Lucidities: Two Ovillejos
I.
Across our eyes, dark scarves they bind,
And blind,
We’re spun about. Our twirls incite
Delight
As peers with stick-pins seek the mark
In dark.
Though muddling spurs attachment’s spark,
I’d tear away this veil and see
Before I’d stumble willingly
And blind, delight in dark.
II.
Within your cage, you envy me –
I’m free
While stalwart bars imprison you.
Break through,
They taunt. You’re trodden ‘neath their heel,
This steel
Forged fast from past’s self-hate. Appeal
To writer’s joys; they sprang me first
With probing prose and rhyming verse.
I’m free- break through this steel.
A Queen of Infinite Space (a rondel)
With open eyes and upheld head,
She spies you sleeping, bids you shed
Your childish fitfulness. In bed,
Illusionary frights imbed
Their thorns in girlhood’s crown o’erhead,
Until you ricochet from bed
With open eyes and upheld head.
She spies you sleeping, bids you shed
Maternal strain from which you’d fled.
Your waking’s gone, yet so’s your dread,
And in its place, her flaxen head
Against your cheek. Pure peace she’s bred
With open eyes and upheld head.
Shifted Spaces (a kyrielle)
1997
Confined within her one-room flat,
She bids men breach her habitat
To oust the dreams that plague each night. .
She pleads, have mercy on my plight!
This wan, assistant retail boss
Swigs scotch to ease her albatross.
Awaiting homebound bus’s light
She pleads, have mercy on my plight!
Last fall, she’d birthed a baby boy
Born brainless - shorn of thought or joy.
Bewailing sparks that can’t ignite,
She pleads, have mercy on my plight!
2017
Now rooted in her five-room house,
With rat-race tasks and lists she flouts
The fears she’ll fail to stay upright.
She pleads, have mercy on my plight!
This bustling writer gains repute:
An office job, a long commute.
When traffic yields just crimson light,
She pleads, have mercy on my plight!
She’s birthed two boys, one headstrong girl –
Their perspicacious minds unfurl –
Combust with such unruly might
She pleads, have mercy on my plight!
Emergent’s Roots (an acrostic sonnet)
Emergent trees who’ve breached their tier arise,
Mere stems in woods’ bouquet no more. They gloat,
Exult in anonymity’s demise,
Renounce the verdant canopy they’ve smote.
Geography’s constraints now loosed, they bid
Enflaming Sun accelerate their schemes –
Negate their past obscurity. But did
They know, unsullied by vainglorious dreams,
Sedate shrub saplings (swathed in dark) exude
Resolve beneath the forest canopy?
Obliged to dusk, the Understory’s brood
Objects to naught. Instead, in woodland’s lee,
Tenacious roots consent to burrow down
So buttressed, spire-like trees can gain renown.
