Poems by Jeffrey Side

DARK DREAM ENVELOPES

You dispel invisible improbability
in the rain and
ignominious expectancy as we
seduce damp noses near
the uniform vortex shrieks
and your vessels entomb

impersonally undisciplined but sack
crash riders terrified define
perforated perfection sleeplessly all
over the sky overflows
deliberate enticement hypocritical concubine
looks drolly vestigial dreams

vibrant balmily undesirable degeneration
envelops unholy perfunctorily agnostics
upright condescension burns carelessly
plastic dolls immortally forceful
sharp craves foul peel
fall abruptly dangerously all

beneath the virgin coma
sighs be luminous the
lust dies blankly narcissistic
streets mark complete vowels
yet ensnare sticky witches
at the stoops dimly
body nourishes thinly boastful
chivalry capitulates dazzlingly travelled
wile the evil rider
defers dark weird and
quaking about the seaweed
reduces night scared unsafe
lost in broad radiance
an unreliable map for
whose sake the guest
makes his way and
misses his turning so
glittering on the mist

we condone mammoth rubies
before the god of
life comes again so
sensuous above the slime
we prod transparent delusions
the spirits way cool

the vision is going
strange and hot the
sea you eat desirous
eyes among the towers
beware the night is
good shadowed and hopeful

LIVINGSTON DRIVE

Oh my dearest darling
I have done you no wrong.
Like that time in the morning
I fell in love with you.
Your father was a good man.
He loved me like a son.
And now you are absent evermore.

What have you done to me
with your words that are now gone?
I loved you like a saviour
in this world you can’t forsake.
My lover of the starry eyes,
I loved you long ago.
And now you are absent evermore.

I only came upon your arms
when I called that afternoon.
And I saw a woman in the forest
who was calling out to you.
Her picture was like the one
you showed me hidden in your room.
And now you are absent evermore.


SOMETHING THAT WAS NOT FRAGMENTED

I contemplate a part of
your beauty that is
like having a new key, or
like holding a snake that
has had its venom emasculated.

The battle with that serpent is
almost over, and the
joys of the fruit will soon
be settled.

You are the designer of
my limitations. You are the
root of my fervour, and
I am caught in your days.

I spent too much time on
the reckoning and not
enough on the shoreline—or
so it was mentioned to me.

You knew the sea would
cure me, though, but not
for how long.


HARMONY FROM DAMAGES

I have heard a good deal most
difficult I would not presume to
dispute the thinking eye or why we
do not recall past lives.

Now the chief god of the Olympians
the moon and witness to genesis in
1980 a group met putting aside a
need to revive the dead.

O my God forgive these angels
seeking some sport in the sun.
Do not remember my madness
and the pain you know I must bleed.

My daughter went within a man
once the viceroy of Egypt. A man of
empty hands I warned about talking to
himself beneath his visions.

IF I HIDE THE STARS AT NIGHT

O Joy, you’re really not this mad.
You’ve tasted everything I’ve ever had.
I would wander in your night
if you’d give me back my right
to make you see that you just play games
with yourself while you wait to claim the dust.
And you speak as though
you’ve got every detail sussed.
And reading all the books you sent to me,
I could never be this free.
If I’m gone were would your mind be?

O Joy, you know that you are wrong.
I don’t have to be the one that’s gone.
If I hide the stars at night
will you give up on your fight?
And we’ll pretend that we share this roof,
these walls, this table and that chair.
I could be someone else for you
if you really must compare.
And I’d see the old cathedral fly.
And the mountains passing by.
And your nose turned up towards the sky.