Seductions

“Trumpet” by Brian Ray Cameron

 

(Originally posted here June 2013)

 

mellow brass traces
tawny fingers of ambience
slender and shivering
silk-threaded sounds
along clavicle ridgelines
pulling at pulses below milky ears
receptively conscious of
cool burnished riffs
a cascading caress
down through untraveled channels
between tender ribs
caging newborn emotion

Viscera

“Cosmogenesis #52” by Paul Shapiro

 

words rumble under my ribcage
trapped in thoracic pink spaces
bouncing off organs arranged
between belly and heart
here they’ll probably live till
the coroner’s blade sets them free
but then what would they do in a morgue

unless I can get peristalsis to urge them
through miniscule channels
the riverine lymphatic vessels
up into my arms and then
down through my capillar
fingertips where I would tap them
out onto the keys of my dell

then both you and I
the whole literate world
could all see
just exactly
what they
have been longing
to say

Heartlife

Painting by KM Schmidt

the irrational heart
cannot think so it dreams
cannot speak so it yearns
cannot laugh so it loves
cannot cry so it aches

emotions in equipoise
beating in balance
a clockwork arrangement
each feeling expressed
in its apposite time

the irrational heart
makes endogenous choices
its reflex to stimulus
mappings laid down in
the mists of the womb

it secretly operates
independent of intellect
organic magic and mystery
giving man means to
most fully experience life

**********************

“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” – Blaise Pascal

Ribcage

“Ribcage”
Painting by Bluefingers
From deviantart.com

robust resolute bones
built a chest full of pride
made a sturdy stout grille
to protect a brave heart

till microbial fires
burned bones to black ash
a degenerate torso now
painfully paltry of form

and a time-damaged heart
sewn and patched and
repurposed for fear
beats in craven distress

as vigor of youth turns
embarrassed by age and
debility gone is its shield
robust resolute bones

Matter Over Mind

Illustration from Antique Anatomy Text
From pinterest.com

what do we know
of our unlit interiors
vital with viscera
organs comprising
our personal engines
of private biology
pumping and beating
secreting absorbing
digesting and dreaming
specialized structures
performing the various
work of existence

these canopic entities
own their own destinies
run to exhaustion
foreclose on their
functions unfazed by
the will of their host
setting off a grave
chain of events that
will threaten survival
more often than not
way too soon for
an unprepared soul

Ocularity

Sketch by Freya Bigg
From deviantart.com

the mind’s eye is no mystic metaphor
and blindspot no figure of speech
blankness patterns our every optical disc
such that eyes cannot truthfully
see a whole picture

but consciousness blissfully lives
unaware of this void in our visual field
because subconscious mind fills the hole
with an image invented supposing
what ought to be there

perception forever in thrall to
a partial reality
perspective foreshortened no
matter in shadow or light
all that is learned always less than
accessibly knowable
limits affixed upon rational reason
breached only by fervent faith

Moth

Photo from walkingprescott.blogspot.com

imprisoned by instinct
elemental circadium
seeking the moon
fenestral gap-trapped
between glass and screen
narrow thoroughfare
squeezing existence
inhibiting wings
eyes tenaciously trained
on dim houselight within
nonreflective hexagonals
unwilling to see
freedom waits at
the very same aperture
gained by her entry
until from mobility starved
she drops still to the sill
where at morning
a brush will release her
too late to but matter
except to the joy of the birds