portage reported...

photo by The Brit_2 © via Flickr

to thieve a vicarious dress 

this horse carriage has odd spoken circles

there’s mud in the lane, the driver says

soft screams in the rustle of leaves

receding snows, in a tiny raked hexagonal memory

my fingers are desperate to hold the reins
as the cold is to hold onto Winter’s reign

that old man is already dead I said and he has fallen

atop the maiden womb and soon too will realize

she is going the loamed way of worms

tendril roots are ancients roads

shows in back alley carnage whispers

the gated mechanized humanity, is thirsty for more

for a supper under high road Suns
are we up to no good

the songbirds must know
they have remained silent

their cages wait to stain 
our lack of stewardship

we scrawl each a home
a poem of desire
carved onto stone
every soul is divine and on fire
everyone wants to know God
every bible is personalized 
every sanskrit, a hieroglyphic
every digestible emotion
is squeezed of nutrients
as part of the rent here

we canvass animal waste 
we throw with haste

when we find what words form 
in anger over denied holy passages
between the high heavens and
the low down hells
humanity sells as part process
and part someone getting more
with you getting less

we sometimes steal into material havens
clipping our little comforts

like electricity once did
supplanting kerosene lanterns

stringing, near the sky
miles of veins cut from smiles

held in stretched bows on greasy poles

street to street, we play for keeps

in crackled elemental codes

we hum to familiars and seek the dark

in every generation’s burning time

the driver says, almost there sir

shall I pull up to the front or

do would want your usual departure

of aperture eyed depiction

I tell him we are all fictional iron eventually

some of us a powder horn or goatskin wine

a piano keyed, turning old wood from doors to dreams

ushering the other side of every payment not made

so yes driver, pull around to the back

of this house, near hill and dale

clear of woods with ancient tree stumps

wanting, ever wanting to swallow the light again

allow me to spy maiden Spring’s flaxen hair

her dampened belled anticipations

her covered exits, all my wounds are faced with sin

my buckles, belts and buttons, all the things I hold in

so I may slip past reason, turning myself into folds
of wheeled yard fabric, everything life has gathered me with

EJR ©