Hey, my friend,
I’ve been painting winter.

Scenes from our summertime.

Remember Beirut?
Only, then it was Bethlehem or Jerusalem
or some such vision that made sense of the mayhem.

Baked potato drunk on rooftops,
spies in covert skies witnessed as we
strained, heaved, fought and deceived,
never expecting a-trophy.

But it came all the same,
delivered and devoured by friends infused
with the rage of an age
and drizzled
in cynical green.

~ EB

In raw silk and things of
that ilk; Audrey breakfasts.
And with Ava, a little,
the sun also rises.
In the eyes of cats,
friends in hats,
suede boots; Inuit hue.
In tabards blue (it’s true)
and so often in this,
but always in that.
In George, generally,
a name to attack,
to inscribe on a back
-ward thinking philosophy.
Over the knee socks
(in memoriam, she rocks)
and ear muffs lock
my eyes to absence.

And inside.
Oh yes,
always inside.


~ EB

]]> http://www.blackreliquary.com/always-inside.html/feed 0 http://www.blackreliquary.com/larkin-about-in-the-garden-of-misogyny.html http://www.blackreliquary.com/larkin-about-in-the-garden-of-misogyny.html#comments Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:07:27 +0000 Admin http://www.blackreliquary.com/?p=1785 After hacking away
at your power of self-healing,
I prune the point and think,
“How pretty you look today.”
With your foilage resplendent,
variegated for my eyes,
inspiration is written
naked in your spastic guise.
I scoff at this irony,
easily denying my sin,
while the parts of you
I’d rather not view
fall casually into the bin.

~EB

My love defines me.
When it isn’t reflected,
I can’t see myself




My love defines me
when it isn’t reflected.
I have seen myself. ]]> http://www.blackreliquary.com/loves-high-coup-de-grace.html/feed 0 http://www.blackreliquary.com/a-work-in-progress.html http://www.blackreliquary.com/a-work-in-progress.html#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 13:15:01 +0000 Admin http://www.blackreliquary.com/?p=1532 O-one-fifty-six and I’m trying hard
to find where the feeling lives.
I want to coax out its wet little nose
and see the shy little eyes
that peep out through the masque of love.
I want to convince it of its safety,
encourage it to relax, feel safe, join the party and dance.
I want it to stand on its back legs and show me its beauty,
proud and tall and breathing.
C’mon lil’ fellah, what makes your skin tingle?
What makes your chest rise?
What sparks your mind, makes your hands reach out,
inspires desire, causes real surprise?
But all of my questioning changes his expression
and it’s anger I now surmise in
the oppression of freedom he could never explain
because with freedom comes expectation
and with expectation, the pain.
And I don’t understand why he doesn’t make the most
of life’s gift because I don’t see the rift I create in his love
when he hates a performance that will surely berate
all that he is because an act is an act
and always too compact to do justice
to life, to create portraiture, to make art
of his finer lines and it comes with a terrible start
when he knows he cannot cope or hope
to carry with import all that he feels and he reels
as the message contorts and he screams
his continuing nightmare as the tears stream
and gather in the anguish
that forgets the shyness in his wet little eyes.

~ EB

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

~Edgar Allen Poe

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