d.marshall's poetry page two
As HEART'S VOICE managing editor and as a contributing poet, d. marshall attempts to address the subliminal/subconscious oppression of girl genders by incorporating genderdriven spellings.
QUINTESSENTIAL
With a quill from a quail, I quelled a query
from the quarrelsome Queen in a quandary
questioning Q-tips.
My memo more modified than pacified
Mademoiselle Mary's miserable misconception
of indescribable dirt in subordinate ears, yet
unresisting trial runs provided clearer hearing
and wax-less, actual underling understanding.
Irreversible (remember ink wells?) writing
erased rancor pertaining to cotton-tipped sticks
so sanctuary sought was bought
by the bountiful Jill & Joshua Johnsons
and the cantankerous Queenly query
stilled by a quill from a quail.
accepted for publication in
POETRY 2000from Borders, Santa Monica
THE NASTY TAS'TER
I just got lost on page nineteen
of Turco's poetic handbook.
I know now I'm rejecting craft
and structured forms approved,
But cynghanedds and parallels,
Draws, Sain, perfect grammaticals --
Who cares when prosody's caesurae
is rhymed or anapestic accentual?
Too many variables I see here
confirming poetry an art
where versed poets never do
their writing from their heart.
Structure wrangled this way and that
becomes mutilated inversion
from stitch or distich quatrain
to normative composition.
Random is as random does
except, unless, in addition to, but
adjust your scansion to uphold
elisions, back to cynghanedds Lusg.
Read a poem like you would a book
whose title convinced you to buy it.
Enjoy the verse's message whether
blank, free, tumbling or dipodic.
A LAND TO DIE FOR
when
substandard existence isn't contingent on 35 grand a year,
and elephants and white tigers are as numerous as chickens and pigs,
and mass media becomes as strangled and suppressed as average voices,
and tobacco is outlawed like euthanasia,
and antibiotics are as easy to buy as guns and ammunition,
and hospitals are as prevalent as 7-11 convenience stores,
and living doesn't cost a lung and a liver,
and death doesn't cost an arm and a leg,
THEN will this life and death be pursued with deserved vigor
of, by and for the people.
If my life were a desert
You could cross it in two paces
The first to break ankles in a you can't win gorge
The second to stab hopes with don't touch me spines
bald grey moustache man
ironic biology
shrinking edge numbers
to page three
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more poetry by d. marshall
