Out of Winter from the West -- A New Collection of Poems

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Philip Locke
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Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2002 6:36 pm

Out of Winter from the West -- A New Collection of Poems

Post by Philip Locke »

Out of Winter from the WestTen New PoemsI.I saw the two most beautiful stars,but they were justplanes carrying heartsfrom minds –I saw the twomost fearsome stars.Constellations burn faintly behindblue jet engines.II.I look down uponthe corner whereI once stood.I would laugh upat the windowthrough which I now gaze atslender worlds.I cry andlook softly uponthat old place.I remember agirl who once proclaimed,“You are all guilty!”Truly this silent canyon is punishment enough.III.It’s near midnight, a gray moon sits outside the window, glowing warmly.BB King’s playing too loudly, I don’t like it much,but she does.Notes creep into flakingbits of wallpaper, longhowls of trumpet dribble about like wax from a flame.A voice moves in my chest,I can feel it on my fingertips,It’s slow and heavy.Walls are amber syrup, flowingdown. A rainbow stretches below me and I peer towards itsbase.All I can see is a veilof smoke rolling overatheist eyes beholding their god.IV.Days turn from my sight.They rest in dejected puddlesat my feet.I can hear only one great symphony now—the moon’s nocturnal vibrations.Is there reallyanything beyondmy lonely friend?There are onlyuntouchables sometimes.Blaze, stars.V.Smoke from a bird’s eye.Urgency flickered in the room,electric and incensed.Music rose: Peaks. Valleys.Crests of beat broke throughthe ceiling and captured themoon and stars and cast offthe sun.My joy’s earth rode freely through the heaven’s farthest reaches.Familiar faces, charged andflushed, fell merrily into wallsand fractured to orange light.I couldn’t wholly feel the circle,it was much more a square,though ‘round and ‘roundI floated.To the cupped ground I slid, feelingquite the puzzle piece. A hand fell into mine, a bridge that arched so thinly, so lovely into the empty heights.Under the glow of forgetting eyesI melted into the most finite point—We are all the most finite points.VI.I sit on thiskind of pillar.Time has passed,completely spent.Only the fluctuations,oceanic,of the Spirit give mea sense of progress.Up down,up down.I stumble upona shivering door.It is a leg of infinite cloud.Upon some tiny seaI sail in good company:The Friend, the Glimmer,the Apple, and the Sirenwith me drift and welaugh and forget land:now I taste the Apple,and I rest in senseless shade;now I embrace the Friend,We dance and make merry;now I kiss the Glimmerwhere pity ends and love begins;now I plummet with the Sireninto the roaring heart of a weeping sun.When I fall through the watersinking to unsinkable depthsI settle again into my seat,but it has melted to a circle.I link arms with my companions.We stride from televised smiles.We find the Lover, the Jazz Man,the Heretic, and the Psychotic,who bend straight lines to curves,drain rainbows to gray:The Lover plucks from my armthe Apple and sins another Eden to naught;The Jazz Man leads with blacknotes the Friend astray;The Heretic torches a mountain temple,and to fire puts the Glimmer’s empty roads;The Psychotic decries the Nationsand feasts upon the Siren’s soul and flesh.Alone I make a pilgrimagepast old ups and through new downs.At last I meet the End,who is a melancholy happiness.With the Friend, the Glimmer,the Apple, and the Siren I am restrung.Timeless-eternals collapseand Never-nothings blossom to the tune of“A life can mean so little,each day can mean so much.”VII.We live in insular worldswhich pass invisibly beforethe eyes of others.Through silent halls weslowly proceed, our churningthoughts glimmering companions,and the most transientof friends.Words to yet be saidrest lightly all about,so fragile as to be blinkto naught at the distant echoesof second guesses tuggingdully and dourly at the recesses of the stomachand harping at the shy soul.Opaque futures float by,phantoms to be incarnatedin some (not so) distanttime and place.I would be boundlesslyjoyful to but peek yourworld from a distant sun.VIII.In the blueof dawn withthe 5am moonsullen and sunkengrazing the redstained horizonI crept from mydreams but had trouble, I had forgotten towhere I was supposed togo, and how.A tiny acquaintance named Melancholywandered with me through cold sheets.IX.The moon is sittingupon the road, she said.And it was,its well pockedgirth was restingbelligerently a bit on downthe snow patchedstreet.Yea it is, I said.As I watched itglare down uponthe crawling earthI saw a poem,I glimpsed a life.X.Only the old havethe privilege of writingabout the stupid andthe trivial, of caressingtheir nostalgia with the pen and cigarette.These distantmeanderings are hailed,applauded.The rest of us are cursedto watch always theskittering worlds, the fluidfaces who march upand down the headlines,tumbling heads, buildings,heroes.The rest of us are blessed, but perhapsnot so lucky.(c)2004, PR Locke

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