New poems
by Frank C. Praeger
Suffering in The Offing
It's never been so;
the countless grasses in a dry summer,
without warning treetops toppling.
The days were getting shorter,
cranberry bogs too long without water
and who could be assured
that something violent was not about to happen.
Blood trickled,
a somewhat useless harbinger,
suffering in the offing;
bird nests abandoned,
lighthouses darkened.
I could go no further.
An elegaic end
as nameless motes of dust settle,
plucked feathers float,
roots, spider webs, refractory and elemental.
Downplaying the Inconceivable
A hiccup,
well,
what a start
segueing into yawn.
Bothered,
no, collared,
tiddled and baked,
yes, shredded.
Had had zest.
Let down?
Inconceivable!
Unlettered
someone cried 'betrayal'
while all those dissed
remained
as they had been;
no one had guessed,
could have,
how it came.
Away!
Mark the lengthening shadows,
the finale
to each day's parade.
And Lastly
Heathcliff! Heathcliff!
Distorted,
febrile, feet slipping,
leads that lead nowhere
as black on black.
She was the one as much as he;
dreams and disbelief,
imagine overcast sky and gray
and a starless night.
Heathcliff! Heathcliff!
Not to be less than worse;
mounds, boulders
sourceless as our final demise.
What could be braver: mountain flowers,
wind-tossed spiders?
A little magic, backward glances,
and with each sleep
roiled, unfettered spaces
less and more than distant.
Innocence or Tact, Fake or Frump
Innocence and tact, though stressed,
belie artificial
grasses' lack
of inwardness as much as a drug-besotted
paranoid last-likeness's fantasy
to once again eclipsed
by be as much, say, as become
as tomorow confounded by temporal
as sun's shadow stalls as non-apparent as lunar
side to side oceanic surges daftly as seedy fields bulge
in toughened plants' gritty spill of self sameness dulled
to me, too,
as ingratitude bearing birth shamelessly, vain,
crimson blotched,
staunched,
stayed,
trinket topped, cream
to yellow to
blue veined handmaiden green.
Yes, filamentous,
but more moment
than can be taught.
In a dither, in tears,
obligated by paraphernalia of ought,
fake or frump,
my name has not, as yet, been called.
Stutter Stepping Through Town
Hot spots, cicadas, leeches,
the touch of pre-formed lives, arrhythmic disorder,
an incomplete followup, deteriorating story line.
Flint,
tricuspid teeth,
illusions of steel,
the tenth violation,
a thirtysecond gasp,
brief delight,
laughter huger than self
foster sequences of strung-out events.
Umbrellas crowd the sidewalk,
voices cut each other,
statements clutter.
One person rests, another falls behind.
A small pile of feathers remains.
Among the fish bones, shark fins, pectoral hopes,
an angler stays in the shadows,
a child balances on a boulder.
Ugly sentiments, popped blisters, used cat litter
obscure the more obnoxious.
Each wonders as to the next curtain call.
You, or I, may have climbed the sheerest heights.
You, or I, may have shivered in the autumn rain.
Two months to tally up the facts.
A lifetime answering charges.
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