SHONE that day the last sun,
WRIST watch down to final second
CHILIast marked the moment at falls’ lip,
CANOE almost hovering before the tip, then the plunge.
Note: I felt that the normal uses of canoe were taken by the time I got to it.
Author: David Wright
Glimmer in the Ursine Mind
HONEY comb combed through,
POUTY bear got there late,
PRICE of late hibernation.
PRANK on those greedy others dimly glimmers at the edge of ursine mind.
Act!
ERASE grievance, ponder action, venture out in hope,
BORNE must be outrageous fortune, dismissed the if-only sham,
SLINGs and arrows weathered, assert your agency’s small dram.
BROODing: what will it gain or change? Act within your scope!
Two Communions
OFFERtory intones, one measure in the long composition,
HORDE–throng–communion of saints sing, in ever deepening harmony.
STEIN raised at end of day, even larger company joined in a rite, toasting day’s end.
SHEAR forces will fate their intersection. Yet, may the bonds hold in this time of grace.
Cowboys in the Warehouse
WINCH, plaything for boisterous cowboys in the warehouse.
HAVOC unfolds: add pallet, cables, voila! ad hoc flying contraption.
AMUSEment ends when Tom falls 15 feet to floor, lies motionless.
DEPOT falls silent. Pangs of sick longing to reel back time. Then his eyes open, he stands up.
Ninth Circle
THICK ice holds grisly three-faced Lucifer at
NINTH circle’s center: ice never thaws under freezing wind of those
AVIAN mocking, seraphim mocking bat wings beating.
EXCEL this hellishness? What poet can prevail over Dante Alighieri?
Muster Grace
VERGE of chaos, strife always straining to cliff’s edge,
SHORT fuses and fears ascendant reach for grim logic,
TRIPE abundant, speech measured by edge’s sharpness.
STOIC hearts must beat slowly and muster grace.
Gate to the Future
GROUTs peered at in cup’s bottom reveal what future?
SPURT of fateful activity, but where, who, to whom?
TOWEL from Hitchhiker’s I might as well wrap round my eyes.
A GATE to the future is every moment, and all I know is stepping through it.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/grouts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasseography
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/24779-a-towel-the-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy-says-is
Note: Some days you go lateral with the words.
The Path to Former Glory
ERODE in pursuit of former glory that glory’s every institution:
STATE’s purpose to smoothe out faction by orderly succession.
WACKY quacks in bombast push to fore for faster diminution.
TASTY! cheered satirists then, who now groan from such oppression.
If The Kraken Still Had Eyes
NEWLY found specimen, giant squid, eyes the size of dinner-plates.
PUPILs, slits in light, plates in the deep, always seem to watch you,
UTTER fascination, thrill for the museum-goers. What if it were alive?
BRINE? If I were in there with it? It would see me . . . it’d be the last thing I ever see.
Note: this one is a counter-factual allusion to China Miéville’s Kraken, in which the specimen no longer has its eyes:
Its eyes would have been twenty-three or twenty-four centimetres across,” Billy would say. People would measure with their fingers, and children opened their own eyes mimicry-wide. “Yeah, like plates. Like dinner plates.” He said it every time, every time thinking of Hans Christian Andersen’s dog. “But it’s very hard to keep eyes fresh, so they’re gone. We injected it with the same stuff that’s in the tank to stop it rotting from the inside. “It was alive when it was caught.”
Kraken, China Miéville, p8