Saturday, November 2, 2013

Six Poems by Peter Richards



Lord I do worship
another lord he is always
saying terrible
animals will come
from the sky and they come
to feed on those who
ponder them



Mars those who you call
dwelling people pass through
prayers just like you do
coiled if a bell
might run though the woods shouting
I’m coiled flatly
they have tall fears mars
they do not lack happiness
they pray to one god
and they pray to some
mars for many of them you
won’t be one of them
you crawling from one
shoulder to another mars
what is it you do
trepidation sire
is that all with an ax rubbed
blushing companion



Mars a white egret
not snow white but white the times
earth fell down upon



Unnamable Lord this morning
telling me not to worry rain has her
own endless solitudes and discreet
joys and not a rain occurs in a crypt
all is god space borne rain intercept
Lord you are the sound I have heard
all hopeful summer a great gray owl
you are the enormity in the universe
so many loving pretenses blanket me
Lord you are not falling down now
Lord my wet leaves to look at Lord
and in all this secondary rain work
Lord I hear you more allowing me
to love you



Mars one of the new horsemen my
god the most black canister blue eyes
we call him soul engraver wild blue eyes
he tells the best early mars campaign
stories mars your ice was a bat sipping
blue wine mars he tells us all the meat
stories mars your first campaign never
knew mars you were such the sibyl licker
back then thin inveterate death talking
slight power without me to kiss yet



Bradley I want you to lie down
now in this bed of Christ water
and hear the sounds of pheasant
myrtle and to know there are many
who by imagining this too intently
are put here too Bradley but that
was me that I could hold you and tell
you why so optimistic god is now
all throughout this new affidavit
silk worm vapory forced to grow
on a loom they say is the consistency
of the court and it has the court’s logic
and that it proves by way of your own
brave acts Bradley no constitution
to their argument and those who oppose
seeing you imprisoned for loving us
Bradley some of them are said to ride
out to live with you thickly now though
we are unpresent and we have to leave
early I want you to know those traitors
who live in galleons so they could put
you here Bradley are said to be captured
in this new affidavit as white shiny tables
and upon them walking and as though
through tall white conveyor grasses ones
walking dim witted in long agony white
fireless mealy eye their own eye is what
we serve them and yet still they walk
with their one eye agape at the mind
left evacuated by its own foul accoutrement
and Bradley some of them go missing
in the aftermath of their own skull colors
they plead and plead until we give their
skull colors back to them and they have
white fins growing inside their mouths
and in this one white glass passenger sack
they are each being incubated into love’s
fate absence



Peter Richards is the author of Oubliette (Wave Books), Nude Siren (Wave Books), and Helsinki  (Action Books).