Lobolian Poetry

The cold here is a kind and sensible cold That you wish will come more often While blistering winds howl down Assailing the face in detached hatred Impersonal, yet intense. Whitened lips defend teeth from the attacks So that the winds do not pain them On those days of mocking frozen sunlight But this cold is kindly cold Gentle to the touch, same as heat When its feathers graze the skin Except, of course That there is squishing beneath your shoes As the white stuff bemoans your trotting Quick, lively trotting to escape air that Pings upon your face While your toes go white and corpselike. A friendly, kissing chill That fades with the embrace of green.

Look at the tear drenched face, The eyes worn out of their sockets By nights of pacing, fury, bitten nails; Look for the truth in that battered sorrow. Did love exist in those soft and tender words? Did the liar believe the lie? Or was it a trick, a malice etched upon the heart? When he pledged his love to her. Or was it as she now screams? A hidden agenda, born of cruelty and nursed by hope? Stemming from hatred, bathed by love? She cannot know. He is gone. The delusion came, the delusion left But truth slipped invisible into the night.

Part I Here are my lips, my eyes My heart, my life! Please, take them all! They should not be mine I did not know this would be our end. I saw your turning back The eyes too tearful to see Were not facing me, but I knew And didn’t say a word. And then I heard the news. I felt my heart stop beating My scream drowned the voices, saying I had failed. Half of me cannot return But maybe magic will remain. Part II I went down to our place today Hoping it was all a bitter prank. But this joke was true. And the magic had died too. One day late, I know it all. You were gone and cannot know, How, guilt drenched in our place, I stand sobbing, alone, ashamed. Ahead looped the straggling river Choked by ice, locked in winter’s kiss. From the rush of tears, the trees knew I shouldn’t be alone But the branches shied away Granting my shallowest wish. The last you ever heard. Were you there too? In the crying of the pines The chill down my spine? But you couldn’t be, once the magic died. Part III A bro...

Sing away, our voices are safe Those teeth will grind our wings no more Our beaks are our revenge. Show the babies its rotten corpse The mangled ruins gutted, Stomach home of maggots- Not birdie stew From the grass it killed us In the grass it died Guess you’d call that Symmetry One day we’ll fly above that grass See fearless bunnies hopping past The mausoleum of that cat.

Is the world bleeding to death, Or will the torrent ease? Everything must meet its end Blazing forth-or falling silent. The beaming politician Calling forth idealism in every defeated heart Has a namesake bullet in the barrel of a gun. The wounded psyche staggers From the bloodied stomach of public war, Lashes hope to darkness, lets a million voices Sway in brilliant blackness, cured of desire Satiated with dreams that surpass an age Of white horse cowboy politics And fallen walls, to an age without walls- Where the only such construction is in the mind; Minds raised to dread and suspicion, Clinging to what’s less miserable, less dire, Watch the two options parade past the nightly news While untouched youth swallow their cartoons.

Right as you walk in You spot him A noble bust upon a hallowed Plastic Cabinet, guarding the loo. The weathered face holds such Silent secrets, and you wonder What brought him to the john. Eyes that belong to chanting counsels Settle and his wise grim face Focuses on a 5c towel sign That fascinates no other. His company is fair enough And visitors are many, no doubt. And when he is lonesome, there is a window Shrouded in curtains, lost to forward eyes.

The heater’s humming nursed my lonesome ears Pulsing through yet another dorm room night. Trapped in the foolish, eased from the real fears I was free to exercise my puny might. Acts of heroism unlike any other When came the refugees at our door Two stray socks, abandoned by their mother Torn from their cold feet, left like orphans poor. Seeing those pitiful, lumped up socks Miserably thrown into a tiny heap At such a time of crisis, a fool talks I leapt into action, some help came cheap, Scrawled a few words, asking for the owner Since I did not need the little loaner.

She’s made me a phantom  Fine I’ll be a phantom.  I’ll linger through the darkened world  Prowling perpetually in her wake.   Starless spaces of the night my ally  The stone wrought moon my enemy.   The moon swore upon all stars  That we would not end.  Do not trust the moon’s promises.  She reflects the light of Apollo  But does she send any?   No. I had shined upon my companion.  Blessed her as a sun does a moon.  A planet and its darling partner  In the furtive hermitage of space.   But no planet can hold its moon   I am a phantom   She has made me a phantom  Lingering through quiet nights  Bereft of company.   By Lobolius