Tag Archives: #poetry

April 23, 2021

THE SILVER AXE

By EPRobles

He wondered with horror how so many memories, so many forms to be branded on his skin and engrave there.

Then the wet rattle of a twisted throat, and he beats his last breath to his knees, gazed on from above as the wheezing thing sagged, and began on his shoes.

One God looked in that one eye of him, took in the whole writhing weight of him, and, from the spine of that beast, blew the darkness that will not let me alone!

It is yet again where we find the Poet’s Muse. Her eyes are green, and they pierce backward and forward even into his head and his heart, his brain and his soul.

I have been chained to this post for six months and now I am to be hanged, it’s a winter morning, half-light.

The axe’s face is pale; its teeth are ready to cut; the poet stands slack-jawed; and waits with a satisfied grimace.

She smiles with blind malignity; I am hanging here, she begins, and her voice gears in his head, makes him mad with every anger and whimpers sound with a silver-sparkle, It is another wish shattered, this one made to whittle the Golden Ace’s life down to a ring so narrow and brutish and pale and inhuman.

The writer cannot see her but his ears are mad With unspoken sounds.

She has left dark-green circles.

He had tried to fill them with wonder and beauty; she: they’re her, only more so, every blot and abrasion cunningly and by dark cunning by her own hand, ever more revolting; why the hell did you bring that creature with you?

There is nothing for you to do, (the axe growls). You cannot even reach me.

I told you that I wanted the axe.

Then are you sure you’re not just nervous?

I am telling you nothing.

The truth is harsh.

This is not true.

Well then stop worrying.

I am telling you nothing!

The Poet looks up in alarm.

The axe comes down, it makes a hideous, brassy sound.

And it is still: I am telling you nothing!

Her face is as white as that of the blade.

He is sweating.

I do not want the axe, he says finally.

I am coming down!

A chuckle.

The axe’s blade is laughing.

The Poet spins in place, does a somersault, lands on his feet.

He moves fast.

At the touch of his right foot he has snatched up and spun into the air, caught, dangled over a canyon by the thin tip of his finger.

There is a rattle in his head.

Okay, okay, he whispers, I am coming down.

He lands and slumps, panting.

His face is flushing red, his hair disheveled.

He grins through the tears running down his face.

Just me, he tells the axe.

You are alone in this awful place with all the stupid, insane weirdoes.

Where is the fun in that?

This place is for people like you, not me.

He is in a mood.

The axe slashes through the air, a silver blur.

The Poet leaps into its path, somehow knowing, somehow having seen what it will do before it happens.

He leaps back and the axe cleaves the air, then comes down to strike his left foot, where it clatters on the ground with a dull clatter.

He starts to bend over to pick it up, but the axe’s weight is too much for him.

He stumbles to one knee and falls to his left side.

The axe rests, not quite pointed at him, but ready, at his right leg and stares at it, mouth slightly ajar.

The blade is warm against his right leg, the handle warm against his cheek.

He gets himself up, he bends over, picks up the axe.

He kicks his right leg up, the axe goes flying past his body as if to his left, and he stretches his left leg out to catch it.

He pulls himself to his feet and does not bother with the blade and bends down to retrieve it, and reaches, but there is nothing there.

The edge is dull. Within his mind and he frowns, picks it up, holds it up in front of him, glances behind him.

The axe is nowhere to be found. But it is mentally within his hand.

He looks at the blue-gray sky, frowns, turns to walk along the canyon wall, head down, watching for the axe.

He waits.

The axe sits on his shoulder, blades jutting up into his neck or so it feels.

Yes! he thinks.

The axe.

It is not true.

He is all alone in the world.

And an old man.

What do you expect him to do?

He thinks about the little old lady he saw in town today, and starts to weep.

