The Nelligan Review

                                           CARRY THE BLOOD SONG

 

Unsolicited epithet dubs shunned by the pariah

questing for the figure of her motherhood

Bleak makeup in the road that cobbles the quixote

lest the sermons she hears bury her underneath the dampened coal

 

                                                Lumi! Lumi! . . .  Lachrymose yoke toted to the inferno

                                                Go to catch the train, and ride, ride, ride, and ride; never to run

                                                The wise owl on the lookout for somethin’ foul but tempest               

                                                 

                                                 may return, mooting the wind of discontent, still and all

                                                 bairns' sorrow carries you to string the violin and

                                                 tube the Blood Song of the ‘Strange Fruit.’

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                                                   BLUEBIRD’S BENIGN

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Never to sing in the old country I arrive from

The song of pine eulogy wrapped in departure

Forsaken in the rain of squirrel’s soil, besotted

and clotted at every step of the bedding left

In the wake of the hummingbird’s hum of the

cockcrow, for the namesake’s name and cocoon’s

crib, the unmanning alley’s jazz to play in my dream’s

sight to rapture and sue the Gargoyle’s gavel.

 

I arrive bearing a calloused Janus loosening

the callous of rabble velocity, not to adopt

but to deliver, delivering golden and not roseate,

sunlit yet not halcyon, verdant without Valhalla

I come bearing the bluebirds' benign and gambling

gumption, lugging memory’s hostage and loons

intuition to trammel despotic and plant the sweet crop

for the wind to carry within and without.