INRI

I am(am) burying my desires,
except the pretty words,
potted orbs of speckled glass,
fine elocution and speeches
artificial flourishes,
my(my) May Parade of
sharp tongues and inflated fears,
window into false hope,
soapbox for throwing dice,
and parapet to take aim,
(Jonathan),
flesh around such hard hard matter
chain and link and limo,
grandstand this canvas,
under Abe's blue sky, "these fine amerikas," ( promises? ),
closing ceremony,
ground up to meet you.

CONVERGE

Lead to Aesop's Macbeth,
Our Brother's Grimm,
clasp both Hands
in bitter remorse,
The requiem, en mass;

Hemp for a machete,
when blown wheat afield and
shedding Life's art is Death,
a chorus whose Exodus
drones a fashioned fugue,
aside from the fading
our piper plays...

Wooing
the overstayed courier,
noting a passerby's penance
as mourners
peer into their crystal balls,
and Captains
salute in common jest,
and doctors
wrinkle a worried brow..
--the lights converge.

THE KNOCK-KNEED PEOPLE

Are these your knock-kneed people,
eyelids peeled and gaping maws,
cankered skins of bleaching yellows,
beneath a heavy carbon fugue..
And are these your knock-kneed people,
singed and breathless, mottled grey,
residuals of cave-drawn masses,
atomic dissidents of wastes..
Or are these your tortured drummers,
pummeling prayer into song,
song's appeasement to deliverance,
in a blessed yet fractured mind.
yes, these are your knock-kneed people,
scarlet throngs oppressed and bent,
outcast sons that seek divinity,
in an all too perfect God.

AN EMPTY WELL

Reactions are Relatives,
they're well-known cousins to disaster and distant nephews to pretense, alike
the dark that greets you halfway,
on this corner,
down this bend.

Yet when we meet along its byway
exchange our ties
make our amends,
we look-up past its' horizon
from the bottom of this well.

That this "Exists" for us,
is good,
should we " Remember".
also sweet,
as though the pain was tribulation's
castdown loaves upon the seas.
Of meager sustenance we measure-
gauge- mete out, to chart our course
can ripple outwards to forever
or return us to the shore.

© Trincoll Journal, 1995.