A Lauren K. Alleyne Poem

What Night Knows

(After Gauguin's Le Cheval Blanc)

Some women ride horses.
Some women are horses.
Some horses are wolves
who have lost their teeth
and are ridden by women.
Some wolves are horses
ridden wild with dreams.
Some women are dreams
in the shape of horses
free of the ghost of wolves.
Some ghosts are women,
their bent air a kind of riding.
Some women ride dreams
and bend the air, freeing
the ghosts and the wolves,
and the horses.


(2013)

POEM: "Her"

Her


I love you I see inside
you say it’s outside you
broken against a wall
in back of a wooden crate
splinters taken by a rat
in the innards of a mind
fetched to the second nest
which has two faulty hinges
the smile easy to remember
moving like a tired spine 
the corner of a rainy night.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

Vermeer, "Girl With A Pearl Earring" (1665)

You know you want to write something about her pale face, the almost smile at the almost man. Her eyes. Is she experienced? She never walked the streets wearing the turban or the big ball thing. On Saturday night she cooked dinner for me. For her birthday I gave her a deep blue lapus lazuli necklace with 6 pale amber pieces. I see her again and ask her if she ever wears it. I don't, she says, actually I prefer a gold necklace. So nice to see you tonight. Another drink? Throws the dice for another vigor. Throws the dice again.

POEM: "On Turning Sixty Jesus"

On Turning Sixty Jesus


Counting positrons against the tide
As if to balance the oceans of this world
In directions likely to be better curled
Though accidents and near-accidents proved
A different physics it never stopped the climb
The jump the fight the poems the wrong ones
The desperadoes the women and the beasts
(Get everything you want & you still don’t have it)
Nearly killed me turning their horns my way
Horses snakes bugs diseases borne by air
By water times a hundred the swell looked on
Nodding there was really nothing left to do
But wait and watch the great idiot ride it out
The sun faded on the beach there were shells 
I barely saw the luck collected in the sand.

                                                     In the Year of the Snake


© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "After Horace"

After Horace


It wasn’t till I got old and cranky
my shields scuffed by faster men
and shadows played with my eyes
that I remembered being told 
slow down, find peace with them.
That was after the last one. Comrades
could think of nothing more helpful
than reprove my new infirmity. Only pity?
Remember the blood that fell along the way.
Consider how long the winter will last.
When I recovered I went back hard.
The trick, like it always is, even limited
is never to be where you have to be
to endure the unendurable. Say it.


© 2013 Rob Schackne