Respite

Respite
by Gideon Burton


He’ll lessen these encumbrances. In time
you’ll find the dust to be the least of these
despite its progress: eyes to throat to knees,
the burdens empty every step you climb
along the cloudy mountain crags. The brine
you swallow thins its gruel and the fleas
that chew in grinding rhythms will release
their little jaws, will leave your skin, your spine.
But there’s no telling what might also go–
the bandage gone, the skin too pink and raw.
There can be curses heavier than mud.
But meanwhile in the curling currents’ flow,
be careful of that sharp and gripping paw
releasing you to silent, whitened blood.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Image: flickr - angela7dreams

Anger

Anger
by Gideon Burton

Like hard and earthy red ceramic, kilned
by desert suns and desert afternoons,
whose cracking surfaces by hours milled
to blunted blocks and scraps of gibbous moons--
so lies the soiled, ungraced remains of some
whose souls are sold to anger's strong embrace.
So red, so hard, so heated by the sun
yet never to be questioned or replaced,
content to beat, again, this stubbing place,
until all moistened hopes are dried to clay
or salty alkaline no mist would taste.
So bakes the land, and so the hours prey.
        The dirt that itches in these muddy pores
        has too long festered; still, they ask for more.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Ian Boyd