I died for Beauty — but was scarce

— Emily Dickinson

Do I mourn my belovèd, and not move abstract nouns?
Roll-your-own sweep of the real world in an apothecary’s ounce.

Expressively, I travel the hot East & West ends, eating a volcano.
Hail, munchies are my God—I’m found on a daylight world on majoun.

A tin of dirt my heart’s palpitating talons the love after that’s unseen.
“Cinammon Girl” by Neil Young; a fool I’m twenty-five nights a roun.

Ehad, cloudy, five months on, I, Michael, a quixotic edifice discarded.
The angel gestured & I dropped her, and my debt, in the ocean towns.

*

Why am I forever saying
Words I do not mean?

–Edna St. Vincent Millay

Plagiarize love, in the absence of a decade of earth, leaking kisses.
Her amber fluid cries her belovèd steps sure-footed down the canal.

Supposedly impossible, the same One who created flies created him.
For a cheap flight open-mouthed dusk became night playing the infinite.

Hardly illicit flesh lingers cold a couplet goes on & — lays the gift.
I so like unbelief word upon word so become tired of brooding sentiment.

Pashmina wounded heralds a postmedia dawn.
A last love blind One doubled upon him dead.

*

From what stuff did He create him? From nutfa He created him

–Quran 80:17

Somebody’s got to take care of him, the King will protect her & love her.
The pattern is this: the image of these injured elements woven shut.

A greying feather slips from a composed mouth, & she reached a door.
A viscous future forms in bed @ night conceives a prisoner.

The raw cotton turbulence reached anapaestic order, incomplete—
Footloose, he rose then fell into a halfway, fountaining tangled feet.

One year, two years in a travel bag en route a Bulgarian harbour.
My scant wounds a black mirror simultaneously wishing poems.

* * * * *

This poem is a joint effort by Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke and Martha Landman, from their recently published joint volume entitled The Paradoxophies. This volume also features a Prooemium written by Dr. Hurley Editor Emily E. Jones. The Paradoxophies can be purchased here.

* * * * *

South African born Australian poet Martha Landman now resides in Townsville.  Her work has appeared in Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure and The South Townsville micro poetry journal. Martha is a psychologist who loves all things writing and reading.

Her submissions to Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure can be found here.

Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke has this year launched The South Townsville micro poetry journal and he welcomes submissions of a 30 lines or fewer poem from any of Dr. Hurley’s readers and contributors.  If Michael could have one wish in life, he would give that wish away. michael(dot)fitzgeraldclarke(at)gmail(dot)com. 

His other contributions to Snake-Oil Cure can be found here.