More Poems

More Poems

by C L Frost

Jagannatha

How they surge forth - a thousand arms

writhing, dark palms imploring,

wet brows quivering, fat parched lips

wincing, bellies jiggling, toes

pattering forth in a toneless roar,

silk sashes shuddering; brown chests

pulsing, rocking, swaying to ancient beats;

saffron hair-flowers spinning up, up

through buzzing moist air; loosened petals

tumbling, swirling down, down like confetti down

while the thick oak stage with iron

wheels groans steadily towards, over

them; crushes each adorer as the flame

red eye of the Wooden One with steel-

gray cheeks and knotting snake arms gazes

down, mute and unblinking.

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The Redeemed Don't Fly

Think of it -- Would you really try it at once?

With no instinct for it? The risk of falls?

All Eternity to learn? With your thumb that claws

Baffled across the new gold clasps,

Asking whether hooks fasten here and the straps

Criss-cross in back or drop down straight,

And how these wings of unexpected weight

Can ever zipper snugly into place? Your eyes

Squint against the lancing light while high

Angels swoop and soar above St. Peter's gate.

There's so much for seeing and asking everywhere:

Will you rejoin your ancestors in these parts?

Business-world bullies? Rapscallion schoolmates?

Do dragonflies and blue jays ornament this air?

Does the sun ever set and when? Which way is east?

Are clouds stuffed with down, does the pearl ever chip

Or Peter ever drowse and let an imposter slip

In? Do chihuahuas and parakeets, like men, rise

To here, or to a separately fashioned paradise?

How must you hold a fork at celestial feasts?

Address the elite of the order? Meet an old chum?

Should you flee from, or greet, once-vicious beasts?

You'll need lessons in everything - the new decorum,

Local geography, the use of wings: That's why

You may talk and walk to cloud-cliffs, but that's it;

On this, the first day here, the redeemed don't fly.

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Have You Heard the Flowers Singing?

Have you heard the flowers singing?

They sing the sky-shattering blues

Of butterflies struggling in the net;

Bellow basso profundo, the red of blood,

Of hollowed housewives who fret

To cut the ties they would once choose

And coffins sinking in the all-embracing mud.

Have you heard the scarred moon singing,

The day lilies snickering, ringing?

Sneering petals, too, shall know the mud.

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A Photographer's Death

Mad, mad, they cried, and perhaps were right.

For him, to immortalize a nanosecond of flight,

The emotion before it fled, the avalanche in mid-fall

Was not craziness but passion: It meant all

To capture on film the wave's curling tip

The instant of catastrophic plunge, that first dip

Fixed forever - a monument of crescentic jade;

To arrest the moment when froth sprayed

Like lace from snapping emerald jaws

And spewed drops congealed to small ivory balls

Spat from a sculpted dragon's snarling face.

He'd rush to the toppling tidal wave, race

To where tower walls creaked before collapse,

Submitting to risk and trusting in luck perhaps

That he'd record the boulder's first soundless slip,

Sparks spinning before explosion, the fatal flip

Before the acrobat crashed, limp legs splayed

In multiple, forever, in photographic parade.

Perhaps they were right: Mad, mad, they cried

Entanglements and undertow.

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Alternatives

Not in dewy tears leached from sallow pores