M.P. Powers
Here are some poems from Hallucinogenic Dragonfly Intermezzo:
Grounded
The great Greek lion tragedy
is at hand. The quantum cosmic elements
are all converging, closing in
on me. This personality, that wailing
war, your changeling desire. The ugly
animal head of some uglier
animal Fate is beginning to show its face.
I need to get away.
And get far away.
To Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin.
The closest thing to suicide
I can think of: to say goodbye
to everything, and travel
alone. To London, or Oslo.
To yet another spiritual self-dismemberment.
I need to solve myself
abroad. I need to think I can be solved
sylvan and renewed. In Venice,
or Novgorod. Dublin,
Athens. Anywhere but home,
where my heart's a prune, all bruised and old.
Duende
Now is not the time to talk about money,
Chavis, nor the Crimean crisis, nor your father's
cancer, nor your son's mother's specially-
augmented piracies.
Now is the time to say so long Care, so long
tormenting Hope, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
and tomorrow; scatter liberally
lilies and purple flowers,
play soft Italian baroque, uncork the vintage rosé.
Every moment has in it the possibility
of rebirth; every moment a dying orchid.
The world is nothing
more than dew-glaze on a grasshopper's wings.
But one day, one night, one hour,
(so you know), the willow flakes
will blow
as though they're hearing music, love's strange
arrow-drawn pricksong will travel
over the waters, and the falcon will find
the falconer's glove.
Transformations
In those days, things kept dying around me.
A nightingale's song fell down in the brambles.
A whitefaced possum groped in through
The cat door one night, very late, found a quiet corner
In the kitchen, lay down and went upward
In the light, circling. A circle of light came down.
And the stain in the terrazzo floor became a mirage.
A nightingale's song tangled up in the brambles.
And then it was summer, and I kept waking up
In all these different beds, in all these magnificent
European cities, without you. I can't even
Remember our last hours together, or saying
Goodbye. But in those days, as the old husk was
Peeling, a halo of honey bees swarmed my head,
And the light kept going out of me.
A nightingale's song lay dead in the brambles.
Insomnia
3 a.m., in Wedding, and the wet streets gleam like blown glass;
trees in a broad current appear to be sailing off.
A heavy truck idles at a gate,
hazards flashing.
A shadow climbs out.
3 a.m., in a phosphorescence among sunflowers,
devoured by peacocks
and grey wolves
and the voice in the walls.
The sky swirls with glaze-green tidepools, a ring of Nibelungs,
fog-white, blue-pale,
gliding fires and no sign of dawn.
3 a.m., in a building of dark halls, locked doors
and conspiracies,
of old leaky plumbing and betrayal,
of tiny rooms where people are asleep, like caterpillars
in the rainforest,
dreaming of peril and fertility.
I lie down on my lumpy duvet amid the hiss of glowing radiators,
jars of walnut oil and turmeric,
images floating across the room:
a Peruvian mask, a coral shell
necklace of light,
lies, rapture.
The windows crackle with blue electricity.
Nexus Stage Left
Soon enough, it'll all be over.
This play, the dim-lit stage
with the cardboard angels and painted mountains,
the green dragon
and the coronation of vinegar.
Soon enough,
the rockfish will sing its swan song,
and the prophet Ezekiel
will come back
as a bulb of elephant garlic
in the Garden of Earthly Delights.
Soon enough,
when the wild horses of the sun
give birth
to cassava
and a Jew's harp, locusts and oil fires
will inherit
the Sinai Peninsula.
Soon enough is happening already.
Already, the queen bee is circling the pomegranate
to inspire some kind of
magic cosmic revelatory bias.
Already,
cactus fur
bristles
in Damascus,
and history's opening its hands.
It's the old story of The Fox
and The Crow, retold
from the point of view
of a piece
of
cheese.
It's stones
and roots and gaudy
weddings
struggling to be fire.
It's a spastic fly trapped in the belly of a light fixture.