Pieces of Poems / Poem in Pieces -- A Poem by B. A. Oard

[These fragments of poems from my mid-1990s notebook seem to work surrealistically well together. Let's call it a single poem.]


Pieces of Poems / Poem in Pieces


...for the darkness will lengthen like shadows
and threaten a drowning


...where the rose petals scatter
below the bush with blowing arms...


--zoning out--
blackness past the searchlight,
lost in the waves.


Remember the brown grass
that blows there
Remember the faces
that laid you in the dust


I know there is something crying
under the broken sidewalk


something barely human calling
something understood...


and an ancient secret
like a child
chained to a bed;


and the vision that failed you then:
a flock of geese rising to sunlight--
only to crash down and shatter
the water's dark glass...


a package of razor blades
bulging your pocket like the weight
of jingling change.

The mind a darkened corridor,
The soul a vacant lot,


The beast that lingers in the brain
behind the door to gone insane
appreciates the strangeness of the plot.