What is this picture? Half-man, half-horse, half-dead – a rodeo centaur as played out as an Oklahoma oil field flat on its back, nap-time on the prairies of Mythos singing Home on the Range in Ancient Greek: Οἶκος, οἶκος ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ. | |
I only see geese by the river, standing in water up to their knobby black knees. | |
And this – A flower whose red has exploded like a grenade blindsiding us with color. The war of the roses now in full swing. Quick, don a gas-mask of thorns or be paralyzed with beauty. | |
I avoid stepping on a nightcrawler. It shuffles across the sidewalk, basking in rainwater. Did you know, they are not drowning? | |
Surely I must understand that a body cast in clear resin will leave its last breath as solidified bubbles. And that if we are lucky, we will watch the sun’s final nova refracted through trees and snow. Our last grace the instant before immolation. | |
“Can you say ‘Wickaboxet?’” The dogs, out early with me, do not respond or even look at me with curiosity. | |
That we must come to terms with the tragedy of our faces, mechanized from staring too long at clocks. Or how our louche desire was spiked by a lover we will never see again, black and white all the color we will ever need for that story. | |
You are sleeping late this morning. Light in our apartment slowly recovers from drizzle. Words recede, my eyes follow barges heading towards the landfill. |
For Desperate Poets OLN and The Sunday Muse