juxtapose-ing: when winter storms, poem and I read between the lines...

juxtapose-ing: when winter storms, 
poem and I read between the lines...



flicker lights, tv's constant drone, the muses are amused at the weight of winter on the tin roof...

( seasonal a-new-ed annual anointing
crease, eased into stretched eventually 
to a too thin )

lady liberty is on her knees 
sucking down the frothy will 
of a corporate world, 
lodged somewhere 
between christian crosses 
and gideon's bibles
and don't be fooled, 
jerusalem and mecca want some too... 

america is out 
there sleeping 
beneath sirens,
winter sea rage 
inside wind 
lining the sky 
poured sand dreams...

build a flood 
and the dam will come,
everything can be held back 
until there isn't enough left...

emptied buildings house birds,
wild grasses break bread 
concrete loam(s), poems
beneath snow
sirens call out 
faded yellowed 
remembrances twirl 
from scraped blade road sounds...

the driver plows, lean in 
their faces full of grit...
their pockets 
stuffed with letters we sent 
from every dead letter office...

what had we sent them, I tried to recall in a flashed 
instantaneous panicky thought...

it could it have been one of the myriad of things, we had thought of, as a danger to knowing mortality demands wisdom...or it could have been a mistaken addressee, one of our vicious chain letters we occasionally send to almost random folks we think of, as lemmings...

hmmm, mattered not now...the phone was ringing 
off the hook and most of our family members were not 
amused...

we seemingly accused them all of being tacitly 
involved with the espionage against the soul 
church branding their today 
with a glimpsed gold tomorrow 
that I could not spend today...

even if by mistake, their universal supreme being 
must be laughing, as I am, at the delicious irony of we, going 
past polite into barbarous truth as an un-forseen 
projectile...every family has its Achilles, I heard Hector say...

and sometimes the ghosts of those vanquished, 
purposely or not, can be heard laughing at any and all 
the come-uppance they had received...

we all had believed, at one time or another, paybacks 
were necessary music...like little howls caught in the spiny arms of oaks and maples deep in the folds of January snows...you could hear that destiny only wanted to live for today...because tomorrow wouldn't know what to do with fate and leeway...so better they be angry to clear the snow and ice from the freeway, we were mostly shuttered inside anyways and couldn't be bothered to answer any of our correspondences...


EJR ©