In Anticipation of a Cyclone: Three Poems

Putting You On Notice

Not one flower has grown since I started writing this poem,

Not one puppy has wagged its tail, or baby owl smiled,

No one could even list the five most important events

That were changed because of it.  The ocean foam

Still piles up on the shore, those clowns who were exiled

From their historic roles, well, nothing prevents

Them returning to the circus for repainting. In fact,

The only advantage created by my verse

Is meeting you again after all these years:

The last time, to be sure, neither of us had the tact

Or maturity to realize that rhymes are a curse

And yield not simple pleasure but bitter tears.

If I wrote another sonnet, if I had the leisure,

It would be a bouquet or florilegia.

Judging by their Enamel, they could Sing Arias all Night

Perhaps in the cave of the Neanderthals, that toothsome lot,

someone dabbled and sprinkled the colours of the moon,

chewing on sprigs and sprays to make a brush,

and if she left her fingerprints, who would not

examine them a thousand years too soon,

tripping and traipsing, gnawing bones to mush,

the despised outsiders created art. better, earlier

than the noisy immigrants from Africa,

even pointillist configurations, tier on tier

at the edges of the cavern where it was darker

and where shadows danced and leaped, a spear

in hand, a dagger in the air, swish and swoosh

captured in a strange meandering line, a dot

next to a dot, the remnant of some forgotten tune.

Before there were Voices or Vices

Darkness, silence, insensitivity, what else

Can there be lost in the great descent into death,

Unless it is consciousness itself, not pulse

Or something more subtle even than final breath;

And dullness of intellect as nothing, or soft confusion,

As when the river breaks through the levee, currents seep

Into already sodden soil, stability an illusion,

Security a shadow soaking up the peaceful sleep;

Or extended hallucinations tangled in the weeds,

Like primeval creatures, neither fish nor anemones,

Where everything collapses into slimy beads

Of silence, life deformed or formless, genes

Ungendered and discombobulated, back

Into the primary sludge, originary crack.