Café, Feb 13th

By William Scott

At the bar, hope of losing loneliness 

He sits lap open, speaking to bosom 

Sweet beer and cigarette half promises. 

Not much less lonely, she banter-beckons.

A waif wafts by luring with service call, 

Prim, youthful incarnation of left hopes, 

Muse of images both clean and carnal, 

Elder prey loosing gaze, she turns; he mopes.

No hope of groping the fecund lass,  

Scorning this instinct for replication

(Lust refusing to age along with bones) 

He smiles cheap hope, asks for another one.

The warm quarter dregs of the pint-glass quaffed; 

The sum of mangled maturity’s cost.

Vietnam Era

By William Scott

Departing track homes of pastel stucco

Over paint-lined grid of sun-bleached asphalt,

Through impact sprinkler dew on emerald plateau,

Where sycamore and eucalyptus exalt.

To the remnant lemon grove, were we find

Our portal to the untamed lands between

The plans, outside of the built world and time;

Storm drain full of Ancient’s forgotten dreams.

Some boys ahead on the wide sandy flat,

Pellet rifles pointed in menaced glee

Into the fractal stream upon frog backs;

Blood, water, and fragments of gutty green.

“Hide your horror at this surplus violence,

Slip away to the sea and its contents.”

Full Trembling in the Moments We are Free

They took the world, these tyrants, simpering,

Supercilious thugs caressing soft hands;

Laud they labour and laud they the suffering,

Who never tasted beans cold from the can.

Fairly, equally, they beat and pull down

To place bellow (the most above so few).

Grandiose Beauty’s head held till she drowns;

Shuddering her majesty might pull them too.

We, drunken on the spirit of potent muse,

Full trembling in the moments we are free,

Stagg’ring on the bliss of exquisite truths;

Will spew into ditch or shout into sea,

         

“Wake up you downed dreamers for your own sake

Take the shore, and all you’ve abandoned, Take!”   

Epitaph for Johnathan Bowden by William Scott

Mid-Lenten Quandary

By William Scott

I. Roam

Such a lot of confusion;
Looking, not arriving.
Or not wanting our findings:
Long walking in the way.


What were we hunting?
What was the capture of our searching?
We wake
Amnesiac to the Will
(Long since compromised)
That drove us from home.


II.  Retreat

Early morning Spring sounds.
Geese coming North
With the doubt of a weary engine
Struggling to turn over,
Punctuated by jubilant honks.


I am sitting on the deck alone;
Bundled,
But my feet are bare.

Sky, mostly cloudless, pale blue;
Muted for lack of light.


My hands are bare too,
But this is the usual way for hands.
Feet bear the weight of our carcass
Shod in wool and leather(or Vinyl)
In Darkness,
Hands toil or play or idle
In the light.

‘Jubilant’?
Maybe. . . Plaintive?, or perhaps
Pleading against the cold morning air
Which the uncompromising madness of instinct
Has them pelting through,
Questing homelands suitable for mating.
This,
To ensure that more geese
May madly fly
On crisp March mornings
Through still cloudless skies over St. Mary Lake;
Questing matrimonial habitations.


III. Respite

Max opens the door grunting,
"G’mornin’".
I answer with question,
"Breakfast?"
"Sure."

We make Tea
Scramble eggs
And place out the croissants & Blueberry muffins
We bought yestereve.
Eating.
I introduce Max to Dark Honey.
He is uncertain.

Sophia sleeps yet.


IV.  Resignation

I return to the Deck.
The sky is now its proper morning hue.

A nearly seamless whir of tires on the road above
Has begun to drown the hushed din of birdsong.
Proving,
"though away,
(Whispered)
We are not away enough."

In contradiction to this dogmatic austerity
I go in for a fresh cup of tea.
My hypocrisy knowing no bounds,
I complain;
The uncozied tea is tepid.
(I only want the prescribed luxuries withheld.)

Besides, why prefer goose noise to tire noise?
Does one hymn God’s Will more than the other?
Both are seeking habitation.

Though b’socked now,
My feet are still cold.
I feel cleansed through this ascetic cinema:
Bitter toes
Against the plenum of comforts I daily groan the absence of.

If I could honk
I would honk,
"Repent".

Famine

By William Scott

-1
Toxic from cheap though fresh carpet
disinterested soothe of state décor;
Squares upholstered in clan-less plaid
(a fate-filled half smile)
bore their weight.
Breathing shallow so as not to draw the deadly newness too deeply,
he willed to fill his lungs as bellows
to shout words only partly composed
to give groan to silence.
To make visible his intestines.
But such yearning is impossible [heretical (primitive)].
Her, 'This-will-help-me-in-my-practice', nonchalance was frail.
He would either hold her sorrow,
or scold this folly and flee.
He daren’t name the obvious, lest she doubt;
the world regressing toward barbarism;
They sat in morbid wait.
-2
Youthful-violent
pulling untimely fruit from the Tree,
whipping each more ferociously against the garage wall.
Bounced back, some.
Split, some,
dropped down, some.
One, masticated by stucco,
Paused like road kill,
then dropped purpose-ruined
onto the pile of pale green flesh.
-3
In the street they began to build a flimsy arbour.
Gaze averted, they tacked together assurance
through parallel praise of unseasonable warmth
and chartreusean growth.
Yet,
Fecundity pruned for prosperity,
the blossomed branches
scratched and scourged the pink flesh of his cowardice.
Had she been waiting on a husbandman’s promise;
hand recoiling at the rate
his advanced?
They,
unturned earth between,
never touched again.

Dark Epiphany

By William Scott

Exactly what you’re waiting for

is what puzzles me most.

No word from god or holy ghost,

than your will, could prompt more.

From the deafening light of childhood

it was for you to bear the grudge;

and among the wreckage to forage

for the knowing that won't be understood.

Your solitary solemn command,

to observe and never speak,

could not plug the information leak

that floods through eyes and hands.

And some times through staggered nod of gin,

come the rotting bits of luminous bliss;

as, over the cold hard plain of drunkenness,

gallops the gelding with impish grin

to tell of the peace of giving in.

Late Summer of My Seasons

By William Scott

Like the year,

I am in the lateSummer of my seasons.

Full of green;

a tired green though,

tipped with brown.

The first leaves 

have begun to cover the pavement, and grass 

of Bad Heilbrunn.

Such a mass is yet to fall!

There is still hay to cut,

fruit to pull;

the hearty may yet swim in the lake.

For all this,

a crisp scent of borrowed time begins upon the air.

The Season's descent will be sudden.

The few brown leaves will turn to many,

turn to all;

with hardly a hope of notice

they will be of the Ground.

Some

wetly obliterated under feet on cobble;

some 

matted in grass

to be blanketed in snow;

some 

raked and rotted.

Others

rescued by small hands,

glued to paper and painted other colours,

or pressed between unread pages,

set up high on reliquary shelves

brought down in mid-winter’s death,

little fingers, delicate, studious,

running (amazed) over ancient lacework

of wooden veins.

Still,

some others

blown to a dry spot,

out of our use-seeking gaze.

They,

enduring the chances of dark and cold,

will be witness to the swell of infant buds;
Anastasia trudging in her green galoshes.