Larry Sawyer (Chicago, USA): Four Poems
LIFTING THE LID
Ferrari thought, baroque thought,
beneath the surface,
models in leisure suits flatten cities.
We’ll sift among them, our gills billowing.
Hello, happy vampires.
Hmm…look up: notice the light
in which a great ship is riding—
will it brave the deep and take us,
over dormant lacquered waves?
Of what do I speak?
The receptor cells quake,
taking in the last hours:
businessmen roasting on spits.
Worry is my tequila.
WOMAN
your eye is a recoilless rifle
my hand so believes
fourteen winds rise up
as the
roomful ghosts
plastic hunters in the ear
there are highway gamblers
in your impenetrable dress
your miniature bites
the size of Texas
your satin calligraphy
and indigo jive
the years are obsidian
our romance is meadow
your eye is a leash of fire.
LUNATIC NOTHING
Lunatic nothing laughs at me
from the tip of my tongue
a kaleidoscope geography
is all that I have, the corduroy beach
and silent water
That mind and I survive together
and I lust harmlessly the
cross of schedules
with a heart full of groceries
I wander appetite roads
wearing an enormous blue
mustache like a dessert
Perhaps you have seen her
indeterminant No
from where she reigns
atop the mosque of sleep
I’ll continue to prism
the vast outer centuries
until the gavel comes down
upon my conscience
Meet me as promised
beneath the full moon
close up and wonderful.
IT’S PURE GENIUS
We are so thoroughly sidewalk.
There are lights in my soul.
Through a trapeze I wear my tomorrow suit.
Saturday is such an exotic animal
as we devour our headaches, open our papers,
kneel between carnivores peeling silences.
My heart is a peninsula
where we eat the dessert called "memory."
© Larry Sawyer 2007
Ferrari thought, baroque thought,
beneath the surface,
models in leisure suits flatten cities.
We’ll sift among them, our gills billowing.
Hello, happy vampires.
Hmm…look up: notice the light
in which a great ship is riding—
will it brave the deep and take us,
over dormant lacquered waves?
Of what do I speak?
The receptor cells quake,
taking in the last hours:
businessmen roasting on spits.
Worry is my tequila.
WOMAN
your eye is a recoilless rifle
my hand so believes
fourteen winds rise up
as the
roomful ghosts
plastic hunters in the ear
there are highway gamblers
in your impenetrable dress
your miniature bites
the size of Texas
your satin calligraphy
and indigo jive
the years are obsidian
our romance is meadow
your eye is a leash of fire.
LUNATIC NOTHING
Lunatic nothing laughs at me
from the tip of my tongue
a kaleidoscope geography
is all that I have, the corduroy beach
and silent water
That mind and I survive together
and I lust harmlessly the
cross of schedules
with a heart full of groceries
I wander appetite roads
wearing an enormous blue
mustache like a dessert
Perhaps you have seen her
indeterminant No
from where she reigns
atop the mosque of sleep
I’ll continue to prism
the vast outer centuries
until the gavel comes down
upon my conscience
Meet me as promised
beneath the full moon
close up and wonderful.
IT’S PURE GENIUS
We are so thoroughly sidewalk.
There are lights in my soul.
Through a trapeze I wear my tomorrow suit.
Saturday is such an exotic animal
as we devour our headaches, open our papers,
kneel between carnivores peeling silences.
My heart is a peninsula
where we eat the dessert called "memory."
© Larry Sawyer 2007
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