POEM: Dark City Sonnet

Posted on March 23, 2020 by B Gourley

any city you enter after dark
will not reveal itself until the morn
you’ll see it like a scrawny sheep unshorn
vague blankness punctuated by landmarks
you’ll see nothing in the darkness of parks
not junkies sprawled out in clothes, rank and torn
though you see neon twenty-four hour porn
you’ll know not the dogs by their noisy barks

light makes it more pretty and more ugly
you’ll see it pick itself up and brush off
like shame walkers concoct a makeshift coif
turning focus from the bloody and stubbly

to see a city at its worst and best
catch it when it’s wearing last night’s dress.

POEM: Tripless Trip

Posted on March 22, 2020 by B Gourley

In the outlands lives a shaman,
an unkempt medicine man of some renown.

He grinds some roots with a wooden pestle,
black and shiny on its business end.

His apprentice sits drumming —
soft and offbeat.
You listen deeply,
dead-eyed tranquil,
but can’t wear that wild rhythm
“like a bear skin,”
whatever that means.

The medicine will be bitter, but no matter.
It’s not for you.
Your cure will be sought on a tripless trip.

When the shaman re-inhabits
his sweat-soaked body,
he says only,

“Beware the Jackdaw!”

You say, “What’s that mean?”

He says, “That’s for you to know,
and for me… not to know.”

You say, “OK, what’s a jackdaw?”

With an intense wild-eyed stare,

he says,
“Google it.”

You say, “Seriously?”

Then he shrugs and he nods off.

POEM: The Silent Wild

Posted on March 21, 2020 by B Gourley

Looking through a window
at the falling snow flakes.
Silent is the snow fall
that piles upon my sill.

And though it weighs limbs down,
it doesn’t break the branches.
If there were a slight breeze,
it’d dust it all away.

Out beyond the farm land,
in the distant forest,
lies the kind of wildness
that’s silent at the bone.

POEM: Virus

Posted on March 20, 2020 by B Gourley

Oh little spikey spinning sphere,
drifting across the fresh clear air,
you think you’ll hijack my machine
for replication of your genes.

Something inside does multiply;
so small I can’t fathom its size,
but still it squeezes out the me
any would know from memory.

Your song and dance are done to Death,
making Crazy like Lady Macbeth.
But do not forget that last Act;
in ambition is writ the wrack.

Desert Haiku

Posted on March 18, 2020 by B Gourley

offset prints
bisected by tail drag
lizard sign

gnarled driftwood,
snake skin, rusty barbed wire
in red sand

cold morning,
the rising fire ball,
a silent knell

red sandstone
warmed by the rising sun
gorge aglow

yon mirage
mirror-clear blue,
chase the lie

POEM: Morpheus’ Shroud

Posted on March 4, 2020 by B Gourley

Last night the drape was thin and billowy.
Dreams seen through the weep of a willow tree.
Shapes without texture, beings without plights.
A curtain of fog, turning days into nights.

I stood on a corner in the land of nod.
One not crossed in maps of men or gods.
And wondered whether I was found or lost.
Waiting in calm for a morrow tempest-tossed.

But morning light brought me no clarity.