Philip Byron Oakes


Calligraphy for Beginners

Percolate to school. Bubble over hopes of ever meeting never
halfway. For the occasional rites performed in effigy of the
moment stitched and rendered whole from many sources. Broken
slowly to a pace of the implicit slogging to mind. Painted by
numbers rounded to the turn of a phrase, into an image of the
balance between the wobbly integers of the whole. Later equated
with something more than a number, coming home to be counted
as what's needed to answer the bell. A serial ire cleaving a pattern
behaviors follow to church. To wait outside the meaning with a
question, growing uglier every day it doesn't rain. The barometer
striking midnight with the weight of blue skies. Coming face to
faceless from which the details gradually emerge, to form an
expression of having been there all along the great stare into the
space of your own. Impeding a calculus. Rounding out the
litany from which the arbitrary finds its feet in good company.
On the march through the colloquial to standard fare feeding
into the larger schism. Polishing up a stretch of jargon in the
haunted light of gentle persuasion. The presumed suddenness
of the peekaboo, past the demise of reasons to see the
sempiternity in the instant it takes to know. The whom in the
wherever falling off the map beneath one's feet, standing on
principle till it frays around the edges holding the protean at
bay. Roaming neighborhoods of the mind. The nadir of an
outburst training a mumble to perform its baby steps. To
please not the slice but the sliver of hope. A glowering from
above known thresholds of pain to pursue the keeping of the
grievance in perspective. Putting it squarely upon shoulders
drawn to resolve a weakness in the knees, come back to
haunt the guise of exposing agents of darkness in the choir.
The mercurial persistence of the outside looking in windows
easily broken, to a change in the temperature of the idiom
keeping the word so debatably alive.



Owning the Past

A race backwards to be first, to never letting it be said,
but in a voice circling the wagons for discourse. A fortune
of immanence building the new now. Purportedly long
waiting its chance to squeeze a life full of holes, like a story
tattling on its own protagonist. Something people don't talk
about, in tongues holding the high ground to a standard
beyond words. A cosmic equivalence taking one's ear for
a walk to the store. To presume the future of color tv in
black and white terms of endearment. Hugging the dust
out of totems perched behind a phalanx of words.
Conflated with deeds conveying latitude in search, for
that special one in a million come to rest in the ear to
the wall. Who you are in a voice meant to hold its own. In
the gleaming bulb at the middle of every well told story.
The irresistible in an immovable memory of the speed to
takes to build momentum. Inescapable as a monotony
answering back to the days before the advent of any
knowledge to spare. Plaguing those quick on their feet
to recite whatever comes to mind, hat in hand in hand
over one's heart in the struggle to perceive what's gone
before it ever arrives. Surely to only further exploit
a regimen of subtle inquiries into parameters of the big
question itself.




Philip Byron Oakes is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent being ptyx and stone (white sky ebooks, 2013). His fourth collection, Rubato, is in the process of being floated about for consideration.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page