William Blackburn: 2 Poems
Parabolas
All those folk tales told of long ago- fountainheads
Heads will roll if new ideas get too extreme
Extreme sports played in extreme weather, whether or not
Not likely, given the forecast. Foreman casting lines
Lines in the sand box, rock gardens guarded by ceramic gnomes
Gnomes and Faeries flit about: alight upon chicanery
Chicanery chickens clucking in the side yard pecking
Pecking one finger typing achingly slowly to the finish
Finish peeling and flaking without dandruff shampoo
Shampoo and soap-on-a-rope will wash away most problems
Problems solved with applied mathematics
Mathematics done: graphing answers in wide parabolas
Parabolas, parables, riddles and kells, fables all
Spelunkers
Before our trip abroad to those grand vistas offered
A repast in cafeteria-styled dining proffered
Provender under heat lamps
With trays laden before cash register coffered
Being low on funds, pocket more lint than lucre
A salad side and toasted whole wheat couture
Perfection in cream cheese
But some miscreant did purloin my bagel future
As eggs in cartons, lined up to take the tour in dungarees and old shoes
Flashlight at right, father left, we slipped down into that open sore
Clamorously climbing jumbled tumbled rock stumbling like a ball pit
Bully pulpit for echoes and that slow, steady drip abounding
Surrounding and caressing as the hand of mother at crib side
Gentle progress deeper gone, sliding and scraping knees and knuckles
Gloves for kid-handling might be advised in all things human
This adventure, familial indenture to slavish attitudes
Father and son separately return to that virginal orifice of Mother Earth
Limestone and postnasal drip, this gullet wide and seeping
We went in creeping, hand on map amid bleak blackness and wonderment
Impediments, obstacles along the road- barring fruition, inconsistent climb
Stacks of books and board games in nooks toddler gates drawn up
These early warnings sprung up in the way on the way to next steps
Must learn to walk and then to run, each a segue to ventures beyond
The exit at the end of the tunnel, this funnel we each must pass through
Breaching, reaching the terminus of childhood and freefalling to parenthood
The lengthy cycle circles back once more each time and tries again
Crawled we caving headlamps beaming
Through fissures of earth, deep spasm of scheming
As worm amid the apple of my eye
Barreling through sheltered chasm of dreaming
Some skeletal, secret closet unstepped from
Spiraled down, embarrassed as flushed to this slum
Amish-made for barn raising
This framework of exploration, my solitude and freedom
Explorers, implorers, exploding potentials in the dark
Radiating waves effervescing, coalescing prickles on my skin
Raised hackles, raising alarms, sounding off by ones and twos
These cavernous thought bubbles, streaming mistranslations
Cosmic, comic-book speech balloons overhead like Signs
As a heavenly beacon to lost ships and wanderers found
Giving away my inner monologue, inside voice shining
Unrepentant, unmitigated, unwilling to assuage
Then falling silent as this waterfall trickle over stone
These walls open out upon a vista turkey-carved of rock
Spiny gate guardians of the way, masticating, gnashing of teeth
All those premonitions of monstrous dentition: eyes wide glaring
Borne of childhood fantasy, a misunderstanding of the words
Each hovel a new tunnel, a cave of fancy for prowling fingers
Those walls adorned with scrawlings and scratchings
First inklings of communication beyond childhood slurs
Decorating the refrigerator doors of our insulated world
While real monsters do exist: they wear sheep's clothing
In these languid days of preschool squalor
Little mensches playing games in the parlor
Obeisance to our daily gods
Those schoolmarms dressed in parental pallor
As cave art in France, those colorful sensations
Decorous, festive hangings in museums of our relations
Such primal playthings in crayon
Monsters as naturally occurring, uneducated explanations
There in that deeping darkness star chart cast upon roof and walls
From flashlight seeming, Greek stories beaming skyward gleaming
In the vastness of our sepulcher, wandering in the mind's eye
Along ancient transit ways, those rivers of the sun suffering its end of days
That heavenly visage, bringer of life and sunburn, once more with feeling
Drawn now to other suns, other worlds basking and baking
Other children somewhere dreaming and thinking fondly of us
In dankest dark cosmos of the night, some fickle chance of fate
Each day should spark and coalesce into these magnificent happenings
Stargrazing as cattle "ooh" and "ahh", seeking sense amid the silly
That central question at the heart of it all: WHY?
We are handcrafted so much stuff of stardust and dreams wondering
Just add water then brew and blossom minor godlings everyone
Asking now as ever, "How can we be the only ones?" Now gaze:
Omnipresent in this moment casting stones across the abyss of knowledge
Catching twinklings and inklings writ among those stars
The next, great American novel, published serially with movie rights
All stories have been told before, laid out at picnics of thought
Currently based in OH (USA), WBlackburn still struggles to find his car keys. His work appears in SCRAWL, Emerald Press, Route 7 Review, and Edify Fiction. He is a contributor to Adirondack Center for Writing's PoemVillage 2019.