VERSEWRIGHTS
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives

David Adès - 2


I Remember the Times I Forgot

I remember the time I forgot to breathe.
I lay blue-tongued, blue-faced,                         
blue-lunged after a hard landing,
air sucked out in a sudden decompression,
 
the contrail of my last breath ascending
like an uncorked genie after the final wish,
clouds spilling from a decanted sky.
 
I unlearned rhythm, the innate,
the inherited knowledge of gills,
residual contact with the umbilicus;
 
and occupied a space outside time,
claw-fisted against the grinding
squeeze of ribs – until the pained spasm,
 
the first shallow intake upon memory’s return,
a diminishing roar in my ears,
and sweet the air.
 
I remember the time I forgot to speak.
First, the air was black with words,
all buzz and drone departing,
a mindless swarm without choreographer
 
that unlinked arms, ended its intricate dance,
its many layered waltz with meaning
and fell into the event horizon of silence.
 
I could find no words then, no whispers,
no susurrations – only the blind fear
and a spreading stain of incomprehension.
 
It passed, and in the silence new things grew:
I learned to read the sky, the secrets
of birds’ wings, the songs of clouds.
 
My eyes recited poems, my hands told stories,
my body spoke other languages
and rich the speech.
 
I remember the time I forgot to love.
My dreams had set, and black grief arisen
behind my eyes, blanketing stars, sun,
luminous swirl of my inner cosmos.
 
Joy – panic-stricken – vanished in the arms
of laughter. The ground swooned,
punch drunk at the tide’s retreat,
 
glistening matted skeins of hope
and flapping wish stranded in its wake.
I sank into inertia,
 
a monotony of nights and days
and listless conversation,
gravity’s shoes hard on my shoulders.
 
It was years before the wave came in,
tsunami like, flooding my sullen heart,
and huge the love.
 
I remember the time I forgot to wake.
I was dreaming noiseless eternities,
floating in the squid ink depths
of unmapped oceans peopled by phantasms,
 
mermaids, unicorns: all the blurred
images of the subconscious.
Not quite bodiless, I sensed
 
an insistent tug drawing me further
from the surface. What lullaby
was this? What siren’s song?
 
Who knows how long I slept
and what it was, at last, that roused me?
I could have been lost forever
 
like someone sleeping in the snow,
but woke in my own familiar skin
and bright the light.
 
After each forgetting,
after each lapse into neglect,
a sweet, rich, huge, bright awakening.
​

Mortality

We were primed at birth:
 
smart bombs zeroing in
on our own deaths.
 
Sweet: the rush of air through sky.

​
Picture


​Go to page 1 of David Adès poetry

David Adès Profile

The Poet

The poet goes to bed with, awakens

in the warm arms of mystery,
words coming to her like shafts of light,

like drifts of petals, gusts of wind.

She fossicks, excavates,
not for fossils or bones, not for shiny gemstones,

but for other gleamings

she can hold up to the light,
look at this way and that,

not seeking revelation so much as glimpse.

In such fertile ground,
there is so much hidden to be found

the work is endless, the days pass

in a blur between night and night,
mystery’s embrace never failing her. 
​

Interloper

Here comes regret, wheeled in on its gurney,
all banged up and feeling sorry for itself,
though not at all contrite.  I turn away,
 
expressing my disinterest, thinking
I have no time for this, but regret isn’t interested
in my disinterest, or in any prescription
 
for a remedy, any suggestion to get over it
or to move on, any prescribed diet.
No, regret is settling in, installing itself
 
for the long haul, fully intending to gorge
on every other remnant emotion,
to swell and swell until nothing else is left.

              Metta Nun

          Darkness shall never vanquish her:
          her chin cleaves the waters
          she sails through, the beacon
          of her face illuminating her way.


Sad
     In memory of Lincoln Siliakus

Anne put it simply, beautifully,
a world contained in six words:
Lincoln left us yesterday in Avignon.

Another candle’s warm glow snuffed out,
another patch of darkness in place of light,
another disturbed sediment of memories.

Some say we pass into a bright light,
we pass into a wondrous embrace,
we pass into a loving realm.

I know nothing of this, 
yet I entertain the notion
that the light is the light of millions

of guttered candles, that the embrace
is the embrace of those who went
before us, that the loving realm

is the welcome we receive
when it is our turn to pass,
that Lincoln’s spirit is waiting now

to pour its light into the darkness, to hold
my spirit with warmth, with generosity,
with the wholeness of its nature.
​
Picture
Go to page 1 of David Adès' poetry

Comments?

***

​Thank you for visiting Tweetspeak VerseWrights.
© 2012-2018. VerseWrights. All rights reserved.:
Acrostic Poems
Ballad Poems
Catalog Poems
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems
Epic Poetry
Fairy Tale Poems
Fishing Poems
Funny Poems
Ghazal Poems
Haiku Poems
John Keats Poems
Love Poems
Math, Science & Technology Poems
Ode Poems
Pantoum Poems
Question Poems
Rondeau Poems
Rose Poems
Sestina Poems
Shakespeare Poems
Ship, Sail & Boat Poems
Sonnet Poems
Tea Poems
Villanelle Poems
William Blake Poems
Work Poems

To translate this page:
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives