keith

I wrote this in 2000, or 2001. Not sure, but it was definitely the first poem I was proud of:

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When? O when?

My bones are strung over a rack of hours

Minutes which are told to be days

but are not the actors required for the role

(Minutes cannot recall the lines of days)

Stretched far too thinly and needing

the glue of my angel to bind them

The hand of most coveted stillness shakes the more

I must be calm but O!

Impossibility!

Asking a boat on the sea to have the decency as not to rock

Assembling a three-masted galleon in corked bottle

with short, ill-fitting implements

As soup of tomato with chopsticks absurd!

The night was symphony/staccato and forte

but the day is a coda of legato and tedium

Conductor! I await the crescendo!

My love is first seat with the strings

my flute sings of her virtuosity

But my part is underwritten and developed poorly

The reverb of the hall brings out of the din

two voices adrift on the waves of a sea of madness

speaking of decency in the bed of the vile

Walking with sureness on a path that is crumbling

Trackless like birds having no attachment

to the pond of the frogs and the fishes

A libretto such as I had never seen

nor imagined existed

she has written

with ease in her sleep

Burned into the pages of her eyes

while the wisps of smoke

have settled on her hair

But the fire still smolders through her smile.