Looking back in the midst of a difficult Spring. This started out as a pair of quasi-haiku.
Tree reaching for sky
Arms wide open
Embracing a winter moon
Winter’s killing freeze
Falls equally on all things
The white crocus waits
Winter
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Category Archives: Poems
On art
Some artists want to own it,
To license the use of it
On their terms, revocable on a whim,
As if the sweet blood that pours out
To rejoin the soil from which it sprang
Could ever be unmingled,
Could be redistilled if the dirt
Were deemed unfit for cohabitation
With such lofty stuff.
As if the close, heavy air
That squeezed out the dewdrop
Was itself unworthy
Of such holy moisture.
All of art is collaboration.
What good is a pot
With nothing to fill it?
What good is a mirror
With no reflection?
Spinoff
Well, the Unscrubbed Mirror posts have been threatening to take over Exiles Child, so I’ve created a new blog just for them, which I’ve called the unscrubbed mirror, oddly enough. There you’ll find all the existing poems and pictures in that group, plus any new ones that crop up. Exiles child will continue without them, of course! Have a look.
Prayer
You say you embrace God
Your arms entwine emptiness
That distorting mirror
You call God
While you pray
Waiting only for your echo
Longing only for your immortal self
To come out of hiding
The stars are exploding
Forever
Mask
That mask you think you hide behind
You fashioned from bits and pieces
Torn from your own heart
And flung into the maelstrom
Without pity,
Without a second glance
I see it written in your soul
Like dead spots on the leaves
Of wakefulness
Like unforgotten regrets
Along strewn alleys
That mask is you no less
Than the unstrange and fatal
Inner master
You stroke so tenderly
Himself a puppet
Himself a summoned
Serpent
Impossible to dismiss
Discard those mirrors
They only contort
The face visible to yourself alone
Is your mask alone
exiles child 