A Drowning

Some friends of ours lost two adult children to drowning not so long ago. I still can't wrap my head around it all. It is haunting.

A Drowning
by Gideon Burton

you wake you gulp slap surface sink you kick
just why the dark the salt the cold the cramps
you bend below cough up the sand the prick
of sickness seizes cloudy pressures clamp
and shake you kick and sink and slap you tire
how long remains how long so far no fight
no shore no more you cramp convulse the mire
of melting mud and muck ascends to bite
your numbing limbs slow treading sink and churn
the froth and seaweed strands that slide and wrap
what's left you choke you heave the throaty burn
and just how you got here what ship what map
you are that distant dimming swimmer tossed
to fetal fatal falling chilling loss

Photo: flickr - andy castro

Veil

Veil
by Gideon Burton

For eons an existence without end
until an end, a goal, a destination,
and to that spinning wanderer descend
toward fantastic futures, higher stations
the other side of birth and work and sense
and senselessness by groaning grace and strife.
Condition: we would not have the defense
and comfort of that rich, receding life.
For modesty, a veil, a way to hide
all beautiful security -- our past,
our billion friends. The smoky cosmos glides
before our planet, bound by forces vast.
     Eclipsed, cut off, oblivioned in flesh,
     we face the veiling sky, we pray, we press.

Photo: flickr - .Andi.

Impatience

Impatience
by Gideon Burton

This bore, this augur, drilling down to tap
a primal vinegar, a bile, a dread.
Infinities stretch out across the map
confused with aching, black inside of red.
It starts with a fixation: this I want
and only this and these my only terms.
The thing then proves to be an endless font
of disappointment burrowing, a worm.
How keen the mind: secure and insecure,
to never waver, spiraled rhythms down
to what is dark and hard and yet so sure
to haunt, to trap, distract you till you drown.
     If we can name the thing for which we wait,
     it proves and idle idol, switch, and bait.

Photo: flickr - tobym

What a Piece of Work

What a Piece of Work
by Gideon Burton
after a passage from Shakespeare's Hamlet

How is it no one, nothing pleases me?
I am not blind to how our sweaty dust
retains bright shimmers of divinity,
despite the vinegar, the bile and rust.
We are these demigods of sense and flesh,
as fair in form and movement as the stars,
the waves, the wind; our stirring thoughts enmeshed
in reason, action, music, spreading far
into infinities beyond, within,
as golden glorious as fretted skies
afire; as magical as newborn's skin.
And yet I stop. I sink in heavy sighs.
     Though heaven dazzles earth with brightest beams,
     so heavy, bland, and sterile it all seems.
  

Photo: flickr - susy

---

From Hamlet:

I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither...

At Rest

At Rest
by Gideon Burton

If there were other options, had the sound
not echoed from the lower canyons, had
the strains of Barber's violins not found
crescendos stronger than the snowfall, sad
against the season, over warm so soon.
If there were chances to betray the light
the children weave across their crooked loom
of chance enthusiasms, loosely bright.
But we are snared, entangled, bound to this,
to sudden graces, mercies tendered thick
as afternoons unpressured by a kiss
upon the forehead. Nothing left to kick:
     the pricking shards and nettles -- all at rest
     because you tire and sleep against my chest.

Photo: flickr - rrrodrigo

Go Broke With Me

Go Broke With Me
by Gideon Burton

The simple economics of my love
for her: supply supplied with time with her.
And as we spend, we find no price above,
below: production and consumption blurred,
our capital compounds as interest soars.
Though years add debts not payable in cash,
our warehouse of affection stocks fresh stores.
No need to fear our markets ever crash,
for we are fully vested, partners full,
and though our funds are taxed, at times distressed,
we balance steady, come both bears and bulls,
and count our assets in the ways we're blessed.
     Go broke with me, and you will find me thankful,
     far more than had I bullion by the bankful.

Photo: Luann Hawker, WholeGrainPhotography.net

Ribs

Ribs
by Gideon Burton

You vegetarians -- just walk on by.
You do not want to see this slab of meat,
dark charred in carnal lusciousness -- not dry,
but robed in tangy-smoky sauces sweet.
Utensils -- I don't need your girly aid;
I rip, I gnaw, I tear the carcass tangy,
You want to interrupt me? Be afraid.
No time for napkin nonsense, manners dainty.
I toss the whitened bones into their place,
sucked clean of any morsels I could chew.
A reddened ring expands across my face,
the beast has left his mark in barbecue.
     Self-tortured on the rack of fleshy bliss,
     Oh, trousered ape, have you evolved to this?

Photo: flickr - jk5854

Ice Dams

I was shoveling the slush and ice from my roof at about 11:00pm tonight, trying to fend off the leaks already starting in my bedroom from another year of ice dams.

Ice Dams
by Gideon Burton

The snow has had some time to settle in:
transforming from its dry and wispy flakes,
it moistens as a warmer day begins,
lies heavy on my roof until it aches.
The heat that rises underneath the shingles
turns snow to slush that creeps toward the edge.
But suddenly, with night, the cold air mingles,
refreezing slush into an icy ledge.
And soon the water pools above the eaves
and works its way to layers better dry.
The snowfall stops, the wetness never leaves,
and rots my roof until I want to cry.
     Two winters ice dams have brought down my ceiling.
     Come Spring, up on that roof you'll find me kneeling.

Photo: flickr - BoSoxBrent

Luscious Peaches

Luscious Peaches
by Gideon Burton

Don't picture them, forget the way they smell.
It's not the fruit that's sweet; it is the sound
of luscious peaches. Say it! Can you tell
the way the S's slosh in slushy mounds
of fructose-addled consonants? It seems
a sin, almost,  to speak those luscious peaches,
moist-ripened in each repetition, clean
and fresh, four syllables and sonic leeches
suck in or out the nectar nouns, a rush
of breath, saliva summoned, ready fruit
unlike their orchard counterparts that hush
to silent wrinkled pits once down the chute.
     No need for Autumn's chill or season's prime;
     I say my peaches, lusciously they're mine.

Photo: flickr - floradog

Returned

Returned
by Gideon Burton

And after so much time, so many days
adrift in waiting -- do I watch the sun
horizoned, rippling in the water's rays?
or angle moonwise where the night's begun
its dread ascent? And after walking west
against that wall of gristled wind, head down
and stutter-paced, the glow of morning's breast
a fable, running short of verbs and nouns
to document the spiraling, the choke
and phlegm, the snapping ailerons, those long
and twisted cloths to mop the sticky smoke
of wasting resolutions -- then a song
     awakens something hidden, buys me back,
     forgives the time, the waste, the weight, the lack.

Photo: flickr - Espen Faugstad