MANIA slides phlegmatic him outside habit’s stable course:
SALTY sea dog now fluent in choler’s rant, tailing into
PHASE of sanguine bold exertion before
SWOON, then awakening to new melancholy knowledge: we live and move in shifting substrate
Author: David Wright
Shirk Abstraction
SHIRK abstraction. Celebrate, say,
GUAVA, a concrete fruit. Green, verruca’ed, yet it sweetly blends.
OPINE? No, leave tedium of punditry for others.
FABLEd zero sums sum life without living water.
Spirit Wind
LEANT boldly, full sails at beam reach,
ARRAY of small craft scudding under the sun,
DRAFT, not of commerce, but for summer dreams,
AZURE lake alive, spirit wind’s joy as motive force.
Let there be
ANODE whence power flowed: speech, divine
AUDIO, sounding out the Let there be!, giving birth to stars, skies, earth, trees, and humankind.
CHASM bridged, maker to made, speaker to hearers drawing breath and hearing words—words by which all
BEGAN.
Homage to Mystery Men
SHANK Casanova Frankenstein, Blue
RAJA[H], with a spoon! Fiesty
PIXIE, Carol the Bowler, has your back,
COBRA—no, remember, it’s a skull—in her bowling ball.
Easily one of my dumbest ones, but an homage to:
Ingrates
TRYST, two lover’s last on outbreak’s eve, they soon entombed.
MOUND, for burial of the city’s dead arriving too fast for single graves.
SPREE of death eventually births antidote’s invention.
SERUM!—One generation would have danced at its arrival. This one scoffs.
Tyranny of Clocks
CLOCK doles time, portioned out in ticks, serves as
BOSSY metronome overtakes all time’s tempo,
LIEGE lord of a time-bound race, counts each subtracted second.
BLOCK ticks! Breathe—seize back time’s unmeasured moments.
Apocalypsis
LOWER down, in Johnstown, all seems calm.
UNION is going on 113, war survived, injustice re-submerged;
PARTY, faction, a steady equilibrium of peace?
FLOOD bursts as a sign; submerged may see the light, bad structures can fall.
Justice Delayed Will Yet Arrive
GAVEL in last judgment, Judge! You will not be partial;
MOGUL in the dock cannot inflate importance or
DEIGN self as exception to what is good.
WRECK those who, unchecked, did not turn and plead for grace.
The Rhythm
SCOPE of poem? Uncertain, but not to create cliché.
BLOKE, yes. Bohemian, yes. Musician, yes.
ROACH—no. So, what’s he high on? Life? This poem does not know.
BONGO? It’s the focus here: the rhythm’s about to start.