PAGES

Is your mind an open book,
Can they look inside your head?
Do you only still show pages you want read?

What do you tell them when the Horror
Leaves you chilled and drenched in bed?
Are you still oppressed by dreams in Black and Red?

Have you found the man who’s shown you
How to overcome your dread-
Shown you how to pluck those pictures from your head?

perfection

possibility of perfection
up blind alleys
just across the street
around next corner

no luck in the draw
not flesh of good fortune
these are anemic
manifestations in grey scale

compared to inimitability
no mistakes
no guesses
perfection is just that

brilliant white
richest black
no shades of ashen wont
it's there! -- take it!

before it just disappears.

vcp

7 December 2010

delightful

she balanced her body's substance
of stardust and shadow
delicately

on bitter point of
that pin

in glimmered dance
breathtakingly
delightful

to a music universe
plays on and on
in perfect rhythms

her feet followed each
chord's phrase
as falling rain

caused concentric circles
to glow
as afterthoughts

she smiled for those
who could
see.

vcp

6 December 2010

73rd street

rasping cough explodes
from cold, $2.00 room.

Leon peers through
filth-clouded glass, across
snow winter-scape at sparkling,
snow covered everything--
fretful city sleeps.

. . .

watch how you walk

last chords of sermon on the mount
echo on playing field

no one paying attention
again
as fans leave the stadium
stubbing their toes on rusty rocks
cursing the world of matter

speaker shakes his head,
spits, and walks away

point is -- doesn't seem
to matter
what masters say to masses
gathered --

be it truth or no --

people need to stop
stubbing their toes.

vcp

5 December 2010

Hurrying to dress for work
I grabbed my gray t-shirt
lying on your vanity's plush chair
beside our bed,
put it on beneath my shirt
and scurried out the door

On my way way to work
in heavy traffic
faint aroma of gardenias
tickled at my senses

At work, at my desk
I wondered where
the perfume came from
and in the warehouse
I could not shake
the faint traces
of that sweetness

MASK

I hope that you will understand:
I have no need to win her heart-
I just have years of need to know,
Did she understand the part
Of me she saw so many years ago,
One April night, when time stood still?
She'd looked into an emptiness
That only you have filled…

terrible wish that all will be fine
screaming in a foggy night
without a sound heard
by any ear
but the one in your head

a kind of madness
that sound begets
hardly delicate --
klaxon's shriek of awareness
sounding doom on one note only

sounded first on first day
plays
long through years
'til last day
in human ears

loudest at the end --
then silent
over -- it's over
silence gathers
gladly

everything comes down
to a few moments
of time
in life