I Have Just Composed a Poem

I Have Just Composed a Poem

Staring at a bookshelf.

I don’t know why the poem

was staring at the bookshelf —

contemplating god, maybe,

like me, or the most reasonable replacement.

When I placed my folded slip of paper

under the poem’s tongue (emet/met, it’s always two-sided

for poems. How did you not know this, Rabbi?),

it sprang awake and started away, rangy big-hollow

wailingfull of bitter agenbite’s dregs. We won’t

meet again but I know you’re out there

still staring like me at shelves 

full of books, looking for something 

reasonably like me. When your shadow crosses windows 

of whale’s tallow at Inishore, you’ll be a forbidden pagan
dance rhythm, daggerflashing brazen
stride silent, the half-remembered echo of screams.

How fiercely I still love you.

Pelican King

A poem from my chapbook "Prophets' Murmur," which I'm only posting in a vague gesture toward self-promotion as a response to my friend's tagging me in to the 5 poems in 5 days game.


Pelican King

Sanctified suicide:

and so I forbid you all follow.

I reserve it for this use, mine

alone.  You know the drill:  his

what is his and yours what is also.

Arriving at the nest I find you dead;

grief makes toolmakers of us all.

Lacking a real beak I borrow desert iron for the job.  Clumsy

king’s-touch spears talk trash, point with

swords which veins open, and revive you with my blood.

Rivulets feed tributaries of myth, it’s

essential material

we’re dealing with here, but it comes back to suicide

by proxy of prophecy – hung to smell

in drying sun on a dead tree of nail.  Thorn-torn

kingdoms are tools, ministers of men

commanders, armies in their pockets.

They wash their choiceless hands (nice touch)

but do as they’re told anyway.

So I forbid you follow

When I gape hell’s fenrisjaw, I slide

past Potter’s Field like rot, like toothskin.  You think

my preference dictates elision but I tell you

that what’s writ is not the full sum.

Strokes of my brush fall

broader than this and

some things can’t be helped.

Sorry about your friend.