A round pome Slip it under your tongue Like a laser-cut flower candy It may cut you Or you may crush it A weak pome Underchosen words Throw it out A slit pome Slit it behind your ear Slit it between your toes Twist it into a straw Drink. Dispose. A pome of light Reminiscent Luminescent Glistening Kinesis
Author: balladrael
the ribbon
Fluttering in the wind lives the ribbon Fluttering in the woods out of the corner of my eye Sometimes through the trees I glimpse the ribbon Distilling all the sunbeams, praying to the sky. If it’s on a young tree, perhaps it’s from construction But I suspect an old tree marks the ribbon’s timeless lie Placed in rituals long ago to remove the dark obstruction That sequesters the divine beyond the reach of human eye. Sometimes when I’m looking down with glasses set beside me I see the ribbon acrobatting in the trees nearby The only way it has such freedom is its knotting to the treeside If I set the ribbon free, it would descend to earth and die. The only way it’s animated – writhing, reaching, dancing, Is the wind invisibly surrounding it, to steer it Sometimes I wonder if the ribbon’s measured prancing Is describing the condition of my immortal spirit.
the pigeon
The pigeon sat awkwardly crushing its tail its wings dangling like grey canvas sails It had been hit by a car. I carried it home in my hands Everyone stared. “the rats of the air” I fed it bread and water Put it in a large open cardboard box by the window so it could see the sunlight It sat in its own poop, paralyzed in stink I cleaned it so carefully in the bathroom sink It drank so thirstily And then died, flailing suddenly in fright Three days later despite Everything I tried. What makes it worth it to try to save a life? Did I just prolong its suffering? Or did I give it a more peaceful exit? I cried I cried for the pigeon.
I have sketched your skin
I have sketched your skin Etched you, stretched you in My arms in the air sprinting under the blazing sun, by the white house, the lighthouse A white salted dress, a red ribbon, hair sprinkled with sun-scorch A salty kiss for you; you etched waiting on the porch Hair permanently ruffled, lighthouse permanently quaint Seagull cries permanently muffled in the flight of oily paint But I can still hear them shriek, through all of the years As I paint you in with the salt from my tears.
new grass
the sunlight slips between the branches to hit the dirt makes the new grass shine like golden hairs in patches. if I stepped on those angled blades, would it hurt? would my feet leak from redly burning scratches? or would the sunlit grass melt between my toes and suction me to always wander where it grows?
trees holding leaves
Love is the leaves clinging the trees and the trees cradling the leaves. One harvests minerals, laps up the earth, the other soaks light from the sky; trading and talking, in springtime and fall, coming and going to die. They nourish and parasitize each other, generous thieves who reply: “We the leaves reincarnate the /trees/ reincarnate the leaves thereby”
mantra rays at the state aquarium
The mantras swim and barely respond to the limbs and hands that invade their pond “Be the change you want to see in the world,” more laps cramped up laps, collect the birch fluid, boil it, everyone claps “May all beings be happy,” for you have made syrup out of saps The hands track to touch – they remove the protective slime from leathery wings Does it irritate the mantras? “Accomplisher of the sublime,” the caged fish sings The rays The beams Their wings On a cold morning with a halo of ice crusting the edge of the panes And ribbons of fog extending outward like roots or veins I press my fork through the cakes so they give way Drowned in syrup like the coins at the bottom of the bay I think of the mantras swimming in circles; creatures of divinity For unlike me, they live, respire, and know the meaning of infinity
[Featured Image: Interior of Fure’s Cabin by the National Park Service]
skin
As babies we were held skin to skin (Perhaps why the feeling is so distantly familiar Like the tune of a music box you heard as a child Like simple words sung at night Like the sound of a voice through a tin can on a wire Like the sound of the birds in your hometown) It is a transfusion of sunlight It is better than a campfire It is the feeling of being a lamp-lit drifting dust mote on A breeze You carry the weight of the earth But have the translucency and lightness of a photon
the ant has latched on to my ankle bone
The ant has latched on to my ankle bone Pincers like the universe Developing venom The ants I’ve always been tune averse, too nervous But this venomous music has caught me alone And I have to dance.
stethoscope
It’s odd That even A stethoscope Feels heavy after a while.
R.L. Balladrael 
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