POEM FORUM

NOCTURNE

The distant sea reaches us here

A tide of will to mane every call

Feeding search-mates to the tree branches

So no voice knows the air it moves thru hair

Sheared from dreams of a part-time

Nightmare working its way thru college

Into careers where full-time fears reside…

Far from the sea, whose mystery

Upon treeless branches

Combs the rays of its moonlight.

Note - Alternate title for this poem is: Consolatory Night

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GRADUATION

The huge corsage of mums

Was a cruel joke

The senior boys pinned on

Glori, who nevertheless

Wore it with pride

On her graduation death-gown.

This poem is from Quintet for a Murdered Outcast

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MISS CLAIR’S CLASS

pupils behind closed eyelids

are students of clairvoyance.

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1938 FORD

The jalopy out back

Lulls me to raindrops

Tasting earth in its bliss

In childhood shadows

Where each sigh gives cause

For narcissistic nature

Stirring to breeze herself.

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DIVERSION NO. 2

From a herd-flock overhead their calls

So under-heard by the heavy mooing throng

They swoop thru the dust to dine

At fresh hoof prints

Then go back upward to by

Dusty skies fly dusty trails

I heard the cowbirds call their own…

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CARRIAGE FOR DREAM WORDS

Slumber lines sway baskets dropping omens

Stalking dark alleys into doorways of decay

That flick ticks and tocks from clocks,

And slap still wristwatch hands…

Immobile stranded moment-in-time wears out

The chair in destiny’s waiting room

Cloaked in linens discarded by death

Amorous always, plotting a tryst

For each split second, leaving what’s

Left further than ever in the non beyond.

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STILL LOST: THE FOUND MEMO

Lambs in limbo kneel before a graze

I place your curtsy at stone eyestops

Menace sliding with amorphous sheen

Where near whose marina your cries

Hear their absence in the seafarer’s ear…

Firearms on lease have hired sitters

For their empty arsenals.

Nicotine invades plastered hallways,

Bastions of alabastard invalids who grind

Your wings in mesmerized foot slippers

Coaxing escape into an imaginetic field,

Its daisies drawn by magnets taking art lessons.

The smile of the crazed slips from my lips.

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MYSTERY OF THE MISSING TRESPASSER

For a giant jellyroll the bear

Mistakes you in your bedroll.

Later, his camp covers your tracks.

* * * *

AN UNDONE MUNDANE

One native son rose in northeast Texas enduring

Seasons of sun and rain where our concurrent

Lives tread nurturing untold paths led heartward

Amidst small towns and boundless plains

Wet fields emit an intoxicant grass

And wild brush made fragrant by the rain

I often let always fight bouts lost to nostalgia

Some country music born of this region evokes

A remembered landscape

Where plaintive songs wear leather

Gloves and deliver rural gates their wide

Openings into the wanderings of

Paradise bedazzled in a common pasture

Oh throat vent of the hurt country boy

Tell countless turns and twists the yearns

Of a populace insist be with love tales told as

The long slow dance you behold romance in song

How ageless the pain - tears weep how endless

Your song. words notes wed so long now this night’s

Darkest passage weaves kisses unreceived its

Moist leaves in sorrowful refrain the hidden deep

Corners cover earhorns gone to vacant guides across

Our forlorn landscape where another’s bride

Came to us and stood fair fresh upon the gaze

Said wiltings writing stone

Her day’s own turn into a stare of veils

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BUM STEER

Stray words have chased away

The rightful occupants they

Replace in misleading guides.

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