Paper .dot

Achieve naught but stalks of withering columns
grating on an eye less bed as they sway in harmony
to music of the empty tribes.
The Great S.... ! Alive on parchment but doomed
to meet his End like flies and rats,
to writhe in earnest in his earthly pit.
Or the Clever E..... the wire man,
his icy wit now charred from eternal nights,
a tongue as dry as a leather belt and mute as sand.
All fall down,
all fall down,
both pretty and the wise
all fall down...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Lunarscape

It all draws in on itself ~
everything, all must shrug off starry dust
to grow.
Break our cactus cages and venture
to where no horizon lacerates the view;
a place where solid lines are ignored
because of vulgar limits.

The glass edge ~
a momentary lapse into structure,
binding souls to brick without pause,
forging earth to sober nerve.
Grab the eagles tail
to soar above the sickly hell
and reach a liver'd mantle.

Pray tell the holy stars
and religious serenades
that ghosts strike and devils lose;
the burning of hymns is a
phantom ceremony of nightmare.
Walls, bridges, acres and territories
mindless limits to pit and flame ~
insect chants
from atomic guts...

@Steven Francis poems 2010