:: Albert Flynn DeSilver
three poems
NON-SELF PORTRAIT
I have an attention deficit disorder
deficient and disordered I write in many styles at once--
this helps me stay focused on my habitual disfixity
hence I give up myself as offering I have
no choice but to be the bloated empty
template of a spiral
relational to the backside of an echo
singular, yet nude with the starlings perched
on a ray of sunshine the length of a chronic yawn.
From the bowels of a star I am spawned
am its exquisite excrement
and exit into each signature hydrogen droplet
where unquenched to the naked eye
I am he who fixates on the approximate hollow
and recede into the residue of a shrivel.
I take residence in the florid canopy
and attend to the foliage of dead skin which collects
in lovely piles against the sky.
A cloud bursts in a perfect circle on the sea
upon my upper lip at once a mustache embroidered by
strange birds and thick prayer--
you may not recognize it as a gift and return it
to the foot of a black cliff
where a pair of hands sound off in the darkness--
The architecture of my wings laid out in the whimsical sand.
Where I straddle the ocean´s throat
between an absence and a presence
a liquid abyss that is
both the swallowed and the swallower
where I over hear the tide recast my song
ETHER OR
The mouth opens
and out steps
a timid
mountain
streaked with pliable spirals of
asphalt
and a lattice work
of glass lettuce.
Today the air´s
clout is ample enough
to cradle thought aching
to yank brainstorm
from plausible stone.
When was the last time
the throat´s flowers
were changed?
Father, fa(r)ther
are you due here
and your death in tow?
Spanning memory´s
irrigation ditch
with a wheatstick arch--
who keeps his clock
in a velvet holster who--
(one I can´t even begin
to reach)
who owns who, a smeared fog
settles on the pen´s lens.
Progression balks
at the crosswalk of breath--
words sweat there
on the silver platter
with the other cheeses
as a butcher tied to his blotched
apron stands in a crowded vineyard
folding dusk´s clean-cut flag.
What´s to become of me?
asks intention, legs draped
over the edge of a quaint
brick bridge. . .
CRANIAL VINEYARDS INCORPERATED
Reason P. Tucker hucked slats
at the frost church
down wind from the crippled geyser.
A zoo of wasps in the eves
pissed there toward evening.
"Creek is to pen
what vein is to winter!"
cried reason:
"Excuse me while I
pummel my navel with a trowel"
I need a tourniquet, quick
for the strawberry valves,
to harbor all this
groveling in the vines--
such bulb frolic
is great kindling
for my future as
fermenteer of the hives.
Bring me teaspoons of seaweed
and some mump throttles,
for my pancreas is
getting cranky
at the cusp of grape."
© Albert Flynn DeSilver 2003