Fabrice Poussin

Poetry

 

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Alone in the Green Room

 

It is a cold room of strange greens and creams

where you lay upon a steel alcove

given to the wishes of another morrow.

 

The silence is complete behind these walls

as voices in sober tones whisper in unison

words unknown to the loving heart.

 

Tubes of blue clear as a crimson cream

you gently inhale the air they made for you

so perfectly still in a mysterious night.

 

Shrill sounds pierce the waves of sound

a sharp light crosses through dimensions

burn away the flesh mutated to darkness.

 

You dream gentle spirit of another dawn

when you will sing to the many

who look up and seek your shining beacon.

 

Rest in the embrace of infinite love

soon you will awaken beneath a renewed sun

so we may utter these faithful words with you again.

 

Chameleon

 

Chameleon girl in her father’s walking boots

playing with a brother’s construction set of steel

she giggles on the wooden floor full of chards

under the glassy look of her friendly doll in pink.

 

Chameleon woman walks on the avenue

perfect in her stilettos bright as night

legs wrapped in black silk under the business skirt

eager for the worn-out sweats and a daily Havana

 

Chameleon man at the office with the guys

trapped in his three-piece daydreaming a gentler life
anxious for that moment of return to his laboratory

scissors and the delights of creating new dress designs.

 

Chameleon boy I might play with the girls today

banning the colorful images of those famous jocks

relax in the tender embrace of my joyful self

and sleep in the ecstasy of their confusion.

 

I am them living in the great palace of my soul

fortunate for the gift they have made to this body

free to choose how I will spend another day

entire in the aloneness everyone fears. 

 

Dark Hearts

 

Atop the gentle mountain she stands

a mass oozes as so many maggots

on the carcass of a rotting age.

 

She recalls the days of glowing souls

when nights melted into warm summers

and humans swirled in a constant waltz.

 

Her eyes fill with torrents of an old grief

pondering the hope she had nurtured

for kin to come and rejoin.

 

Searching for a last beating heart

her features saddened for a loss

as mouths scream cries of hate.

 

Death reigns in those decaying hearts

echoing with the hollowness of a void

deep as the lines on an empty will.

 

Hearts darker than their dying shadows

they might be corpses in the daylight

speaking devouring lies to the four winds. 

 

 

 

Once Upon a Stroll

 

One upon a stroll compared you
to the infamous bloom of a trite rose hue
warning of the flight of the hour
a shriveled future cocooned in a certain death
thus you must greet this charming dawn with lust.

Another ventured on an eerie path in a darkest eve
intrigued by his fiery gaze, she walked on
to reach the dreadful fork beneath threatening clouds
there he begged her stop and contemplate the corpse
inhale the stench of her decay and waver hopeless.

The vision so real is too familiar for it is I
invaded by tiny lives to soon take flight
fluid with the colors of melting existence
passed on in the midst of an unexplored wilderness
perpetually forgotten in a life to nowhere.

 

Road to nowhere.

Sixteen streaks of life on a frozen highway
a last thought on a road through paradise
school was out at last for these eager hands

It was time to race with the men
to the wonder of a promising dusk
greasy fingers, feet by the hearth.

He dreamed of a mere existence under a shack
home for the simple mind filled with glee
a can of soup and the second half of a squandered cigarette

Someday he would enjoy the welcome of a friendly canine
sit back as colors above turned to black
and finish another Marlboro forgotten in a rusty tool box.

He went on with the same carefree joy riding shotgun
in a pick-up kept together with an extra coat of paint
winter came to greet him with unknown gift of Christmas.

Laughing on his way to a broken furnace 

his throat to the glass when all came to a stop
at the end of sixteen candles broken in mid-flight.

Ages have too died since and I go to the stone
a faded image of the lanky pal
I hear him giggling on the playground still.

 

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Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in DM, The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.  

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