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Thursday, May 1, 2014

ANIOLY KARTY DO GRY (Angels Playing Cards)



This poem was published in my book A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION published in 2011 by Rattlesnake Press, Pollack Pines, CA.


ANIOLY KARTY DO GRY
(Angels Playing Cards)

There is too much light
In the room for anything irreconcilable
To happen.  It will be recorded
Inside the caves, on the battlefields,

Across the purple moors and darker prairies.
The cards are flipped down upon
The table, voiceless like generations
Forced to speak to each other
Through the dark
Doors of time.

For each card is unforgiven, unforeseen
With traces in its skin of the stillness
Before birth, The Ascent of Mount Carmel,
The Olympian crucifix with its living
Christus smelling like wars and collapse
Through fire of great empires.
There is no betting at all.  All blows away,
Just the open-mouthed angels constantly
Surprised at how the cards fall

As if by chance.



Sunday, April 27, 2014

A GO




A GO

There is a keening
On the wind, a kind of clear
Blue wanting that knows how
To use a can opener on the
Air, so that it can tear silver
Lines into the heart.  Oh, there
Will be no blood, for blood is
A veil and time, a great bird
High over the roofs of this town.

We thread our way past the crowds
To discover a land drenched with moon,
Its collection of owls silently winging
Out, over the edge of the lake.  There
is an idiot’s song, a lament caught
On the floor of the night.  How big
It all seems, the words, the voices
From the sink of the city.  It is
As if we were not to find a way
Here, as if God himself were out
For the day inventing Christmas
All over again, so that it might have
A different sound, perhaps that of many
Children, rather than the small golden 
Voice two thousand years old.

When we arrive home, well
Fed and slightly tired, the block
Is strung with colored lights and
Singing can be heard from windows,
Laughter and a crisp of first frost
In the air.  It must have been
Like this over and over again,
So far we have come knowing such

Things, so far we have left them behind.