by Robin Ray
Ananda, it’s been snowing since you
hand-delivered your toasted envelope
of admiration, erroneous sentence for
inadequate leanings through corporate
transfer of isolation laying behind you.
Benign guilt in powdery form, hybridizing
tulips with marbled sketch books, encourages
fogs of sobriety, illusions of masculinity.
Upon waking, you’re hard as petrified anger;
ambition – baked in a half shell, your
spine-cruising initials, finial-masqueraded
breath, vented through a louvre of thorns.
A decent beggar of pillow talk, you lathe
molasses wrapped in wooden trowels for
the underworld or an innocent bite of life
then conspire, on doctored mushrooms,
against green while egging amethyst quartz
miners to brunch, their negative guitars stuck
in rustic idylls commanding trenches to the
forefront of juvenile, sea-worn, fur traders.
Rain pillows on malnourished beds remind you
of western summits as long as weathermen crave
sonic maelstroms, but your silver retinas glow,
My dear, what big eyes you shine!
Robin Ray is the author of Wetland and Other Stories (All Things That Matter Press, 2013), Obey the Darkness: Horror Stories, the novels Murder in Rock & Roll Heaven and Commoner the Vagabond, and one book of non-fiction, You Can’t Sleep Here: A Clown’s Guide to Surviving Homelessness. His works have appeared, or are appearing, in Red Fez, Jerry Jazz Musician, Underwood Press, Scarlet Leaf Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Spark, Aphelion, Bewildering Stories, Picaroon Poetry, The Bangalore Review, The Magnolia Review, Vita Brevis, and elsewhere.
Find Robin online at https://seattlewordsmith.wordpress.com/ or on Facebook as Robin Ray Lum Cheong.