Poems
by Perry L. Powell
Deal
Your friends over
for the birthday party
playing their cards
and you on your throne
alert.
What does the Queen do
after the King dies?
Are her orders still obeyed?
Amateur philosopher, I
can offer only friendship.
I have no solutions
for the frail horrors
of anatomy.
But see the milky girdle
of stars through the night's window.
Nothing Doing
All the way round we wait.
The music portends.
Be neither bored nor angry.
You can do the reverse.
Somewhere another morning,
your train will arrive.
To calculate the duration
is an act of faith after all.
Reading your magazine,
counting your dark sheep,
taking your notes,
your time to dream is at hand.
Death On Mountains
You know, I remember that day
when I hung off the side of Brasstown Bald
clinging to a root
like in the zen story but with no ripe fruit
I could have let go
and fallen to my death.
You know, I could never do a decent pull-up.
But I managed to crawl my way back.
I never told anyone.
One day on another mountain,
did you pay my debt?
Exchange
I listen to an old man sing
and reach for what I have lost.
It seems
I reach for a ghost.
Yet
the tumble of the day
is a round fact
while you remain a flat mystery
and if I can give these words away, you will know
I would trade all I have left
for one more of your kisses.
Morning Glory
And when in the morning the air is cold
and the mind is empty without limit
and the preparations for the new day
hang in the room purple like last night's smoke,
you will stretch out your hands to plead for fire
without speaking a word or buying a thought
while glaciers slide down your stone forehead
as if for the first time, as if for real,
and all the pale pages will burn in ice,
the dreams will burn in ice, the plans will burn.
When from the last flickers you will find means
to invent your next world bit by bit, word by word―
this time, you say, without error or persuasion;
this time without a clock; this time without an end.
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