of the sea,Things that gave me life as a youthWill give me life at forty-three.?


14/27

Brown flecksAre organized by the windAround the new devices:They are mans flecks,And they each, a small bit,

Channel the immense forceOf the ruling handsThat spin odd gestures and designsTo drive the immense, energetic wind.


15/27

A Mack trailer, red and glossy, turned onto Elder Street.I was in a bus, looking at it, almost head-on:It plowed by, squeezing between the bus and the opposite cars.Once past, it diminished and the roar faded,But, as it was passing, I saw it as a huge ship

Rocking slightly- a cradle on the buoyant waterOf a tight channel.It passed me flaunting its red, starboard side.

I felt as if I was on a log built dock,Where log built houses sat meters awayFrom the clear channel;As if a floating wooden town,Supported by spongy trunks,Was dipped into a stormless bay.

Then I saw the truck as a canoe,Embroidered with suede designs

And encrusted with precious stones.The canoe glided along, stretching out to full lengthOnce beside meTipping gently in its unerring tubular path.It passed and the surface watersSplit behind it like an ever-opening rose,While winds popped the waters with clubs.


16/27

I waltzed into the forest with my rifle in hand,Then all the animals fled, but re-approached, slow and shy, with puppy love in their eyes;

The bird wanted to show me how to fly,The beaver, how to build a dam,

The bear, how to fell a buck,The cricket, how to play violin,

The stars, how to twinkle at just the right moment: when poets look up or love isthreatened;The tree, how to shade a squirrel or provide a home for the owl or ant;The monkey how much we were alike, and how to lose yourself for your young.

Ive learned all their little secrets and hidden storesBut wanted to fly so much more.


17/27

The nighttime desert isA rumpled canvas sack,But I am too caught up adoringThe space where stars float boldlyTo care for the bones,

In small, white sets,That pepper the sands.

How disheveled the vulture seems,Flapping and shaking by under the stars,Yet his gluey dischargeWinds down in a breezeAnd smats my face.I feel such kinshipWith this soaring creatureAnd far from the begging, pure glimmersAbove him.

I yank my face down and plodAcross the infinite expanse,Where earth and skyForm two perfect dishes.

I step down into a sharp-rimmed valley,And there is a lamp flickering ahead.There will be water and a soft pillowFor me tonight.


18/27

The Leaf-Keyed Craft

Forest columnsSpray the skyWith rattling canopies

That make the leaf-rings echoIn the heat bubblesOf the air.

The leaf-keyed ringsHover overhead.The oak sprayNever reaches them,But fountains endlesslyAs the forest stands.

The golden rings,Blurred with haze,

Slowly moveToward the hillsTo land.


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Air bubbles upFrom our breath to the sky;Air bubbles downWhen snow drops to the ground.

Hands reach upWhen we fondle the orbs;Hands reach downWhen god leads us around.

Souls drop upFrom our bodies to clouds;Souls drop downWhen stars fall to the ground.

In transition,Our souls are friendless;Heavens exchanges

Are balanced and endless.


20/27

Never is a truer fancy wroughtThen when alone I lose myself in thoughtWith pen in hand, only sad I beIn classrooms cramped, never am I freeMy body shifts and, face it, hards and softs,

As if the fancy in my head took me aloft,And over woods and towns my body flew,All my friends to me were in a zooThey couldn't see or catch my blatant stares,Or see me sing my ballads, humming theirs'

No they couldn't, and free from them I'd be,As free as if I sailed on the sea,And the waves were calm but the wind sent me my way,And mother left me for a single day.


21/27

Though my landscapes and characters be far flung,Remove the scenery, props and costumes,And what you see is my living room,My mother and my father,My whole house, the block I live on,

All quietly there; some reading magazines,Others mildly shocked at the unfolding of the scene.


22/27

The cocoon stores me,Head detached and tilted in theGlaze-Arms wiggly like chicken ligaments.


23/27

In the deep ocean, weight doesn't matter.A single, light teflon muscle, taught and tough,Is better than a five ton hulking hullAs the pale, wet, blistered skeleton of the TitanicCan attest to.


24/27

Inside a tank, like the inside of a de-blooded lamb,All whitened skin, tendons and bones tied togetherAnd bunched.


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Reason is the tree seen as a log cabin,And all the trees seen as a village,And a net to capture hogs;And reason is a sharp pike to joust tigers.


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The trees line the street like pillars;The sky plainly elucidates the beauty ofEvery texture;The sky admires the cars, the street's face,The hairs on every head, lawns-

The wind lightly chills all of itLike vanilla ice cream to the touch.The lawns are cool like my cool white cheeks.Give to others the south, the jungle, Greece,India, the Sahara;Give to me my city block and its coverings.


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2009

Fresh Oranges

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