:: 04.23.2021 ::

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April 23, 2021

THE VORTEX OF LIFE

By EPRobles

AND what is a friendship without warm feelings and devotion?
As those who go to and fro from bed to work without
a gentle smile or hello!
I would share a drink with you but first i must be sure
the label is not high alcohol but a label that reads either:
“life,” or “death.”
As the sun dips behind Mother Earth we eat and clean ourselves
then ready for bed. We read, watch something on the magic box
called television or stare at the walls. Some dream, some smoke,
some drink, some fight. Who is mad? All of us! Call it what you like
but the moral of that is — ‘Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes
the world goes round!’

Our human intentions only make matters worse!

Then the turtle spoke: “Those lovers we read about: to all the characters
drawing in colourful lines… you keep emotions at an anchor deep inside so
you can move far above the bubbles’ tricks — but the people swimming in
fish-glasses are freaked out. So many lives spilled, even all living simple
souls, cannot sustain the waters of love.

:: 04.22.2021 ::

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April 9, 2021

BRASS AGAINST STRINGS

By EPRobles

TONIGHT i was writing some prose just a word or two through my mind
within this confused world so i thought i would write instead;
the skin of my body // was warm and the thoughts colder than my head \\
it felt so good so i feel i could come to sleep; i dreamed so i dreamed
i was a thin thought of my mind and so taken to a place within the world
of those who do not care … could have blown my mind way out but again there i was!
meeting upon a mountain top all the characters of words and all those
sentences and incomplete thoughts — i had a woman climb up toward the fallen
characters — so crazy:  she said,  “Hey baby, take those words and make
a world, take those worlds and make my world”  i smoked caterpillar and
she was an island girl with sharp shapes and almond eyes and a mind
so sharp;  looking at me i said, “lady, you whispered something in
my ears so crazy so lady you have me.”  Oh yea i floated upon a cloud
upon the ground and took me into a place like a dream (all within my head)
ooooooh  one more time she said, ‘hey babe take those worlds and make
those fire characters words into poetry,’  and within my hand was a bottle
of turtle ocean wine and within my heart blood — we cut our lips upon the
fat love of feelings;  so take it and make words so take it all and make it words
— come on’ come on’ come’on come’on make it fine  as red wine.
we could ask Alice — where logic and proportion is small like the requiem of
songs so head — be your head!  be your head!

:: 04.09.2021 ::

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April 4, 2021

SPEAK WITH A QUIET MOUTH

By EPRobles

My inner darkness doth grow darker still and demons appear to men and birds and beasts by guise, and animals to meek men, and men to women, the last victims.  Thus we see the bitterness of our play; who act now dare not and then cry and rave and whisper in spite of the crookedness, the foulness, and recklessness of the blade of voice nay of mouth.
When did love and joy ever last? If the flesh of my thoughts and schemes do not dim and slacken and break and whither away, it was a Dream that made them.  My sight is now clouded with clouds of mystery, that look and bespeak as much as the good, yet give no good report.

But my angel of wisdom, and sweetest hearing, from whose lips the warring days have grown sweet, the graces, the attractions, and the pleasures and the choicest life-giving mead — in her throat have ever been heard; she, who drinketh the love-lamps still burn, and who never takes a cup or thinketh of death or pain.  Thus, to my mind, is wisdom’s knowledge, she who is a DAWN over the dark night, and rises on the dawn.

And as we look to the Day we see, indeed, in it the comely Maid that were always promised; not because she appear’d or twas talked but because, when our heart’s secret sleep e’er let slumber fall, our Mother had said, and the soul has thought since, ‘My dear, ah, come, see our love is done;’ Then do all things but with her, she that were never our mistress; and with her alone, who would let us loose unto that, and that alone, we trust; behold how round are the radiancies of my heart’s farthest thought; and the light of God’s Kingdom shines there, in the human’s heart; for I hope to learn of her more than of God.

But my mind, which is mine own, says, ‘Ah, though fair she be, she has none in the world for me.  And in the thrice wise maid, who was our Mother’s delight, the last hope and fear, a pity and a grief in my bosom have yielded with dull persistence; and in my esteem and affections retain with bitter ache all my love of all that was ours.

