Frank Watson
The Distant Bells
Night whimpers its last gasp
with the smoke that lingers from solo chimneys reflected in the moonlit sky. Breath chokes on nighttime mist, harbinger of impending rain, a funeral procession, the notes to a blues night. My voice is damp; I listen to the distant bells beneath a roof that offers thin shelter from the coming storm. |
Micropoetry
she drinks
the sweet acid of his words until he corrodes her soul when she slept
she visited him across the night sky to kiss his soul in another world she runs her hands
along the poppy field as if in an opium haze |
she did not want
to face the sky but it came down anyway she plucks
a purple veronica and dreams of life on the other side of the lake |
Leda in Chains
The roots have grown in earth’s entwining pulse,
and all that’s left is sown in plundering pulse. Words of squalor, birds aflutter, consciousness slurred in time’s encircling pulse. Absurd, this game of back-and-forth, the silent shame of desolating pulse. Girded by fear, she fled but could not escape the spear of thrusting pulse. Spurred to seize his feeble prey, he drives to please his surging pulse. Unstirred by sounds of Leda’s cries, he drowns in rounds of violating pulse. Unheard between the herbs and sky, No one disturbs her stifling pulse.
|
Gravity is Light
I walk along the moon,
kicking the gray dust of fallen souls and in the distance I hear the shadow of laughter’s smile, yet gravity is light. Back home the rain raps shingles on my roof and as life is short, I speak with a wet voice and watch the moon. Moonless desolation in the ashes of lost salvation
The earth cracks in the desolation
of smoke that rises from the ashes in search of lost salvation. I drink bronze wine and listen to the gnash of a lone bird that sits on dried up vines. My violin is broken-- the strings are twisted like nerves that scream a word once spoken. As walls close in on a moonless night, I wonder how long my memory can serve when the dead will still indict. |
