The Dance of Four Elements

The Dance of Four Elements

I.

She was a stone

figure carved  

out of a marbled

rock mountain

or in the walls

of an ancient temple 

Every movement

was so sturdily

organic, fresh

in the way that tilled

up wet soil is fresh

It was at that moment

the long instant

of the yogi-like pose

she rigidly held   

that I forgot  

she was a person

indeed the same  

(at least genetically)

I had cradled

some time ago. 

II.

She is the light;

the waxy sun crawling

through the window, writhing

around her ankles becomes another smoky

shadow: the useful but minor kindling

 of  poetry captured

by flaring forms.

III.

Anyone could see the haloing auras breezing

around her head and shoulders as if she had danced

right out of some Victorian painting and wafted

onto a stage on some otherwise ordinary afternoon

And will we ever see first the connection instead of the contrast?

IV.

The brightness and the blackness

the firm and the fluid

the near nothingness sound of silent

bodies that are yet conversing, moving

in soliloquies and discourses -

a communing that can be heard over symphony pumped

through the loudspeakers: the music becomes the crackling

rain of a stormy night’s dream.

See how she leans ever so slightly?  

She moves aqueously:  splashing into herself

ringleting with virulent grace

rippling on and on

by: L. Raymond Andrews

Lying On The Deck In My Sister’s Backyard

Ah

the aria

of any singing pajaro!

    moving—

without thought

from refrain to refrain

    —enriching

without thought

of remuneration,

    singing for Science-still-knows-not-what

and pausing

sometimes— a measured rest

 … space

for the complex

    inflections

to echo

   in the distance

and be echoed

in sentiment by others:

life

as it should be praised—

     a skilled, continuing jazz,

dipping

and soaring

  towards white bars

on a blue sheet of sky

  and a bright clef of sun,

      before it alights

to renew its chirping,

flight of music 

What a fearful, unthrifty quiet

I have made of the few short measures given to me

by: L. Raymond Andrews

Sestina on Developing a Drinking Habit

We’ve been stuck in this dive, unable to drive, as if in some dream,

a paling vomit just on the lip like the ghost of a lemon twist—

     something, it seems, has been forgotten in the glass.

It makes me a little sad, the filthy juice

on the floor and the sound of whimpering keys when they shake

against all the others in a jar underneath the spirits.

We’ve been sitting here staring at the blank spirits

all bottled up and out of our reach like secret, tiny dreams

huddled under Stay Sober or Surrender Your Keys, the sign that shakes

 like a whispering flag. How unnerving, the way Barkeep’s eye twists—

 polyphemic— while on the floor, the last of the color fades underfoot, the juice

 getting sticky like elbows and the bottom of my glass.

I wish the sun would slip its fingers through the  glass

 and reach for me like a benevolent spirit.

Should my sleepy, gray ghost ever find enough juice

 to move, cool-handed, as if meeting a childhood dream

 I’ll meet the future the way the night and morning twist—

  but Barkeep, smiling, caps the tins, shakes…

and Bob, like the frightened poor, is hoarding the last of the peanut shake

and I am again vaguely wandering  the sea in my glass,

lost or looking,  following the path of Barkeep’s twists—

beguiling how Barkeep tinkers with the spirits

             like a tiny voice moving quickly,  a dream

to the pale. Everyone’s watching again, like when the juice

spilled out and its color brightened everything for a while— Was it just juice?—

and waiting for the miracle, rousing up shake

but they are lost, whatever little fabricated dreams

he hoped for. Back to idling in our Ogygian glasses

ashamed at being given over to such childish spirits.

Like strands of rope, wet rings  twist—

footprints of old cocktails— like spun legends twist

until the enthralling pulp of that juice

is no more a memory. We are all fallen to the fiery spirits.

Better to pull the lid over the glazed glass

by: L. Raymond Andrews

Always Near

Dear,

To the point, I have been absent—there is no denying.  Yet the more absent, the more nearing.  You say I have not been with you, but many mornings you brushed me aside like a breeze snuck in through the window over the headboard.  And you have not been with me: though I held you, you held onto only your own warmth—you odd particle, you strange matter.

But we are so close now, and everyday closer.  In the times when in the still water of night, you yourself ripple because of a breeze or some thought striking beyond the surface and sinking into your core, and you move in the bedside lamplight as if pulled by some taut invisible string—on nights like those I am so nearly pressed against you that my breath raises the hairs on the balls of your shoulder, raises your skin into tiny altars awaiting little breadth-less sacrifices.

Collide into me! And react as atoms do—release your heat!  Remember again the days we were close, when your innocence became mine! Unzip yourself from this world where we are separated! I am here next to you and always have been.  Let me truly touch you and you will fall asleep in my arms and we will dream as if forever.

Eternally,

Azrael

by: L. Raymond Andrews

Losing the House

Losing the House

I.
When shouldering the rubble clogging
the caldera of the veiny underground
procession or when soldiering
at some stuck twig or toe
or crittering exoskeleton,
does the ant ever imagine
between busy antennae
what becomes of its body
when it is time
to at once repay
the great loan
of life?

II.
When lying on a small farm listening to the chicks pop like sizzling kernels in the setting sun, leafy greens hurdle infinitesimally over their brown bedding
like children forever rising in the slow morning, nearby

a butterfly, yellow with dreaming life, sniffs out a rock

to fan down while elsewhere in the same
ordinary instance hot, red life lurches forth to feed the brown ground
as the insidiousness of its own leisurely life is recognized by an old hen ah! too late.

III.
When the fish
having broken the cap
of its universe, for the first time
pierces into the choking air, cutting wind
and eyes its watery world fearing it may float
forever away, it finally sees the round
horizon of everything
like the scintillating
edge of a bubble.

IV.
Before
whistling
their bloody tune they are cloistered,
a frightened family,  until one makes
the short pop
to the chamber, loaded
shot irrevocably
into the world,
toward death. 
Created to be destroyed.

V.
When I was snatched up from my worrying daughters
and led into the judge’s chambers,  He spoke
with laser precision expressing something like sympathy
for all who similarly must stare
down the cold barrel of poverty
in this land of plenty, loaded
the room with deep condolences,
yet then let fall
the remorseless hammer.

by: L. Raymond Andrews