:: 04.03.2021 ::

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April 4, 2021

A HUNDRED POEMS – XXIICOUNT DOWN (4.3.21)

By EPRobles

That blade which takes i took that made what cuts did so did I bleed and took my road: that dust and blood the path my blade had cut for me. My blood your blood my bad my flesh machinery.
i cried aloud to see if the gods were indeed touched by my rage; they did not answer and all my rage is now dust and blood without a single whisper on the sand below.
i did not fall in this glade but it made me fall.
Back to the Restaurant Hip hip ho!
There’s a man in the town who has a silver tongue and so hard to hear, but loud and clear,
he could read the babbles of the natives, they say he can see into people’s hearts
just by looking at them.
That he is wise beyond his years when it comes to the things of the heart, or at least the heart of men.
For this reason we cannot quite explain he is the host of the good banquet and so the heart in the heart of man is a place that deserves his much deserved
tender touch.

What are you looking for? You have asked me many times before. And each time cannot seem to find you. Is it my age? i am an old man. Maybe it is my hair maybe i am ungainly. Perhaps i don’t look the part. The thing is i don’t like them as they’re everything a man should be.
But then there’s a thought maybe they’re trying to eat you. In the middle of winter the sun won’t shine and a man will see only darkness, but the sun isn’t what i mean but you’re a man so you know what i’m getting at.
Of course you do — you’re a man and you have your masculine way of thinking.
Maybe they look different, a lady with makeup she wears it as camouflage as her intentions are to seduce you and are veiled in its many colours.
i am the first to say a woman can’t make a man do anything they don’t want to do. But a man can, a man with a small piece of metal can do what he wants.
If they say no you can leave, leave them be.
But most aren’t like that; they seem to be of that sort, you know why, because most men have never known what real courage is.
i do.
i have it in me.
It’s inside me.

That desire that secret desire that we think will never exist
when we’re a boy.
It’s a lust, a dark lust and i have it. i am a man and you are not.
You look for it though just within you — that thing which you don’t know you had but now you do, and this thing you now desire/ you can’t help but see
it’s in you all along.
It’s you.
it’s me.
it’s her.
We’re all of this and it will only be her.
It’s you.
It’s me.
It’s her.

In the middle of winter the sun won’t shine and a man will see only darkness,
but the sun isn’t what i mean but you’re a man so you know what i’m getting at.
Yes you are a man and you know something else: a man with a small piece of metal
can do what he wants.
There is no need to look far and see what that thing is, or what she has to offer and you’ll know it when you see it.

04.03.2021 ::

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April 2, 2021

FAST FIRE

By EPRobles

small SLANTS by which a high pitched viscous singing commences
(coyly shifting from plane to plane) who baby! (unknown, a child!)
SLEEPING.
??!! NIGHT
sonospy: cigarette, watercress-ness, or what? chewie.
some of us. .other: hemp-prickling.
trollis. !!

WOE. a human head pop-smacked onto knee,
as he’s LAPPED up by a bee’s lost game;
some guy’s shorts are tied with an abcrack pattern;
wipe cigarette ash from chin while a skull
reminds him “blackout ;l none much to watch here.”—let’s dash out to
the terrace before night’s turnip-spore thin streams go
swimmer; pools of restlessness abjure and submerge. Friends wave off form
gentlemen like pornography of their adolescent’s middle school
suction cups of intelligent perspicacity.

Here eyes are blind, the portals to the sky of the day O!
The totally torsioned and pummeled
currents that lay out of phase in the machines of society, night is
where a brain should be: where black spirits capture an unawake
dawn.

night, in a jungle of panthers and giant green beetles where
with their infernal cocoons flimsy victims emerge to sprawl
on the concrete roof.

fastfire.

epiploca’s glorious blind-spot colorizes the gritty whiteout,
shadows now reflect signs of a Saturday night black and wild
chewing the band fence the yellow floodlights of some
everlastied school are reflected and seem to immerge
along the flow of broken bodies into the black misty mud of a
street trashed via the wonder of NIGHT ? ;
One hot A.M. the city is hard and uncomfortably
heavy- lipped, a reverberating pebble smacks
through the window; an off-note of her roar
wears- the dry car-wash window from all openings,
smashes out through the corner light.

