Monday, August 17, 2015

4 poems || Philip Byron Oakes

Shoulder Closed Ahead

Transient compassions forging treaties at intermission
of old and new worlds of difference. The malarky man
smiles. Outside the steeple’s chase of heaven a crow
grows smarter everyday. Doubt is raised to a level it’s
never seen before the flood of insights into the laps
of bystanders. All but eligible to foresee fleeting nature
flee into smoke as the sandman takes it against the
grain. Putting the whole battalion at risk of confirming
the existence of perfection between the lines. Time
struck a little woozy in a holding of the pose, as the
manic frustrations amount to a wicker basket of laundry
at the doorstep of the naked truth. The generalissimo
concurring even as the tawdry details accrue to his
moustache, melting like glaciers on a chamber of
commerce day. And before you know it the dog is off
his leash and all hell’s breaking loose into song for
the people forever wandering the melody’s
fraught fitful way.


Austere

Parsimony bends ill begotten cranky over time
squeezed into presence minding pennies on the
floor. A stupor’s significance measured in snow
drifts towards thinking it’s cold where alter’s ego
lives. Flibberty giblets stuffing strange birds. Aging
ephemerae in search of lasting gasps, from a
wheeze’s narration of the moment. Temporal
intrigue. Bundled up in blooming episodes, fitting
nature to nurture’s slow slog to blame. A primer
on relativity in passage, cutting short to the quick.
Lopping hours off into the presence. Past getting
over under suspicion of being potentially, in all its
svelte caress. Rolling through consequence
thinning the air of importance. The weather’s
curtain falling for clarity. Code words for not going
there, where else is just as liable for the ethereal
state of affairs in the realm of possibility. Of a
depth charged with oblivion’s well being, able to
blot any memory of the interminable brevity.
Striving to extend the sorely shrivelled into play
the fool, for yet another violin lending gravitas to
curtain calls of commonality in the pry of eyes.
The peek-a-boo where are you going as gone the
way of saying that me is mine all over
the news.


At the Count of Three

Playing possum to a draw. Born wizened as prune
plumb forgetful of the sway of an interminable sea.
A tertiary cog in a fiddle lesson. Noblesse obliged to
share a secret’s odds, of growing common as the dirt
allows a seed of assertion. An ember’s ploy of seminal
sparks, promoting a warmth of the hearth in model
homes for tenants of the dream. A sitting position on
affairs of the heart. Ameliorated with distance.
Contextual slope to soften the insurgence of space.
Behind the scenes made in public, bringing those looks
along to wipe clean of suspicion, remembered as the
culprit in the hurry to come full circle to better see.
Franchising the carrot for the stick’s stake in holding
dinner down, to nourishing hopes flickering in an
ambivalent repose of painted tomorrows. In relativity’s
purge of landmarks. Oft indicted but slowly assimilated
colors taking a splash as their destiny, in a sea of dark
and light offerings at the altar of denial. In slippery
succession scolding the sequence with a blur. In the
greasy heat of interlocking alibis, for time served
growing tall enough to see over the verbiage
into both fact and friction of the fog.


Vacation School

Stubbornly ecclesastical biologies pumping stardust through tunnels of love and loathing lacing the wobble in perfect spheres. Contemplatively visceral alchemy brooding potions of mystery made plain in surrender to the formula. A sequential route to bypassing a plastic muck of living unattended on one’s own great fortune of time, diced ever inward down to a moment from which to jump as the world sinks into what it has long deserved. Into a milky froth surrendering to the effervescence of nucleic epitomes surfing the pedestal safely ashore. Dooming omissions in the grumbling to echo all the louder for the missing what it feels like to be superfluously real.

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