Misericordia. Monday blue lightning flash on the freckled limbs of the
sycamore tree. The silver kicking colt in the breech position. Ryukyu
dye patterns in the indigo skies of her eyes. The axial tilt of a
mother’s loneliness. Raisins up both nostrils. Monday airborne rubber
elephants. Samadhi of giants beckoning. Brown bones of saints.
Learning to ignore all random effects. Monday Monday Monday.
back-to-back life sentences
flossing the bars
grass characters in the wind
(earthquake) Jiang Qing let her green canaries out of their cage. No
Murasaki grass to land on. To communicate across centuries and
imaginary biological divides, I’ll need a Goliath-sized block of
Carrara marble. The odds-on favorite 9 foot one (according to the
Masoretic text): all this before we can talk about how slingshot-David
kayoed him. THIS IS YOUR LIFE, and all the way from Clifton Heights,
Fast Eddie gallops naked at night, straitjackets marry soggy bones,
and always there is the embezzlement of space-time. The sponsors
insist on sacred OMISSIONS of uncomfortable history. Ralph Edwards
isn’t telling. All of us coming from somewhere else, powered by Madame
Mitochondria. I only want to endure the Roman sulfur mines of Sicily
like Anthony Quinn in Barabbas or sit with Legerkvist in the Swedish
sun. Do they have the symbol for MAYBE painted on the walls of the
Lascaux Cave? Maybe a cat on a window sill.
nose in a new Saturday morning sneaker
boiling tar, mustard and chlorine
I didn’t cross the Delaware, I guzzled it
It was a staring contest with a Damson flower. A smudge of coffee
grounds on one knuckle. Heavy metals. Maybe the lasered ablation of
memory. The $64,000 Question. Teilhard de Chardin dressed as a dusty,
excavating basketball coach. Alphabetical mnemonic devices recalling
the Suez Canal, but where, I interrupted, and when, were the gondolas
of Mars? Moving at secret tachyon speeds. I went back, back to what
never and always happened. The Titanic didn’t sink. The bullet never
left the chamber. The wart wasn’t on the chin. I made my confirmation.
The price tag peeled from my heel. My sister danced in uniform on
American Bandstand. Mom dated Buddy Greco. We landed on the butter
islands of dad’s oyster stew. He crunched Trenton Crackers and
devoured the salt-water bivalves of perfect balance. And did he not
explain the Golgi apparatus to his flat-in-the-back illiterate boys?
Duh! caused Biblical hemorrhaging in the last row
only to be enveloped by the flowing blue stingrays
of holy myroblytes
©2023 Patrick Sweeney All rights reserved.
Patrick Sweeney is a writer of short form poetry, who delights in jotting down the insignificant thoughts and images that constitute the lowly, livelong day.
Cajun Mutt Press 