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The Poetry Of.
Doug Richardson...............................................
The Consequence of Solar Flares
Summer noon diamonds;
10,000-mile ropes and arcs of sun.
The heat reaches earth
And luck! I'm in a raft
In a reservoir with scotch
And soda
And the feminine residue
Of starlight, sex, and
The Italian songbook.
I want more of this.
These women.
This music.
But first I'll have to recover
From the second degree burn
Over 50% of my body.
Household Objects, 4th of July
In a plantless apartment
Of paper plates
And plastic cups,
Street art oils
And poetry taped to the walls;
In that dark apartment --
Windows flung open,
Flawed curtains
Pulled out by the wind
Moving like startled junkies --
A bottle of dish soap
Sits on the windowsill.
There for the fifth straight year
On the 4th of July,
It absorbs the sound of fireworks,
As do the isopropyl,
The H2O2,
And the reticent spider web
Spun and respun
By generations of hourglass spiders
Pleased to repeat the patterns
Of their ancestors.
In one corner
A hat rack reveals images
Of a medicine wheel,
A crucifix,
And a voodoo doll
Skeleton key around its neck;
In another corner
A mannequin looks on,
First mystified,
Then elated,
Then in hysterics,
Mood wholly determined
By flashing pyrotechnics.
In Search of Rivers and Women
In his night travels
He traveled south
In search of rivers and women
Until the dark-road signature
Of the skunk
Veered him into the wet
Green blades
High as his hips
The secondhand light
Of the moon
Upon the skunk's
Stripe which lured him
To a ledge
Where there was
An aisle of concrete
And in this moonlight
This aisle of concrete
Descended to the sea
And he followed the stripe
Into the crashing tide
Which spat him back
Into the wet
Green blades
High as his hips
And he returned to the road
To travel south
But he couldn't remember why.
