Poem-A-Day #345 : Breakfast

I think I get weirder as I get older.


Breakfast

How smile you
are today a leaf
fanning chains
of fire -

Smoke is teeth
purl & knitted
sound of fog
growing -

How ominous
cooling though
ice forms from
coffee
          it didn't
have the chance
to even operate
to glow -

Poem-A-Day #313 : Worn Out Shoes

Worn Out Shoes

The shoes need to have velcro

It's just a thing - I can tie laces fine - don't look at me like I can't tie a lace

They look good

Straps across the narrowness of the foot - like weapons - like leather jackets with buckles - there is a shit-kicking aesthetic in it

It snowed the other day and these old shoes have a hole that I didn't find until I stepped in it

Cold up my heel - a feeling that comes with it - a needle at the base of your nail bed

This is not how one walks in weather

You pull that thing tight over yourself - it is swaddling - you are prepared for the day then - anything that could possibly come will can then can because you have been sorted

Kick a rock and it will continue on its millennia journey

Add a pair of new shoes and your several decades worth of walking can go on

Poem-A-Day #254 : First Frost

First Frost

There is the moment when the night comes up to us and grabs our hands

It is not a threat but it feels like blood in the water - the tendons are always just about to kick - the fists are always clenching and unclenching there is a grinding sound under the skin - it is velvet but burned it smells like canned air - we are on fire together

Getting out of the car tonight may feel like a death - air escaping like prisoners fleeing labyrinthine hallways into the cold of everything

But

Above will be found the stars where they were left still silver in the blue expanse of space - Orion notching an arrow at the backs of the Pleides

The roof of the car beside mine was covered in frost - thin and translucent - I was urged by an unknown force to rake my finger across the surface - and I did

Fingers come away cold and wet and covered in light - the ink of winter seeping into the bones of autumn - around us the cars all twinkle it is a calm

There is a moment when night comes up and puts its hands to our throats

Not a threatening gesture - an honest one

The rasps of its nails speaking about the darkness within us - the heat of its eyes a cipher - night is a void filling with the answers to questions asked in daylight

At the top of the cycle there is death - at the bottom there is more

Somewhere in between is a sort of daylight - a moment where hope exists - where the growing isn't futile and it will not just end again

Fuck - it burns -

Poem-A-Day #77 : Mediations on Water Forms

Mediations on Water Forms

I'm afraid of water :

          the ambiguity of space - sound - the lack of feelings beneath it :
there is an inherent voidness - it is rolling glass

In the photo the iceberg has just turned over
revealing its Coke bottle undersides - polished by the salt

                    within hours the surface will crack in the cold - will cover in snow :

          I pray for smoothness

          transparency

          the crack of cold air on wet surface :

light penetrates regularly only to 200 meters
between 200 and 1000 meters is the twilight zone - photosynthesis ceases and then at 1000 it all goes black - the midnight zone is where things go blind - eyeless - colorless :

                              the octopus can stand on it's tentacles
                         spread out its skin - this is called the Nosferatu pose :

          at some point I remember being able to float

          that first time - it was like a stomach turning upside down

          and I was scared shitless :

there is some sort of spreading out - a blackness - ink-like
                    polished in its opaqueness - purpling in the sunset :

whiskey over cubes - the sound

Source - Alex Cornell