poemsby Kurt Hill Iseltfor don cherry In the child's eye a styrofoam glider makes no impact on the sky, only a quiet storm between the branches. Tight, silent runs landing shadow punches on bickering birds, bubbling over time and again. To taste the sweetness of sugar Is to taste the sweetness of salt - Crack open the barrel and pour in your death. To esteem a presence is to abate the flow - Only herds of cattle continue where there lays no grass. With barren soil securing the corn stalks - The wind blows, they sway. . . Reflecting the invisible, Falsely feeding the multitudes, Digesting ideas that do not exist in fields or waves. But in the blades and breeze which butt against the door, Phantom farmers knock loudly for the funeral march to begin - "Proceed to your birth, Eat ecstacy from the communal plate," The cattle stand tongue-tied waiting for your answer. haiku Watching a lightning storm from a distant shore, clouds burning like prophets. Dead fish hang on the still water like a fleet of tired yellow balloons. Mind numb with tv and alcohol, only to lay around and weep. Moonlight glistens on silent black serpent, sliding into inky pool. Played Twice I made my father soup and sandwich, a simple meal I thought he might like. If I only had not left the stove on the second time. The moon shines brightly tonight, a glowing blue as if the tv were left on. My father enjoyed the food, he seemed happy I made him the meal. If only I had not left the stove on the second time. Lentil beans and peanut butter, empty plates on his bed. I was clean-shaven for work. (repeat) Dinner at McCall's I was walking to two dinners across a park of diamonds and grass, when a man approached from a passing car, his face rough and haggard. "Might you need a person to draw? I taught myself and work at McCall's, though I'll be leaving to go someplace else." Someone who might draw those things I need, but from a restaurant and not even there. "Why are you leaving McCall's?" I asked. He stepped forward and threw his words: "I can't live on that. No one can live on that." "Then I'll see you there tomorrow." And because I had two dinners to attend, I walked to McCall's but at an apartment opened the door. An apartment (more like a closet) where a table filled the room, and men filled the table, and no one answered when I asked who he was. turning race surround the butterfly orange yellow, ants eat the love then turn home for more. not so up the way a robin with asphalt eyes lays waits for love, and waits- cars pass. grass black birds from green to blue undulate over car fence wall- a banner rally-waved to convert the parking lot poets; a child's church of cries and wails and eyes black somewhere between the clouds, black somewhere amongst the withered leaves. aces and ashes hammer the asphalt for unhatched eggs like zealots on a fallen temple, creating destruction in their search for that which will fly away. acorn banquets and whistled symphonies inebriate the ascetics in a turbulence of heavenly haberdashery, each now a ragged royal parading an empty urn to the envy of apparitions and nightmares. from tree to tree to tree the birds flee while crippled converts stumble over root and rock with their words tumbling to the ground, lying dormant amidst the grass; from the trees black birds then sail blue to green, feeding on ancient seeds from unmarked graves- each seed a song, each song a color, each color a devotion fulfilled. In the beginning, the gods reigned down a heavy hand, a kaleidoscope eye; incontent seraphines punching hu-man into space, thus breaking the tender turn of existence. The earth then continued at a break-neck speed, spiraling closer to the sun. But cat and mouse never served the god’s fancy, never guaranteed a proper burial for the impotent children they’ve ignored for so long. How could such betrayal find voice in the quiet solitude that gravitates towards the nasty puss building up underneath your fingernails? So the lies and sins pushed truth to the shore and pierced the earth with trees. Thought after thought after thought couraged the storms with words (with words). Trumpets proclaimed the sun and mountains were raised and temples were built. Terrible curses kept in the ocean’s bounty forced fish to hurl themselves on the shore, salting the rocks with feather shines - shining shining shining under the glorious night where stars chattered clamorously in semaphore rage and clouds chased evening shadows from the lizard moon, her scaly roar challenging the priests to hatch from their shells and hunt again. Rivers bloody to hunt again, mountains groaning to hunt again, stars falling to hunt again, the eye of God hunts again. As the gods maintained their wrath in Harkonnen way, words split and minds split from the sharp surgeon fury no one could look away from. Turmoil of truth, crisis in the rocks, belligerent skies cried lies somehow never seen with the eyes. Yet careless suns singing silent jokes of criminal children smelled a new scent of justice in the cities man never built; all the while contemporary faults fossilized from millennia past were indelibly circumscribed on the toothless grin of Father Time: Saint Vagabond in a mossy robe beset with the glistening dew of a thousand ransoms. Each leaf green with understanding, knowledge dripping from his cup. A fearless drink collecting in rivers and pools only to be heated by the flower’s fire, steeped in the slave’s sweat, stirred with the queen’s scepter, and loved by the ocean’s lightning. Believe me when I tell you, there is no faster storm.
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