the sentinel

there are large black spots on the moon.

 

 

 

I don't know where this can go.

So when i'm done here, there wont be any disagreement.

 

Unlike everyone else, I have no physical body.

Lipid only.

 

water, with some proteins,

fat, some wax. Getting darker with age.

 

Discarnate; I have come to confront this world and

reject the stuff of bad habit, to consider myself

 

as real as a thump on the door,

a flower. The link between this diet Coke and the

belly ring that disappeared. Are you keeping score?

 

A dirigible air ship steered by the winds of heavy burden.

I quarrel with myself,

 

make fists in my sheets.

Put the fires out on my feet.

 

Eat the liniment honey, bite the embouchure of noisy bees.

Lick the stems of the plant ovule,

 

dance like a man half my age, remembering nothing

about rhythm, history or James Brown.

 

Go to church in inanity,

eating the round, bland cookies, drinking the watered down

mix-jive,

shout HALLELUJAH!

then go home making  Martha faces at anyone I can't understand. Dear

Sister of Lazarus.

 

Lay beside the river.

Get cold.

 

Try to lay eggs beside that same river;

can't squeeze my but cheeks

together to form ovals.

 

Try to sing by the river

but wanting instead  to be lip-read.

 

Saw some children with their mothers humming lullabys.

Caught a halibut to be eaten on holy days.

 

Looked at the sun, saw my feet in the shadows

standing sentinel and foolish watch

 

over lost souls.

Reviews

[Shmoke-Sifted Heftlande..]

"A dirigible air ship steered by the winds of heavy burden.
I quarrel with myself," relatively speaking, it isn't the most poetic line in the piece (and I mean that in no way as a critique or an insult to the line), but it's possibly the most poignant, according to the theme and the timing of it. You've juxtaposed the displacement and movement in the air based on varying densities, which is so apropos and genius, considering you've called yourself lipid (as opposed to standard physical form), which has a different weight distribution ratio than other organic solids and water and said solids that absorb them..and the fact you're speaking of burden and speaking of the sky and mixing it with lines about introspection and the sun...just plain brilliant...it's so poignant, I've been able to base the bulk of my review around it.
"Saw some children with their mothers humming lullabys.
Caught a halibut to be eaten on holy days." the use of literary devices and history here is absolutely brilliant...so many synergistic and revolutionary binding and freeing lines and elements in this piece.
"Eat the liniment honey, bite the embouchure of noisy bees.
Lick the stems of the plant ovule,

dance like a man half my age, remembering nothing
about rhythm, history or James Brown." and the leap here needs no explanation or description..it's been an honor that I'm pretty certain I'm unworthy of to have witnessed this masterpiece.

[Marie Anzalone]

As Ken Simm recently reminded me, the journey is more important than the destination. You will get no disagreement from me, therefore, on where this one sauntered off to, of its own accord, into little spaces and observations of that river, metaphorical with so much importance. For what do we really clench bedsheets in fists for, anyway, if not for the struggle to hold onto every moment, make it lucid, make it real, make it COUNT?

I hope you always remember to dance like a man half your age. You don't need to remember the rhythm... you already have that mastered. What we need reminding of is that even the ones bothered by it, eventually do not matter any more. One more reason for Hallelujahs on Sundays I guess.

[one small maybe correction... but should be butt?]

[Tree]

Make no mistake about it there is structure to your flow, a rhythm A tone
that keeps the ear tuned in and the mind wide open. Someone in an earlier review (of another piece) wrote that normally they would discount free-flow poetry but can't over look yours; I respectfully disagree with that initial assessment. This Is free "controlled" flow, you have /method.

[Emily B]

this is the stuff, amen