Found Poem #7

RECOGNITION

Imprisoned these nine months,

I wake to hard earned fantasy,

more fleeting than those soft dreams

that slip and swirl through coffee steam.

My jailer, cruel Argus, demands,

“It’s time, are you ready?”

“Giotto,” I yawn and roll against the wall.

He claps my back and disappears:

I am such a willing prisoner.

Light pushes through windows and blinds

beaded with nicotine like mist on a jaguar

that crawls across the carpet so slowly.

With bleared eyes, I wake the jailer

and beg an hour in the yard

where lizards skitter with scaled eyes

to deny my fears, as I am just out of bed;

I walk too fast, and it’s all for show,

stop to watch a black winged butterfly

hop across a patch of sky.

Back to a hot bath and my image in the mirror:

memory, fantasy, and impetus for sleep.

“Are you ready?”

“Kokoschka.”
“Good night.”

SK/1978

Little Diomede

LITTLE DIOMEDE

Those hovels are like barnacles on that rock island
rising from ice, a solid valley between the islands.
Where I stand on the carved landing strip.
I could throw a stone into tomorrow, into Russia.
This land of vicious, metaphorical winds
is calm now, sunny, sweater weather,
beautiful alien world that it is.
It often happens like that,
while what you want is hardship, torment.
Still, there is the namesake, Diomedes,
fed to his horses, but in this land,
dogs are dropped, one by one,
eaten by masters of labor and love,
until sure of destination, at least,
where they are fed and petted,
canine teeth clipped with pliers,
and that's how you survive
on the edge of civilization.
Some cringe, some do not,
but the teeth are clipped,
the dogs eaten.
Who knows the lives inside those baranacles,
those who willingly lash themselves
down for the deserted winter,
their only view, snow streaked Big Diomede,
a rock like theirs, but larger,
another country,
a day away,
a stone's throw?


SK/April 1994

Yo Yo Mama

Like a guitar,
he held her in his arms,
his fingers fretting at her buttons.

She took him between her legs,
playing him like a cello,
and, oh, how they moaned.


sk/nov 2017

Found Poem #6

AIRCRAFT MECHANIC WITH ARMS CROSSED

In a corner of the hangar

between beam and guidewire

is a spider’s web,

the spider motionless

at a distance from a pouch of eggs,

with some tiny spiders, barely visible,

emerging and moving outward

like an expanding galaxy.

As spiders are intrinsically evil,

attacking their hapless victims,

injecting them with poison,

and with eight needle legs,

working furiously,

to roll such sad flies and moths

 into living mummies

(the juice will be sucked later),

it seems somehow my duty

to strike a match, light a paper,

and hold it beneath the web,

ball of eggs and all,

but then I wonder

if any life

is better

than

no

life.  

  sk/1982