Construction
Sites
Forgotten winds
bearing golden
sawdust
of construction
sites. Forgotten sense
of treachery
midst saw & sills
yellow electric
wires, live. At University
I would walk
the weight of oranges, crates of oranges, walk the shape.
I would walk
the prongs of anchors, bales of anchors, walk the shape.
In half-built
constructions, I would sing songs for the weeping Lady.
Night would
close-in, calling, softly.
My best friend
had nearly died in an automobile accident.
Our friend John
had been driving by the river, headlights switched off,
saying he could
trace the curve in imagination. Memory
fails however.
Memory fails, failed, the boy in the backseat was beheaded.
The girl holding
his hands the weight of his hands
held in her
memory a headless body for an instant
before her sense
of self & other capsized.
I sang, in half-built
homes,
amidst tiers of white string knotted
& holding
the myth of terraces together, sang for my friend.
She vanished
into the dunes, the sculpted white dunes, later, knowing
a kind of God.
Healing in that manner.
I sang, My Lady,
Our Lady.
It would be
some time before I too would hold the hand of the dead.
It would be
some time before. Sawdust like cigar smoke in my lungs.
Gold reap of
time. Gold reap of substance.
Let us know
some wine.
The addict's
knowledge of wine.
All the World is a Banquet (some poet once said)
Downstairs
or across the
street
a transistor
radio. Or is that voice, voices
converging on
the nape of her neck
where the black
cage shatters?
Cage of glass
bones & cartilage.
We go for drives
in the soft rain
like voices
calling, softly. We stop
at fluorescant
diners, she orders nothing,
her fingers
curl in upon her palms
that she touches
nothing....Yes.
I too have been
thin enough
that people
assumed I did not eat.
I ate. I ate
voraciously.
I ate the rind
of the voices rattling in my paper skull.
I ate the pulp
of the ripe mangoes turning dark
in my palms.
I ate what others thought
could not be
devoured: shadows,
as the stone
is lifted,
light,
as the stone
is lifted.
Even the skulls
of demons
ground to white
rice
were salt to
fish & nuts.
All the world
was a banquet
as my stomach
growled,
chyme's acid,
eating
its own lining,
chyme's acid
eating its own
disloyal & transporting
soul.
Tell the Prisoner
Tell the Prisoner
there is a key.
He has locked his copy in a golden box.
What reasons
are there to run toward the sea?
Earthquakes
move us inward, or so I would think.
Toward the fresh
water bodies. Toward the finger sized black flashlights
that write in
the dark but never die.
There is a talk
of a big storm. Some say it.
A storm out
of a Stephen King novel. Winds,
pounding the shore,
lighthouses
dissolving beneath the snow. The search for light
begins, never
ends. Light unlabeled. Light unbroken.
Love, Love.
I checked the morning news. One inch of snow
in Saratoga.
Blanket the horses.
Blanket the doves.
Tell the Prisoner
there is a key.
He will feel manipulated
by the devils.
He will feel only slight relief. He has more
reasons than
ever to run toward that big paper balloon
called the sea.
It eats his features. It yawns
his face
into its suction
cup
& takes him back
to the village
bicycles built for a thousand back to his cottage
inland where the lighthouse salts meat where the dirty white dog
named Salt
walks around the circus poles pissing
gentle relief.
Prison either makes you believe or pares
your belief
from you. I have been there.
It named me "who"
it tamed my
cussing soul.
Carolyn Srygley-Moore is the author of four books of poetry, the most
recent being Miracles of the Blog, published by Punk Hostage and
available from Barnes & Noble online. She has been widely published
internationally, including in pages of Estuary and Thus Spoke the Earth.
Carolyn lives in Upstate New York with her husband, daughter, &
rescue dogs.
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