Richard Magahiz

Cinq poèmes

 

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The original error renews itself

 

a sweet, high, sad voice  

 brother-husbands  

  assemble --

   a seawasp ankh   

    jiggling to the pulse    

 

the more she scythes

 the more the strain on

  our mainmast   

   zircalloy fuel rod,   

    livid cotton       

 

Europa platform:

 the melt trail

  from some cathouse  

   sighs brass meteors

    that plunge straight down

 

they arc

 the spectrum bright with static

  then all fall

   the pleated girl 

    laughs geodesics

 

mirrored O's for eyes

 yes I said yes I will

  Yes

   a wee kilt

    of cryptic energy

 

with each pang

 Rasputina

  sings gales,      

   through coppery brine       

    plough me a mohole       

 

you have forked

 cosmoi, have spooned out

  multitudes

   mercy, mercy, Florence

    Nightingghost

 

kindly observe,  

 a pistoning action

  is normal     

   swisher smoke rings    

    pierce the rubber dam

 

five microns

 from ecstasy, the thought patrols

  fine

   deliquescent ozone 

    electrosexuals

 

snap the tails

 off black hole swimmers,    

  let them rebound...    

   my truelove's quasar   

    follicle looms    

 

on crushed velvet

 plasma plashed

  and a hot-cha-cha   

   the eggshell split:  

    a moist pink starbairn   

 

through Lexan

 the apgar engine's   

  full head of steam,   

   Tsiolkovsky dilates      

    resin-crowned heir         

 

Venus of Arrokoth

 

fingers  

forming an Elder Sign  

in silhouette  

the sky cracks  - billions of spores rain down

 

Merger

 

Child, find somebody

who longs for you

the same way a black hole

 

of five solar masses

longs to engulf

a neutron star of

 

one point five solar masses,

making the space between them

shrink to something

 

literally incomprehensible,

encompassing 

all of eternity or 

 

just moments (same thing),

in modest darkness

(both stellar partners

 

with shades drawn low),

setting the jelly

of space-time reeling

 

a billion parsecs away

still a-quivering,

where the beams

 

of feeble creatures

who've come to know

they are only ants

 

and cling to the hem

of someone else's

soft marriage bed.

 

Concentrated States of Being

 

prospector's gold  

watch it run down   

the porcelain   

 

    brought you a void now give me no kiss

 

a falcon cowers  

something too large  

takes the air  

 

    scramjet contrails your peroxide laugh

 

weaned from  

the grease gun   a wellhog spurts 

naphtha tears  

 

    eyes greenbloodrimmed a shot to the jaw

 

What I think about

 

What would you call a gun that fires ghosts?

If you had one what would you do with it?

Specters spraying out from the muzzle

through doors and walls, to gather

around hearts, like see-through butterflies.

Some bring a story 

                             of agony and loss

while others only mouth wordless sounds,

not willing or able to speak our tongue.

There are no magazines to load

as long as you pull the trigger,

a squirt gun whose tank is the afterlife.

 

Could they charge you for discharging it?

And what does the law say, exactly?

You might say misdemeanor disturbing the peace,

obviously, that's what phantoms do.

Violently propelled, 

                        they would not be blissful,

even (especially) if from the blessed realm.

But if you claimed you were freeing souls

and wore a sincere look on your face, 

maybe you might go freed as well?

 

And if not, and they took you in,

what might appeal to a judge?

what would you say to your peers?

To explain these ghosts 

                             came from your soul,

that you needed to do this as therapy, 

that you had to expel them faster

than spitting them out of your mouth,

the way ordinary folks have to,

would this gain you any sympathy?

 

I imagine this supernatural gunplay

has given someone else some trouble,

so much more than they began with.

Could it have helped the targets -

the ones with too weak a spirit inside,

or maybe empty, 

                            just hollow hearts?

Suddenly might they start to see 

other people as fellow people, with

ghost-mobbed hearts of their own,

despite their way they look and speak?

 

I see a great need 

  for a ghost gun.

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