Tuesday, February 8, 2011

hardwood heroine












Sometimes 1 + 1= 11, say the supply-siders. I'm usually a little more cynical looking along those lines but then I happened to recall a time where I mashed up a couple of pieces I had written & it worked pretty well. Add just a smidge of touching up here & there & I had myself a workable would-be poem!

* * *

On the outside
she was coated with green muck-slime
mixed with brown
a camouflaged soldier
gnarled roots stabbing ground
at her muddied bivouac
laughing at tact, lunging with zest
limbs sprawling wide
as if calling to heaven
her arbor request
to halt fungus and scales
from their molestation
as out her pores they spill
parasitic on her body, alive
imposing their will.
I split the hard wood and
color explodes
rings shout to life
sable amidst bright yellow rife with
secrets where exposure is fresh
she sweetens the air-
the sawdust flies as blade shreds flesh
and I can shape her into a rocking horse
or park bench or a desk at which
to quench my parchment
an exhibition of lust, a behest to her beauty
reduced to possession, her prizes relinquished,
spent, used, torpid and stale- no addition of rings
nor spreading new scent
now hollow in color
marred by spackle and stain
no mystery left within
arthritic, contorted in pain
She stood in the forest picturesque
now in her nakedness in my cabin
lays awkward, wronged and grotesque.

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