Upon the shores bathed by withdrawing breakers,
four sailors lay against the wooden beam
that anchored them above the raging stream
while their ship drowned, sieved by the whirling shakers.
The stranded crew is made up of a man
a lynx, a woman and a mandarin duck,
who after the due rest and rant against their luck,
their doom of sand scorched by the sun they scan,
wave after dreary wave of drought till they locate
the silver heaving of the spaceship’ dome,
announcing through their doom the hope for home.
With varied strides to pace their weary gait,
they reach the entrance of the ship to see
that someone must have broken in. Afraid
that something might be lurking in the shade,
they chose the lynx, well skilled in bravery,
to go in first and check if all is safe.… ...continue reading
While students are confusing with their chatters
the classroom atmosphere as at the wooden desks
they take their seats before the lesson starts,
a bird glides through the open window,
swooping on th’ irridescent sunlight filtered by the trees
brimmed with the scent of the moon–budded dew,
and ushers in the glimmer of a halo
distilled upon the ripples of the sable beak
and pupils taking shape before the eyes
of one shy student, who, poised for the boredom
of the inevitable victory of time o’er dreaming,
reflects: ‘and yet the birds still pour
from branching shadows in the trees
their pure melodious gold to celebrate
th’ invisible refulgence of a light
that permeates the sky without restraints
even if my pensive moods can’t feel it.’… ...continue reading
I find a map and ignore Chicago,
you don’t exist, your warehouse
collapsed with you inside.
I can’t forget that you forgot.
I was 17,
running away,
reaching toward validation and adventure.
Just making a mess,
with open hands and a dead black heart,
pumping toxicity and fossil fuels through each vein.
I find a car on the side of the road,
take the 70 East until I can see smoke,
from the industrial plant
outside the airport.
The air smells like flight.… ...continue reading
Staring intently into the mirror
I can see the bones beneath my face,
a rigid armature
that would take
fierce will to break,
architecture that’s endured
decades of menacing weather.
Pressing pencil against paper,
I trace the ridge of cheekbone,
the shadow pooling at my temple,
winding up the long stretch
of my inherited grandfather’s forehead,
to that bulging vein
I blame on my father’s rage.… ...continue reading
Go to the store, collect frozen garlic loaf,
noodles, sauce, parmesan, & meat.
When it’s time to leave,
the self-checkout seems more self-
obsessed than self-aware, less AI &
more I quit. It freezes after the ultimate item,
tells me, Help is on the way,
which feels more self-defeating.
The clerk who comes to my rescue
is stoned out of his mind, staring,
rubbing at his faint goatee. “Sorry,”
he says, “I was mesmerized by your
garlic bread,” then tries to chat
about irrational imperatives of machines.
He’s so friendly I want to invite him
for dinner, see his glasses steamed
by sauce. I sense that he would love
a conversation more.
– Ace Boggess… ...continue reading
Waste another hour as if back in prison
when the world is elsewhere:
wall & razor made from snow flattening hillsides
with portraits of paleness, clouding roads,
filling in the potholes with despair.
I sleep as I did then, robbing time
from storm’s sentence.
Maybe I dream but awaken & forget.
The white river has come to rest,
trapping me in its natural penitentiary,
binding me with shackles I could break
out of, don’t dare risk my life
on a whim for pizza or sex, a trip
to the store or a concert in a lovely bar
where the pianist plays songs
of siesta, lulling me back to my cell,
convicted of warm-
blooded wanderlust, a weather pattern.
– Ace Boggess… ...continue reading
There was once a man who fell in love
with his own shadow. On a gloomy day,
along the pebbles-paved streets swept by
the sooty drizzle of Victorian London,
a clattering of hooves announced the fast
approaching of a horse-drawn carriage,
with at its reins a man in a black coat
and top hat turning back on the way to
the entrance of the graveyard he had crossed
after he had presided o’er his burial.
There, waiting by the sombre iron gate,
he found a woman with blonde hair
and a black cloth that sheathed her sockets
on which two eyes were drawn with chalk;
she raised her arms to him as he was passing,
and the man had a vision of himself
being thrown down in a freshly dug-up grave
while shovelled dirt was heaping over him,
with the moist scents of the night-dewed soil
imbuing its soft texture on his lips
pressed by the tasting of the woman’s kiss,
whom, as he sluggishly awoke from dreaming,
he found gone, with only the resulting pain
of an unearned oblivion being real.… ...continue reading