Paul Skyrm

OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM


When my father's father died, I dreamt the Sun a beggar

                who wore no clothes & could hide his money from no-one

                so he was lynched each time alms were placed in his palm.

When my father's father died, the devils came & broke into corner room,

                 where he & grandmother prayed eye to eye  heart to heart

                 owl-beaked bursitis elbows sinking into Cumulus mattress now stolen

                 by blindfolded mercenaries who prayed to a stone Christ

                 dangling from rear-view Elam mirror.


The devils dumped snapshots in the City Water Septic Tank!

The devils burned his clothes in toilet incinerator!

The devils rolled his white Toyota truck off Colorado skyscrapers,

                  jigged, jitter-bugged, and heckled as it drowned under membrane

                  & Lake Havasu belly!

My father's mother during this, bent at her new hip moon  dunked her torso,

                   like windshield wiper,

                   between worlds in St. Christopher's Bullhead City ghost church.

Lace embroidered handkerchief basin cradles breaking flood muting eyeballs

                   to ashen satellites, circling red-lights

                   and apocalyptic railroad men hang blue-lights on grandpa's headstone.


When my father's father died & the house was empty,

Some devils plied oak floor boards from foundation

                   with the blood stained hammer of Mara!   

Some devils drove dry-wall nails into Buddha's eyes

                   & some devils backed their '77 Caprice Classic Twilight Blue

                   over Grandpa's brickyard black frame,  soot-spectacled reading glasses

                   in the middle of downtown boulevard

& some devils wrapped his little statues of Sakyamuni in grease-finger-print pages

                    of Cleveland Plain Dealer Thistledown racing results

                    mailed from son to father on loon's cry  Aurora to Bullhead

& one cross-eyed asura, well, he didn't close the bottom & glass Buddha slipped out,

                    hurdled through samsara & shattered on Eternity -

tiny shards scurried across the looted floor & giggled in darkness

while my father's mother howled on her knees before Emptiness.

   


Waxing The Blade


Lanterns line pall-bearer astride Walnut Ridge Trail

click-clack east & spin North, humpback speed -

jettison impaling of settled mandible lava flowed down here in threads

10,000 years from Cold Volcano.


The cars hustle  bristle  didgeridoo fiberglass steeds gallop chaotic streets

scream into clean driveways & disappear behind electric wheeeeee-uuuuuuurrr.


light is rapid in it's extinction, doors slam shut before silence.


Letter-sweatered Cambridge dames burst out front door,  Balsam Tall House

& vomit golden medicine   flood front yard dead grass

cut under mid-afternoon Earth-turns.


Does shadow fall from our body?

Or leap from under foot?

I turn to shadow & ask here   starless bedazzled forlorn bone


    Is this how it will be when She comes for me?


Southwest Strawberry Moon hangs ripe!


Ah! The yellow-ed children of Finlandia rise & kiss open mouths!



Home   prose   poetry   art   bios   guidelines   ts publishing   Reviews