World Poetry Day 2015: A Poem Should Be (14)

A musing quest 
For common ground, say 
This cur’s 

Sniffing round the body 
Poetic where another member 
Of the pack’s been 

Hanging out his calling card so 
All us intimates know just where we are 
To piss on the corpus, too. 

Ditch

Gathered by the wayside, 
Heads bent over, 
No need to decide— 

Full of bleeding wind-
Flowers on either side. 

Windsong

Your hair barely grazed 
The wild flowering almond 

In your passing and already 
The air sweeping through 

The meadow’s redolent
With bitter fare-thee-wells. 

Tandem Limbo

Help me get to wherever it is 
I’m going, I’ll help you 

Get back to wherever it is 
You’re going along, too. 

Black Hair, White Space, Gray Matter

That space between your ears remains 
Shockingly grotesque, revealing 
A gross lack of fantasy in shucking it— 
Do not wonder then how it was all 
Those sheaves of corny poems you wrote 
And kept turning over in your mind 
That turned your hair white overnight. 

In-between Poetic Tracts

As the words retract, 
The gaps keep stretching 

Out longer, till one day 
Down in the lower 40 

Of your mind, 
There’s just one 

Endless gap left,
Tilling away. 

Transparency, As in Projection

You’ve barely scratched the surface 
Under the volcano 

And already you think 
Your mind’s made of obsidian.