Lakey Comess



All the people rejoice

                1

Early music on offer has been programmed
a pale shade of royal.

Paganini variations strike ears
aimlessly in drift of season,

energy composed post-mortem,
strictly out of keeping with rueful parched voice.


                2

                Zadok draws forth suppressed tears
                               (All the people rejoice),
                flicking ash onto secret, stricken niche.


                3

Nouveau riche sport animal skins,
bravely weathering heat wave, overdressed to kill.

Earth's highest form of life trains cameras, panning
                knees up on one side of the Atlantic,
state of emergency on the other.

Balance is a special form of consciousness in date flow,
                sound, bitten to bare bone, scattered fragments, yawning abyss,

good drainage,
displaced energy,
rapt dialogue.

Hold it together, light spiraling mystery,
cloud-blaze, need to gift.


                4

                Compensate for action,
                               rich in coded motion,

                charged with reflected identity,
                               out of keeping with being.


                5

Reportage speculates about size and fillings of sandwiches.
People pour in, drop litter in family groups where they stand.

Horses wear expressions of grave disdain,
bells peal in sequence of five thousand changes.

It’s memory only,
feeling excitement and joy,
reacting to crowds past,
occasional pomp,
circumstantial.



In a puddle, electrum

Deep longing for the moon's small image, a trinket found on the beach yesterday. This is the edge of the third rainbow since sometime. Panic accepts an absence of weather, spilled ink on a shirt—the buttons torn off, invisible frenzies in messages. Capacity plays here, undirected, walks in a daze, frightened of depth.

Verges wait for the unfinished chapter, a fresh red-hot peach cooling off in a boat.
This, but a single memento of bad streets in support of a novel, wherein...

Sensible lighting stands naked before linear shadows in the border cinema, partially contained in reruns. History has smallpox near Nizhny Novgorod. Somewhere the scrapbook finds a volcano. A philosophical gypsy crosses our palms with an alloy of silver and gold. (Oh, electrum!)

They are rebuilding New York without direction. A single cherry blossom will be nurtured for consolation.

Brilliant lights, soot-shaded storm-lamps, hopeful of night darkening, promising angles.
Heather and peat stratum will be installed around puddles, a free-varied reflection.

This is what will happen.

You will turn corners and write about Jupiter's moons, sharpen imager-brushes against
the rate of advance.



Momentary grace

I

Deflect admiration from Bacon's twisted darkness
to momentary grace.

                You, too, could quiver from strenuous balance,
well defined tensile beauty, anonymous poetry.

Vibrate markings on gray blotter,
curve of line extended beyond hate, fear, doomed wing.

Let go in order to grasp solitary truth shooting through subterfuge,
delicate web, moment, ritual approach, movement nearing pure illusion.

Approach holds fast to discovery.
Is it time to breathe, return to garden?


II

If a groan passed your lips as you lay dying, and nobody heard,
does this mean it had no lasting effect?




Lakey Comess, born U S A in 1948, has lived in Israel, South Africa and the Orkney Islands in Scotland and now lives in Glasgow. She has contributed to Versal, Big Bridge, Gulf Stream, Sidereality, Milk, Hutt, Otoliths, Hamilton Stone Review, Mad Hatters' Review blog, On Barcelona blog and other publications, also as Lakey Teasdale.
 
 
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