February 2013

	February 2013 Wanderlust I See your Bones Voyeurs When the Rain Falls like this... Deep Water Gospel Deafened by your Soft Simple Words Basted for her Feast Coming Fully Awake I'll Call her Janine 'neath a Wedgewood Sky	Wanderlust Would I truly hike those lands, explore as much as I pledge to myself, or is it just that dangling string, an illusory rise that shimmers its mystery at me. that other fork in the road that lures with the soft buttery greens, the smell of fresh mown hay with its eerie breeze, that susurrus, that querulous cry through the trees.
image © Marko Popadic I See your Bones I see your bones crawling out of bed lifting from my arms releasing my fingers as we raise our glass of cold pink sky. I see your bones settled in risqué and teasing curled, nestled around each limb of me. I see your bones sizzled, sleeving, sliding… sautéed over mine I see your bones in the quiet as they lie lilac ash in dusk’s repose. In life in love in passion in loss in death I’ll always see your bones.	Voyeurs We the tarnished barely hold our smiles when you walk to the market full of such life and promise, each, refilling our basket full of dreams. We the mottled, grin at these blossoms, their bosoms the naughty fragrances the thighs exposed… as we tuck our lives and our eyes back away. Thanks to ‘Back-door’ Arnie for the seeds to this one. Cheers!	When the Rain Falls like this... When the rain falls like this… syncopated and fitful, like lucid air, wet with scattered thoughts drumming on the awnings spat-clack splashing my table for two. When the rain falls like this… misting on the walk, swirling oil on this hissy-fit street, hanging from the leaves like malachite pearls When the rain fall like this… faces emerge, hopeful it has eased, cabs cruise like voyeurs, ticking yellow guppies gawping for fares When the rain falls like this some hearts begin to blue, flowing over with bruise, or the cold cloak of longing, oh how they blue When the rain falls like this… other hearts quietly smile, stolen kisses in doorways, the scent of once belonging. oh how they smile. When the rain falls like this… I am a finger's curl away, watching the flush on your ivory skin, tracing its vague freckles with the lips of my mind.
Image © Oliver Blaise Deep Water Gospel Deep Water Gospel Most move beyond their moments the poets, balladeers, the buskers, the bar-stool bards, losing touch with the spirit that once rose beneath them. They slide like islands, volcanoes under-lit by hotspots, urgencies of anguish the passions of love or remorse. The eruptions churn the fumaroles cool, the effusions of angst crust over. Poetry is deep water gospel. We are the swimmers, denizens of the current we must swim in our schools of word to breath, to function, to flourish we must write.	Deafened by your Soft Simple Words I’ll hold you in the scarlet dark captive to our failing light. I’ll keep your heartbeat on my skin as long as I have my mind. You can’t walk away leaving words stillborn in their womb, you can’t remove your gaze the light from my heart’s bright room. In one moment’s breath the shadows wailed, light falling, deafened by your soft simple words. I’ll hold your head to my chest as I spend our final dream. I will whisper good night as I kiss your brow with the stars as I always do.	Basted for her Feast the bay is a convulsion a roiling foil wind whipped and white its wave tops like knuckles bared of their slick grey skin sun-smacked blue white gristle as chrome undulations dancing through the light. this bridge is slick, sea splashed and briny, thick with the seizures of this fickle wind. this hurricane is the usual nautical bitch, promises lures and lies boasting and puling blustery cries. the gulf is an unstable mirror, an unsavory calm eyes glassy, affixed in a narcotic dream dreamy and eerie, just that eerie pause as we are basted for her feast.
© J. Baylor Roberts Coming Fully Awake Dawn broke wind from a greasy sky, a wet fetid whimper of a breeze as shifts changed at the mills. the horizon a wall of congealed porridge tail lights scattering like neon mice across the yards to the bars or back to their blue collar caves. all night the skies are a fever of light chank-a-tink, tink-chank as they pound on the ore and the furnaces blaze in the valley freight cars bang out their violent coupling traveling for miles, their engines wailing as they leave the yards. Most nights I slept through it until I grew older, until my heart was first broken and something new came alive in me then I’d wake to watch each sunrise etching those sights and sounds on my soul.	I'll Call her Janine This woman wears the mantle of the world. in her tailored, black, ankle length coat she seems gothic - displaced as if removed from another time. I see her most days when she walks her dog. She walks with a resurrected pride yet seems to harbor deep sadness. old style dark glasses, black hair kept loose beneath a scarf or a deep green shawl as if perpetually cold. It’s a warm day today warm enough to shed sweaters to open the windows “Hello!” ‘Hello”, she replies with an alto voice a gentle voice, cherry, a voice you cannot fault. An endearing voice. My smalltalk is dust in my mouth. She is not old She is not young. Not thirty, not forty, nor fifty… Her feet are slippered a soft dark gray leather no nonsense, practical. Her black wool coat, unbuttoned today, moves side to side in slow ovals off the ground often stiffening to a sudden velvet breeze. I feel compelled to engage her to feel her eyes on me her polite smile locked with mine yet I pull away… as if this is not to be allowed. I never learned her name I never introduced myself I never petted her dog. I pet every dog!! She was gone in weeks. Eight weeks? Ten? A renter? A visitor? Had she been sick? Died? I knew no one who could know. It gets hot here rather quickly, quite early in the year. Perhaps she follows her coat.	'neath this Wedgewood Sky ‘neath this Wedgewood sky lies a scowling afternoon, a day of glaring light that shoves holes through the clouds and kisses your skin with pyrite promise. a day of winter-weak dream. The Anclote’s waters are tarnish blackened silvers and copper, glares of Chevy blue-metallic, of brackish iron and roils of pewter and tin. endless streams to an indifferent sea beneath this Wedgewood sky.