Poetry Category

...and perhaps you will discover that these things which lightened your days were not as bright as first imagined, but that the illusion had more conviction than the illumination, and in the dying light and disorientation the darkness passed each of your senses through the aperture of the new: the flesh; the structures; the worn artefacts of the world became a braille for your lovely hands.

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  • The Prince, Redux
    The Prince, Redux
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Wednesday, September 12, 2012
    ‘Tis true, the skull is held aloft each night -
    nostalgia bleeds down the inside wrist
    like molten wing-glue,
    yet the metaphors won’t mix in this emulsion:
    there is no sun here; there is no chance of flight,
    the hawk and the handsaw are known apart.
    A straitjacket is typed and named a poem,
    grief kerned tightly, a weave to filter the passage of madness,
    and, as though pinned beneathed the vocabulary of forms,
    Ophelia gags in the stitching.
    This poem blisters into a catacomb. A mummy’s curse.
    Every other poem is a virgin’s unravelled womb.
    A patriarchal tomb. A view with a room.
    Perhaps a pride of feminists will deconstruct
    this poem to reveal its penis, obscured by the symbols –
    it is only the wittiest lioness among them who will yell
    that she scraped the interior of each word
    and the shavings didn’t hold a trace.
    Truth is, it was the virgin who was crucified, with child.
    The son, indivisible from the vanishing mother.
    The death of the light of the world.
    Tonight I’ll brave the crumbling parapet,
    anxious for an audience with the ghosts of my fathers,
    and hum a hymn for your every barren dream of Elsinore.
    Barren Dream Of Elsinore
    Barren Dream Of Elsinore
  • God Is Not Elsewhere
    God Is Not Elsewhere
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Wednesday, May 16, 2012
    Some people claim to know God:
    they have never heard the great aching arc of your laughter;
    they pray to know the many glories of heaven
    without once having looked upon another’s heart.
    Love is not elsewhere. It rises and glows
    in the ever present flow of now -
    a burst in the gut, a dancing flame in a vortex,
    a bouquet of flame for the hearthless.
    You are the river of my time on this earth,
    you are every tributary, your waters are my life,
    all breath is our breath, all flesh is our flesh
    all joy is our body, all fire is our fire.
    In love we are equal to heaven, to all beauty and glory
    that ever was: your hand in mine is a Universe.
    Each day we are pieced from the ash of sacred beings
    who have burned, together.
    All Joy Is Our Body
    All Joy Is Our Body
  • Warming
    Warming
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Tuesday, May 15, 2012
    On the mumbling trails of the past,
    passion has weathered poorly.
    This rigor upon first touch:
    a loss of tenderness, held too long in the heart.
    The birth of intimacy is the rewriting of destiny.
    The absence of self in affection, the sacrament.
    There is life in the laying of the wreath.
    Slow hands wheel the darkness.
    Trust, now – the only light that opens
    the generous bloom of her body.
    Trust - The Only Light That Opens
    Trust – The Only Light That Opens
  • Prose Poem
    Prose Poem
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Saturday, January 1, 2011

    It has been seen in dreams: death is to swim beneath water that has an impenetrable surface, facing upwards, an open parachute trailing behind like a submerged hurricane. The movements of all other beings in the afterlife are eased by flow: I am tasked with fighting against drag and current for eternity.

    A Lithe Salmon Flashes Skywards
    A Lithe Salmon Flashes Skywards

    You, admiring the anemones and pincered beasts of the shallows, never look down upon my craving face; my wails cannot rise as even small bubbles through the immersion. I will watch you walk away from the shoreline in a perpetual loop, ever yearning to flash skywards into your thin air like a lithe salmon.

  • The Hands Of All Gods
    The Hands Of All Gods
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Friday, December 31, 2010
    The hands of all gods are wringing:
    they have been emptied of love.
    Misunderstood, it has been laid down.
    We must gather it to ourselves.
    We must turn to others and surrender
    all love we guarded from the world.
    The great worship is each for the other;
    the great praise is one circle
    of given,
    and received.
  • Love Is My Favorite Gulag
    Love Is My Favorite Gulag
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Monday, December 27, 2010

    The mapping of flaw has been completed. The shape of my name inherits the angles and contours of infamy. It can barb a tongue if uttered in certain quarters. It can be used as a flamethrower, can be a bottle filled with rags and propane and thrown against an ear. My name can glaze eyes with the longing for an intimate jihad….

  • A Lover, Loving
    A Lover, Loving
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Sunday, December 26, 2010
    To make love in the sands of Persia
    is not to know the desert:
    to love is to grip at smoke;
    to clutch at air.
    A lover, loving, knows nothing
    of the history of love
    or of love’s future: it is to cradle
    water for an insatiable thirst
    in the palms: to quench
    a lifetime in each instant.
  • A Visit From St. Nicholas
    A Visit From St. Nicholas
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Friday, December 24, 2010
    ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
    Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
    The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
    In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
    The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
    While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
    And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
    Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
    When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
    I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter…
  • How To Bury The Living
    How To Bury The Living
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Tuesday, December 21, 2010
    You will know of this.
    It will furrow your brow and twist your sheets
    deep into still, still nights. You may need to mumble
    assurances to feel that you exist
    or that you ever existed.
    You may feel inclined to resort to counting
    worry beads with affirmations;
    to eat too much cake;
    to discover the maelstrom of stupor…
  • Armageddon
    Armageddon
    by
    Jé Maverick
    Sunday, December 12, 2010
    To all who were not born as heirs to beauty
    the memory of the flight of Icarus is dedicated –
    you will not know even the dry bones of such exhilaration,
    or how, from a loom of wings we are each woven softly
    into delusions of great heights.
    Zeus was a travelling salesman
    who cleared a trail through lovelessness
    with his bare tongue.
    He returned with trench warfare and croissants,
    paid for with the thin vertebrae of your finest warriors.
    His backbone was the litmus for the battle.
    His mistresses had breasts like slipknots;
    their truths were dressed in leather – they had whips
    and devilish instructions.
    He tried to sell us life,
    but we knew that disaster had been built into the product.
    taste me like you taste a delicacy.
    meet me on the same corner that you meet doom…