Cassandra Voices

Tag: Cassandra Voices poem

  • Poem: Rental

    Rental

    Motes swirled in windows
    like stars in The Starry Night.

    Water stains framed
    mirrors in bursts of gray-gold.

    The landlord’s lips were thin,
    her lipstick coral.

    She braved the tropical storm
    to unlock closets:
    her Waterford crystal.

    Branches needed pruning
    but all I seemed to do

    was dream of Heathcliff.
    I never scrubbed

    or mowed enough.
    I leaned my bike—created tracks—
    against the accent wall.

    She said No.
    No need to search

    for my replacement.
    She’d done living with my choices.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Poem: ‘If I Could Only’

    If I Could Only

    I dream of roses blooming in the sky,
    of boys with guns, of body parts slung
    over broken toys in some unholy rite.
    And through mind-searing noise, I hear
    the  wail of mothers keening for their young.
    I dream of hell.

    But when dawn breaks,
    I wake to find that, silently,
    a veil of snow has fallen in the night.
    No severed limbs,
    no sightless, disembodied faces.
    Just snow.
    Its cooling calm fills all the small, slight
    spaces where, yesterday, deep shadows
    seized the waning light.

    No bombs. No blood.
    Here every twig is dressed in vestal white;
    and even while the cold-eyed, brooding
    dawn still dawdles into day, the sky is bright
    with snow, caught by its primal purity –
    the indrawn hush.
    This lustrous, arcane alchemy:
    the mint-ness of a clean-wiped slate.
    It seems a consecration, soft as
    the laying on of hands. It bears the grace
    of prayer – an urgent dream for respite
    everywhere.

    If I could only catch it up, reach out
    and gather in this white of new-washed
    sheets, flung over fields and trees;
    garner it in, then loose it on the scorching,
    hope-burned world. Stifle the fires and guns,
    the screaming drones. Re-write the
    countless stolen, rubbled lives.

    If I could only soothe this quenching
    silence over all the weeping and the
    wounds; make real this gift of new
    beginning. Of absolution.
    This unflawed state of grace.
    If I could only.

    Feature Image: Francesco Goya, Y son fieras (And they are fierce or And they fight like wild beasts), c. 1810.

  • Poem: ‘Calling All Angels’

    Calling All Angels

    Leaves fall like secret prayers—
    calling all angels

    September’s having her best
    orgasm in a century. Everything lingers
    in climax, the character of the light, earthy
    fragrances, a whole heaving calendar week
    with an arched spine.

    Here’s how I know the world
    is ill and absurd: a dead fawn stares up
    from the roadside, spots unsullied, perfect
    and gone. Most days I choose to forget, but

    entire families explode in Palestine. Cascades
    of leaves now. Calling all angels yes god yes

     

    Image: Vico Rock, Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland.

  • Poetry: Commuting with Baudelaire

    Commuting with Baudelaire

    We are living in a time when there are no gentlemen.
    So, women stand for hours without being offered any seats.
    It’ s a privilege which they have laboured for and for centuries,
    It appears! Madness, I know, but you must respect them.

    As you watch their small fists tightening on the headrests,
    And the veins on their slight wrists seeming to almost split…
    That is just at the point when you must resist to offer them a seat
    And rather plant your own arse further into it!

    As I have said before, we are living in a time without any gentlemen
    And highly vocal women, who apparently know exactly what they want.
    The children are so dissolute you could be forgiven for not showing!

    Resist, resist, resist! Resistance, apparently is the source of all Art.
    Resist recapitulating altogether. And whatever you do,
    Don’t Fart!