Summer 2016 - THE POTOMAC



Four Poems

David Houston

 

Consider This:

They say familiarity can breed
contempt. Whoever coined that hadn't spent
much time with you. Given the chance to feed
upon a banquet of your charms I'd rent
a suite and party like a Roman Lord,
repeatedly restarting all afresh
in cyclical debauch until we soared
like ghosts above our steaming pots of flesh
and set our feast a spiritual course.
Ethereal communions would arise.
We'd show how loving spirits can be coarse,
and horrify Decorum with our cries.
The mind's eye prickles when you come so close.
If I could shoot you up I'd overdose.

 

Deep Six

A simple stanza for a simple soul
might start something like this — with sounds unseen,
unheard–of sight, the outside in–between.

For complex folk a complex verse would roll
across the page with no more ardent goal
than making clarity appear unclean.

Lest complicated purity demean
itself in jest, what price the folderol?

 

Metaphors

are figures of possession.
Similes are siblings swapping shirts.
Kindred spirits thrive in comparison.
All discover exorcism hurts.

 

EX—

egesis was in the beginning.
The footnotes have gone on ahead.
Here's a coda to start the ball spinning,
a cracked floor all dancing–shoes dread.

  
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