|
Poems
by S.R. Compton
This body
wants
a mystic realm
that it would return to
again and again
like music
like leaves falling in autumn
like sleep
*
If a lily exhausts
the whiteness of white
does a red rose exhaust
the redness of red?
If the sky at a certain hour
exhausts the blueness of blue
where does that leave
the whiteness of snow?
The earth moves
the ship sails on
*
It was an electric diorama
of a frozen time.
It was a snakeskin fabric
covering a naked earth.
It was a blushing bride
accepting the sacrifice of the volcano.
It was a joke that made
the poinsettias laugh
for a thousand years.
*
You can tear the pages
from the spiral notebook
You can forget to send
the anniversary card
You can leave the books unread.
The sand falls.
*
All the neighboring tables
are talking.
The choker on a woman's neck.
Line after line in this lined
notebook.
*
minatory
laughter
imagination's
gods
the bottomless pool
at the end
of the desert.
*
I must have spent
an hour
I must have spent
a minute
a dinosaur
65 million years
*
white space
lapidary
characters
on a silent
page
x = |x|
*
like the melting clocks
across the hall
like the vanishing star
in your favorite constellation
like the language
you'd forgotten
the softness
of falling petals
*
a slide under the microscope...
but there's nothing on the slide--
just glass
which is devolving
back into the sand
from which it came.
Next
Poem 
|
