Tag Archives: destruction

The Swarm

Like whirling dervishes they congregate
around the bright lit porches and streetlamps,
their bodies hurling like mad wax-winged clouds
that seek where water meets with tender wood.
Against their onslaught, darkened houses crouch
low to the earth, hoping their bones are dry
enough to seem less tempting to this horde,
and seem to hold their breath ’til it swarms by.
They even chase cars down the wood-lined streets,
as if those headlamps led like piper’s notes
to glens and forests filled with hardwood trunks
where they could feast for endless hours in peace.

From block to block they travel, seeking out
a damp and fetid place where food is near;
and then, when night’s ink blots the grey of dusk
they fold their wings, crawl off and disappear.

It’s said they follow, blind, a rebel queen
who must split from her family or die;
to save the kingdom as it grows in size,
each daughter takes a legion to the skies.
Their soldier’s stomachs fill along their trail,
from Pontchartrain uptown to Magazine;
through live oak and great cypress-covered streets
destruction marks the way that they have been.
Where they’ve encamped, the kindling’s turned to dust;
at just a touch great beams and walls collapse,
while parque floors and Quarter ceilings flake
away to skeletons and fire traps.

Tonight the window lamps are left at dim.
The armies of Formosans are astir;
and woe to those whose timber lies beneath
the echo of that hungry cassion’s whir.

26 May 2005

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Shakespeare in Love

The flame the muse ignites inside the artist,
who would in service wish themselves consumed,
their dreams the fuel that feeds this beauty’s fire –
how bright are even sparks from this great pyre!

Against such light what chance has meager daybreak,
that would impress by merely ending night
yet fades with such indifference into evening?
‘Tis but an ember to devotion’s glow.

Its mad destructive urge will turn to kindling
all thoughts that wander from its candle point,
transforming those who seek it into marytrs
soothed only by the balm of its scorched hands.

The ardor of this radiant connection,
one soaked with inspiration’s kerosene,
the other wisps of smoke that feed on love,
cannot be comprehended from without.

Against such heat what show make giant bonfires,
their Beltane furnace lit for merely hours,
when lifetimes come and go in the brief instants
that muse and artist meet and share their souls?

12 FEB 2005

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