The Poetry Of..
Rick Marlatt...........................................................
Poet Laureate
Across from me he sat on the darkened stage
wearing a jacket so green it had to be lucky.
Called to the microphone he rose
like a flowering spurge, preparing to stride
over the long shadows of velvet curtains,
an armful of poems, cool eyes steady, a valid grin.
But he stops cold as the applause flutters out:
Ted's coat button is caught on the tablecloth
he says smiling, with some kind of composure
and peers into the crowd letting the patina faces
wash over him. That's how I want to go-
when a voice calls me across the long shadows-
an armful of poems, cool eyes steady, a valid grin,
a part of the world still holding on, not ready to see me go.
Conspiracy
You start the cd on the second lion's roar
I say stepping towards the television
reminding everyone to watch close for
synchronization of the action on screen
with the mood in the notes and lyrics.
When I kneel down I see the two of you
reflected in the black pool of the screen,
the restrained look of two ghosts unable
to act on their passions in lives they lived,
now haunting the shadowed alleys with
flailing hair, gnawing teeth, wild notions
of infinite romance,
what I’d suspected for months but refused
to believe clicked into fact like a remote
control command, a dream in full color,
sudden realization that what you thought
you lacked was inside you all along.
I suddenly want to step through this portal,
accompany the exultant clan to the emerald
city, walk straight up to the wizard,
the old poser who had everybody fooled,
and shake his hand, for without him,
the sweetness of death, too, would remain
a mystery.
Eyes closed, I lean through my body and fly
out of my life, somewhere in the background
I hear the likely wail of a tenor sax, the moon
turns in perfect time, her best side still to come.
Approaching Sleep
My fingers ascend the cobbled road
of your spine like two weary travelers
at the end of a dreadful journey,
feet raw as an overturned grave
minds thrashed as an all purpose scarf,
they crash before the flame
in an oak-veined cottage they rent
for the night with lasts of their loot
and the good of their lives,
tremble moist cake to chapped lips
breathing bronze cups of piping tea
flickered with cinnamon,
a place so much like home, they beg
to stay here forever, await deaths
so sweet sunrise doesn't bother.
At dusk the light dusting of snow
and the fingertips of the wind
tap lovingly on the glass.
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