The Mixture As Before
Poems by Perry L. Powell

Findings

 

Yet metal
is best found by wood
glass by paper
air
after rain

 

scriptures
sculpted in sand
and a search for clarity
in this, that, and the other

 

gray flesh
and black blood
gave light to nothing
and life to light

 

somewhere love pays
in silver for leaves
and you will know
after
and after again.

 

 

 

Entanglement

 

The back story for the best dreams
goes like this: when on the slowest
day of the year, clouds, thunder and
heavy winds start, with you alone
standing on the porch and tasting
that flat taste in your mouth, the one
with which you are most familiar…

 

Then - particle across the threshold -
that moment of superposition
where the woman in blue jeans leans
into the door jamb to smile and
to sigh with a sound that takes
forever to die while your heart
is forever knotted in her arms.

 

 

 

Children of the Island

 

No one left remembers when
the mothers left, and we are
killing the last sad fathers.

 

Children rule our island now;
tell me again, if you please,
how this liberates my soul.

 

Brotherhood and Sisterhood
of Man, yes, but oh! the rise
of that sibling rivalry.

 

 

 

Lightly

 

Like a shawl
lightly,
the lavender bloated
wisteria wraps round
the shoulders of the old
oak

 

and he,
bent, doddering, professor,
peers
down

 

at the sun splattered stark
white
dogwood blossoms
as if

 

new
from Plato's cave.

 

 

 

What It's Like

 

It's like the last gardenia in fall

withering under that last breath.

 

It's like that moment

you're watching a horror movie

and you fall asleep

and the dream that comes then.

 

It's like carrying your bucket of water

for that fire you can't find.

 

I tell you I am no Argus Panoptes;

and I cannot take infinite care.

But some of us, it seems, must see and must take and bear

responsibility.

 

Because in the end a life

is only one life;

a death

is only one death

and love is only one reason

to see it all through.

 

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