m mactavish's writings

love is luminosity

for some the winged circle high,

above their heads, on fierce blue currents.

a breeze won't move them,

What distress, the jay cries, too!

for fidelity, for Christmas holly,

for folly for theft and for faithlessness.

Heavy weighs what is left of cheer-

Pardon these golden sparks

that leap and twirl and flit.

A strange and ghost-like whirlwind

has caught me in the midst of a new fervency,

And I dare not ask you

"Come to the core of the thunderbolt."

And I could not read aloud your palm

"A honey chior, comb, and blossom."

For I am cursed with sinful rhythm of the heart

and when I get too close

Outside I heard the gamin howl to an implacable seraph,  a cry consumed by its own echo, "coquetry does pierce my woman though she claims she does not swallow!" Then laughter poured from every brothel, and in the pub they clanked their mugs, 

what an experience, this torrent of puberty
these children, drilled and dressed as gemini
an appology! set free the ghost!
and the carnival hair is cut
and a face alone is a mask.

oh clemency! oh adroit centipede!
how you squirm about the press, still warm.
pallid legs which twist the body
not an eye that does not bulge.

and just last week
i caught you with a shovel, digging.
and what?
a pestiferous dog i'd put to rest four years past!
your tongue makes a point
and is pointed for you speak a language
vulgar in its boorish cliches
that bounce about like flies!

Every morning hear
muted yellow chapels sing
and golden pews flit.

Snow on the street melts.
The persimmon twigs below
snap like gingerbread.

A curious voice
washes dishes while next door
the town brothel sleeps.

The mortician winks
for with violets and ash
he cremates the dawn.

I have seen a deer who does not stop eating when the sky breaks open
and pours down handfuls of hunting dogs,
but instead dips her brush into a pale murky water.
and when the clutter of feathered wings beating, collapses into
the sky's uncovered wound,
sending cries which reach the foreign shores,
I have seen a bird stray onto an opposite path.
It's blood hit the ground, and then it's body.