scarecrow poetics/essays

DOLLY PARTON ON THE INISDE OF BILL BRYSON.

Perched I am, on cement slab
overlord of 5pm proceeding
scasting upside down glances
over projected peoples.

Poor soul’s
recipients of my biased musings
all the while, hypocritically
I seek their depths
looking with lusting eyes
through amusement park mirrors.

And they cry their case
through cheap-expensive suites
"there's more to me"
"than this sideway shuttle-step"

And what exactly is "ordinary"
but the lack of imagination
of a procrastinating seer
with burned psyche
and all the scars
of a horny napalm victim.

And the beat of glossy leather
is an incessant reminder
of the places we'd rather be
down turn on this damn moment
this damn enemy
a painful reminder
of the ghost in residence
long since pounded
to dust in the crack of a sidewalk


SHARP PAIN ON CREMORNE WHARF.

I peer out through sea water eyes
I feel slats of wood
mottled against my calves
I reach out with amputated limbs
feeling blindly for a soul
to brush lightly against

But, how they rush on and on
in the dreamscape of importance
wrapped tight in a woolen cloak
a future of satirical goals
an eye of self-reflecting diamond
cut crooked against the water mark

Though I still want to touch
still want to hold them
feel my nakedness dissolve
walls rife with barnacles and star fish
decayed and mistreated
in a bleached April sun.


MILITARY ROAD.

I gotta burn this weight
flame it off my chest
it's burning me, roasting me
in the fires of doubt and wretchedness
a wall of dried eagle feathers
with periodic portals
to peer through with bare eyes
eyes that see a potential
drifting on warm thermals
to the forever receding horizon

Stopped the ride, I did
jumped off the schizophrenic carousel
who's demented horses
had raised the professional absconder
to demi-god status
in the mirror and eyes of another
who's innocent devotion
only tipped inertia’s scales
into a blood red avalanche
of deceit in the name of love

Now wade through a pool
of screaming memories
face their unfettered fury
I must, I must be consumed
in the pure water and death throws
of an open wounded ego
long passed expiry date
best left to the junkyard
at the end of Military Road

Bradley King 2005.