WINDING UP WINDING DOWN
Memories swirl by un-queued, like a top
spinning, wobble, mere beginning
of turning to un-spun. Dreams
askew — blur of gold, fuchsia,
white, blue, careen to blackness,
dizzy journey along sunset frozen red.
I carve a last whistle from willow,
cliff-paint mantis, stilted, still,
sculpt ravens in salt, outline them
with snow. I forget lies, slights,
crawl diapered in circles ever more wide.
Fear the final letting-go,
I don’t know you, call you evil,
wish you dead. Bitter end of the end,
I forgive myself, then forget.
AFTER THE TITLE
comes more memories, iced,
their color, blue. Similes signal
another interlude. Regret
guides the cursor, moves
my fingers down. Cruel slights,
to begin, go, sleep alone, no more
midnight swims, no forested hike
to meadow, camp, fish, count stars,
spoon all night. Stoke the echos
with reluctant strokes, let regret
spill over line edge, plunge deep
in pool below, struggle to surface,
float. Admit love tossed, the loss,
let pulsing guilt stream out.
Argotist Online Poetry is the successor to the poetry section of the now no longer existing The Argotist Online. Send submissions to argotistonline@gmail.com.
Poems by Les Wicks
AVAST Their barque was launched in a swamp with fiddlers & wine in real bottles. Potted politicians & public barflies paraded down t...
-
EQUATIONS #25 When I converse with N on the phone, in about my thirteenth year, our heads open up together, and we create an imaginative lan...
-
EQUATIONS #26 Audrey, as a tangent to N, took the idea, not of broadcasting gossip but of sharing and disseminating literature, as a fait ac...
-
THE STUDIO The vista which then opened was one I never could’ve anticipated in the Nineties—the PAFA campus was set as a series of jeweled b...