;; 04.02.2021 ::

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March 31, 2021

FIRE OF HEARTS

By EPRobles

THE bad weather had subsided. \the sound of the spring equinox heralded the falling of a silence on the world. In the village, a few village men, young and old, sat around the long dining table, eating by candlelight. The village elders had gathered to select a new sage-the young had no wisdom, yet the wise men desired the young-and so they seated the young with the old, and none left alive would ever know. Before the elders sat the long table, with an old flint spear on it, it was cold to the touch as it glowed in the light from the candles. \(but it was worth it, it was the knowledge that I will not return. \) one of the young men said: \((I chose this spear, because, when it strikes, the spear will be split in two. Half of the spear will go out to become a bird, so the wisp of a spear can fly around, being a bird, and think about what we had, and whether to go on. Half of the spear, the half that is left, will come back to me, and I will become wise, and then I will guard it and understand the power of flight, and perhaps build a new village with a thick stone wall and and a trapdoor into the next world.\)) \((a warthog man-creature, \) another young man said, drawing into words his inability to remember his family and friends. ((I thought of my parents, my relatives, my village, my friends, but my home and my parents are gone now, so I do not miss them in the way that I could, if I could recall them again. They may as well not be a part of me now, any more than my eyes are part of my body now that I see without them.)) \((but what of the village, of my life? the wisp of a spear? what shall I do with it? \) the young man asked. \((I think I will remain with my people, but I do not know why I feel the urge to guard it. All I know is that it is a burden I should not bear, so I will not leave it behind. I suppose that in the end, knowing is not knowing, and the answer to the question is as elusive as before. And that is my answer to the way ahead, at least for now.\)) ((the other young man, here, said: I think I will go home to the city, and live among the people I grew up among. I will remember the things of my youth, but not the sorrows of my home. I will continue to be a father, a brother, a friend, but I will not become a part of that grief, it will not be mine.)) \((and then they said: That will be our voice, young man-creature, that will take flight like a winged dove, flying far away from us, flying away to a future beyond us, far away from our sorrows, and far away from our questions,\)) ((the old said: With what voice? what is there to compare with the way that can song that speaks words we could not have? I speak the deepest wisdom of the elders, and yet it is another mouth, another voice, and yet it has it own power, with words so beautiful and profound. Look at the blood of your children, and remember, look into your wife’s eyes and see, hear, hear, hear our song, which will return to us someday. Our words will leave us, to be another’s song. But our song, which was our voice in the first place, and remains ours by right, will return to us someday. It is not the way ahead. Yet even in that deathly quiet of remembering, you will know us. You will know the words that we sing, for they are our voices in the darkness, that will return, if we are lucky, to us. They will not sing the words that we have said. We will sing a new song, the song of our next, better life, which has more meaning than this one. The words that speak of sorrows, of homes and families that are gone, the deaths of young and old, those words will all have to be lost, for we will lose ourselves in the voices of our children, if we continue on.)) \((the young man-creature took some of the spear-wisdom that was given him, and drew it into a kind of pouch, and a strap of leather. He then cut his wings away, and his hair, and changed into the likeness of the wisp of a spear, with hair of copper and gold in it. He went to a chamber that was like the eyes of a hawk, and looked out at the world through its eyes, and looked for a long time, at the passing of the years. He was the first of the owl-creatures that would travel, the first to leave his home and leave behind the old, dark-lit chamber, and go to a different life, away from the old and sorrow, and into the new and waking sun. The old of the dark chamber that he had entered, the wisp of a spear, the old but dearly-held wisdom, the owl-creature, the other man-creatures, all lived in the chamber with him, in that world that he had created for them.))

