Michelle Greenblatt
          & Sheila E. Murphy

 

from Ghazals

 

44/


She swallows a jacknife and runs down the hallway gargling
Catastrophic substances while not considering them.

Coiled blue on her canvas seemed to absorb some of the garden
And the regions of blue coils all turned to legions of black spoils.

The glittersnake sparkled, of course, because
Shards of jewelry had been ground to shine.

Brass instruments erupt against the desert miles
Where for thousands of years one hears limitless space.

Virtues thicken with time, same as anger should thin
Qualms, mud, arpeggios, the makings of cement.

Beatitudes inflect our way of seeing
Not our way of waking to tottering joy.

The stars hang limp from the heavens this sad night
Jimmying the locks on atmosphere as flight.

Momentum blurs our clean, fresh regimen
How quickly the landscape fills with people.

Origins change after a well announced
Green, brown, silver metric leaning to sight.

Fresh lines of code erase the simulacrum
Of reality that she had clung to for years.

Shrinking and soaking, returning from translucent,
Page after page of changed skin trespasses on soul.

Partaking of the least sum of squares, one moves
Round and round though endless concentric circles

The movement that takes design and sculptures it
Brackets into foregone conclusions not safe.

Yellow and forest colored life forms fill the roadways
Child stops to stare at the eyelit house on the train-tracks.

 

45/


We stumble through mud puddle in slimy darkness, patched invisibly by
Oil's thick presence that reflects supremacy over ubiquitous water.

Chain link albatross mimics the flowerlight
Mimicked by mirrorlight mimicked by soundflight.

Follow the dry trickle of river to where it dissolves in sun
To germinate the only cell to live beyond the river.

Spackled walls injected with turmeric luster draw
Circles of breathing dust that reach with a hammered claw.

In the semi-darkness the swooping sound
Of wingspan opens a moment before.

Chance gorges on its range of motion;
Ocean gorges on its choice of fish.

Wholly enter the body that is yours and become
Inflected during miles of treble hope across life.

Speckled division problems stays healthy so long as
Spotted multiplication surely follows suit.

The rains speaks as it pelts the windows with water sized words
Discernible only to the silver slim pale children.

Walking extracts intended breath; walking deviates from thought
While circling around the margins of the brain, walking takes time.

Never diffuse rapture on a sunny day.
Deride the source of feathers not now immune.

Sorrow with a penchant for departing from its word
Assembles the lovely shape of mortal destruction.

She saw him bare and hideous, she saw him a broken shape.
His leathered eyes seemed craven, his face thus unmemorable.

Distances are difficult to see, cerulean paths
And clouds warp the traveled path of any cellular root.

Removed by milkmen in the background of a foreboding basement
Chilled despite an outer luminosity transcending ballast.

 

46/


Paper plates accommodate meals served to royal flesh
The grass is nostalgic for all the royal suitors.

I could feel essence; an oily leaky mess of clogged
Intended irrigation, thus the lawn held quiet.

Canvas dismembers de rigeur a quaint subservience
Basic recurrence rips itself from skintop to bottom.

Tangled, two bodies, kissed with the afterglow of sex stains
Pantomime an effervescence left in memory.

Slow speed terminal was once a fact of life
Time has stopped for those who wish to enjoy it.

Water plants wisely for you are the growth-catalyst
And lead actor in the drama of forsythia.

Shape gets in the way of forecasting preeminence
Of mysterious astrological urgency.

Orders change command when chain of command is
Textured with archival expletives left whole.

A mannequin divulges what is seen as absolute
Headless and armless perfection to the foolish women.

There was a millennium of silence between the loving pair
Of a determined obvious, whose winter lost its shrill blue shine.

Commas had been mended to enhance the spruce
Semicolons folded along the fault-line.

He jumped through pure trajectory outlined by snow's shadow,
The consummate implanted outer glow that joins one's skin.

Cinders put a layer between steps and individual intention
Iron surrenders the will of the masses to the rest of the ripple.

Earth attacked the moon-silver night, leaving
Chapparal its modest share of sequins.

Pastures taken from their earth begin to act the part of
Stolen sieves, the water draining out and through the grasslands.