Cold Caller
Verse for an Alien Visitor
Carefully, I’ll show the puzzled alien the way
Through the museum of monstrosities that make us human
To that smiling stranger, who on any boring day
Looks into the eye of some botched beggar with acumen
To see a febrile poet, grave philosopher, sad genius
Imploring passers by for grudging cigarettes
Or the last piece of silver that we owe him for betraying us
As callous, sneering Pilates with clean hands and foul regrets
Looking at and into this dirty, ignored prophet, the stranger sees;
Seeing, he must be seen by the legate of distant lights
For recognition of the smallest, strangest, sickest you as I--this frees
The shining part of us, that had the cheek to leave trees' heights
As much as I might wish to show the grey guest other wonders:
Music cleaner than a pause, or sculpture’s frozen ripples
Feasts fit to make a corpse drool, books the ideal reader ponders
Rhetoric that softly thunders or dances that nothing cripples
Instead, I’d index what turns worrisome to worthy
Mere object to subject, thing to person, thee to me
About the Creator
D. J. Reddall
I write because my time is limited and my imagination is not.
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His Haibun
He does not like poetry; I write it anyway and do not tell him. It's true his face is not a poet's face. It is round and open, youthful; too apt to be compared to the sun. His nose is neat. It is impossible to imagine him smoking a cigarette, terse, full of cheekbones and tension. His warmth burns my fingertips. I am here for his fascinating body, the haphazard freckles I touch one by one; he is here for my eyes, just my eyes. A sunbeam sneaks through the curtains and pierces us both, sizzling the spices of his skin. I inhale and wrap myself in him. He kisses my eyes.
By TheSpinstress3 days ago in Poets
Timothy
My fingers inch closer to the keyboard, itching to obliterate a day's worth of work. It's some of my best writing I've done to date, but at what cost? The words seem to bleed, dripping onto my desk. For a millisecond, I'm sitting in front of a crime scene, looking at dead, begging eyes. Why? Why me?
By Alexandria Stanwyck4 days ago in Fiction
Comments (1)
Sublime. "Imploring passers by for grudging cigarettes Or the last piece of silver that we owe him for betraying us As callous, sneering Pilates with clean hands and foul regrets Looking at and into this dirty, ignored prophet" Damn. I ought to quote the entire poem, but this is the part that really got me. You knocked this challenge out of the park, my friend. I don't feel I need to read another entry.