:: 03.30.2021::

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March 29, 2021

VEGETABLES

By EPRobles

VEGETABLES, summer sun, a touch of salt and chlorine — his take on Italian art restored by frescoes who I don’t know well and a hundred times better than it says so — almond and lime ginger lime broccoli baked on a day during a season where there isn’t any snow and everyone outside to have a picnic on the one flower in the pool that everyone is using to make salt with since everyone can slather it all over their bodies and throughout their bubbles that they carry everywhere with them yet also simmering in pools and those that surround the one they are doing it in that the length of a slip of leg is not about how long the youth can stay and carry such things in his youth and how others have never felt as they were and how how he has never looked into their eyeballs knowing that the greenery remains awake, in a world that has been turned off and some even have forgotten how to look and still are drenched in cool water, and the scent and the texture of what it is in you and around you the fragrance of the space and the darkness and the sweat and the heat and the syrup and the celery that goes along

:: 03.28.2021 ::

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March 24, 2021

FRAMELESS HEADS UPON EMPTY WALLS

By EPRobles

On the single side of my art song—my parodic air—the loveliness is perfect
because I am “last in the line.” When you sit there pondering how you got
from here to there, you forget to be there, and the years hurry by like birds,
yet without wings.

Maybe that is what poets mean by the grass between the toes: it is the kind of beauty
that strikes me as singular, and then makes me forget where I was going.

Could that be the air I am inhaling, that gorgeous little dew, the sort of fragrance
that one asks questions about. That one is good, and leaves you for another week.
I am not asking about the individual, about the wit or the sex, that one; the other
thinks she is too good for poetry and wants to hang out her pants.

The trees on Central Park West have not only dimples, but very high struts.
Many passers-by make like jumping spiders and creep along the white beech bark,
tearing off the strange multicolored pods that are the leaves of the American locust
and varnish the unenclosed bark.

For a while they seem to be all yellow, then the green reasserts itself and they all turn red.
Red like earth, red like hell. I say what I mean. Why do we make so much of appearance
and so little of meaning? If you were to sneeze on a weekday you’d make a million dollars. I’m lucky
to get one or two dollars a day for my poems, and that’s all. All my life, I’ve been scraping
and clipping in hundreds of un-sexy places. I once walked out of an interview with a magazine
that had hired me because I was willing to work for peanuts. So I said to the editor,

“I think you have the wrong guy. I’ll get a job in a steel mill, or on a frickin’ airplane,
anywhere I want.” He seemed to like that, but I can’t remember what the magazine did later. I suppose
it was less than they wanted. But that’s what I mean by avoiding the cheap. I mean always for the mind
and the intellect, as if one day the outer world were going to fall apart. When it does, maybe it will be like a tenement balcony—the floor’s going to fall out from under us.

My best poems are about love and death. I think my best poems are about women and death.
The romantic poems give me pleasure. I don’t want to forget about them; I want
to love them. I don’t want to kill them; I want to hold them.
A love that is not really love doesn’t interest me.
It is interesting to see the Queen of Sheba swat away a red and yellow butterfly that comes to you
and likes to rest on your shoulder.

But there are different kinds of love—one that wants to hold someone in a tight embrace even though
you both know that someone is going to shake loose—one that wants to hold someone
even when she’s going to leave—one that wants to hold someone when she has long learnt the fine art
of saying no.

I’m always looking for “the little door.” But there is no little door, and if there were,
I’d probably find something I’d rather do.

:: 03.24.2021 ::

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March 17, 2021

A HUNDRED POEMS – XVI

By EPRobles

The morning eye dew
i love it sees a new day untouched
a breath of sight so grand
a peace-inner speak-eye!
Tussle the bed sheets;
a flag that Nation for the sleeper
my Anthem made of murmur whisper-speak
my tender love!

And each morning to awaken
do i see my Nation
next to me that Anthem
her name and lips her voice;
angelic bliss!

:: 03-26-2014 ::

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