The Forbidden Room
Ian Ayres
Or city symbolic an accident born
Followed from a wake
A daughter cuts off her hair
Her mirror a window
Beyond the pane
Black ravens on bare branches
Apparition, dead parent
Skin unchosen, ancestors denied
Fallen to her feet
Unbound from centuries
Foreign to the West
Her hair so often touched
The father she kissed
A favorite cheongsam dress
She’d gone straight home
Chinese whispers in her mind
Snow Angel
Ian Ayres
Wings of Christmas lights twinkling
All the colors in the galaxy soar
Icy stars in your eyes watching us
Bow to you and the child you bore
Tiny arms and legs that made you
A guardian angel of love and more
One Night I Let My Heart Go Out
Ian Ayres
One night I let my heart go out
And jumped out the window after it
Bouncing down the street to a drunk
Who’d fallen before oncoming carsÑ
Bloodied from some beating he’d taken.
I watched my heart help him to the curb,
Then bounce away as if in search of another
Heart set free. Instead it found a heart caged
Within the ribs of a woman selling her flesh.
My heart leaped into the cage with hers
And made her rich with joy. She fell in love
With the next man she met. My heart grew
As it skipped away into the electric night;
Reminding me of a mutt off its leash. Its tail,
I imagined, wagged with adventure.
Lake’s Edge
Ian Ayres
This park is alive! A puppy’s running back and forth,
yapping at two black swans, each other’s shadow,
floating on gray sky mirrored in their web-footed
ripples. And here’s a mother talking to her baby,
snug in its carriage, unaware of the withered
man over there: tossing torn baguette to sparrows;
cursing the greedy pigeons who’ve come to rob.
From the lake’s wooded island, I hear a peacock’s
cry. A tomboyish girl, kneeling at the edge,
meows to imitate; but the peacock turns its back,
its closed, green-eyed tail. Touching the water,
the girl jumps up from the lake’s wrinkling face
to hug her father. An icy wind flutters this page
as a yellow leaf flies past my hands, going numb.
And I wonder why these trees are doing a striptease
to stand cold as ashes on abandoned winter nights.
If Trees Could Run
Ian Ayres
Silent timbre in the notwithstanding. Notwithstanding. Still. One losing a limb it must switch back to. Climb the limit lost. Up the winding breakage as compared with. Winding wind and where and would. Where would they run to. Notwithstanding. Still in the frequent loss. Where uprooted could they scoot to. At or in what whether. Permitting either and and both. Or in drought of fire flooding. Where as ashes could they float to. Where on soil could they hide. From the ax withal sapped gradual. In as to knotted be not. Through tough and fibrous disentangled. Swiftly hence to groundless whither. On abouts event so turning. Leaves clearing stride. So ever into by fore worming. Out where coffins no more would. Cut to burn. Notwithstanding. Still. To be running. If running could.
Ms Messiah
Ian Ayres
Hearth-lit & mirrored in cracked panes (crept by
moonflowers in the indigo night) naked
amidst Tchaikovsky & perfumed smoke-webs
Ms Messiah walks on water-
colors strewn like autumn beneath bare
trees toward her groom to raise him from the
black-inked obituaries of Time....
The little girl who loved to play with furry
caterpillars has died, died in the blood-
red cocoon of puberty
metamorphosed into a symphony
exploding with sound, then softening.
Bubbling Out
Ian Ayres
molten lava flows
cooling into porous rock
blackened and crumbled
each destiny is weightless
no matter how bright the glow
Tokens From the Tomb
Ian Ayres
Godly ghouls prowl in the granite garden,
Where rosebuds rot and flowers never bloom,
Haunting the Dead, in dire need of a friend...
Oddly taking fond tokens from my tomb.
Plagued by light, they’re as nocturnal as owls,
For dripping darkness best drowns their sorrow;
Aspiring to eclipse a world that scowls,
Some crawl into my tomb from the morrow.
O paranoid pariahs, I’m no dream...
Softly echoing in misty silence:
“Behold my shadow aglow in the gleam,”
Reaching out, embracing our alliance!
For I am the soul mate of all who’ve bled,
Forever forsaken among the Dead.
Seed
Ian Ayres
From my brain they feed.
Some are ravens, some are crows,
And others are just sparrows.
They feed until my skull is hollow,
Then search for a new kind of seed;
Never to bear an empty tomorrow.
|
