Natal Motions
You blame me for rumors
floating across highways
which come to rest uneasily
among swans
and other natal motions.
The voice you claim
to speak with may be your own
or the disembodied sound
of warm intentions you thought
had finally been quelled.
Like a spin of insects
beneath an evening streetlamp
it’s useless to sleep
when you could be awake
imitating life and tracing art.
I appreciate the false existence
you’ve found in a patch of tulips
but I don’t want
an expression of your tenderness
chained to a bird of song.
The Highest Reaches
Beneath the highest reaches
in a yellow-gold field
your eyes are filled
with gestures of joy
and light-blue bends
but sadness and star grains
still cling to your hair.
I rise to my feet
even in an anatomy
of insignia and pins
obscured beneath a canopy
of crippled captivity.
The birds have ended their ostinato
and we’re left
with only a stuttering silence
of leaves.
My dream is cracking open
the egg of a white lizard,
a little girl pounding
on a locked door.
If it’s me you’re crying for
then no, I don’t want you to stop
until we’re separated again
by sutures of emerald green
and pinches of black.
Gelatin Plateaus
You’re scared to exchange words
fearing that I’ll intersperse my voice
with a disastrous elixir
designed to make you love me.
In my guise as a simple hitchhiker
with a broken guitar
you’ve driven past
at least a dozen times
coursing the roundabout
with your left foot tapping out the window.
Cast from the joke of a raven
you dance naked but impenetrable
in a tongueless world of gelatin plateaus
and abalone snow.
The sound you’re hearing in your mind
is only a mortar and pestle—
the killing powder was consumed
when you first imagined
the swollenness
of my lips around your nipple;
felt the insistence of glacial stone
opening furrows of ochre and loam.
Disconnected Flickers
Never does my mind
consider the disappearance of earth—
my thoughts go even further than that
a grisaille balance of stars
and starlessness
the high pitch of emptiness
and the decaying swingset in my backyard;
warped, brittle wood
and tattered canvas.
A calm has descended upon
morning grass
and the departure of small mammals
for more secluded silences—
the faintest trace of your instep
makes the world more
than a sequence of disconnected flickers
running in the direction
I suppose.
Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.
