FOUR FEATHERS PRESS ONLINE EDITION: CITY LIVING Send up to three poems on the subject of or just using either the words city and/or living totaling up to 150 lines in length in the body of an email message or attached in a Word file to donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59 PM PST on February 16th. No PDF's please. Color artwork is also desired. Please send in JPG form. No late submissions accepted. Poets and artists published in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: City Living will be published online and invited to read at the Saturday Afternoon Poetry Zoom meeting on Saturday, February 17th between 3 and 5 pm PST.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Denise Dumars

The City by Day


The city by day delightful

whispered breeze moves the leaves of the trees

in witty breaths and sweet susurrus

dappled shadow in shades of green

we meet in a Moorish hallway

wrought iron bent to the will

glass blown in a thousand nightmares

dripped in radioactive blossoms

the soft paws of the afternoon

hide the hypodermic stick

and we pass the green liqueur between us

measuring the pattern of the tiles

and its mathematical wrongness

the geometry that shouldn’t work

until our eyes have lost the sunny beauty

and all color fades to unease

until coming through an open doorway

in robes the color of sunlight

the master of all our troubles

to us genuflecting sheds his skin

and we choke in the resulting madness

and are finally grateful

to let the black night in.

 



The City of Never


Mired in the city of never

fraught with care and doom

the amethyst dreams of life forgotten

the fading eyes and paper arms

of the carapace metamorphosing

 

We crawl out of these curiosities

we bespeak our own mortifications

the haunt of timeless indoctrination

never catches us as we wander

through the liminal lodges of the wind

 

So tomorrow when you think you awaken

and all winds have blown away the real

when the burning silver lights

abridge the lingering darkness

small fears then go screaming

and old losses collect on debts


Soft plaster falling with each step

lips too dry to taste or speak

and the wings beating faster

than the turning of the clock

you run but those clattering steps

echo through silent rooms 

 

The last time I could ever touch

what erases modern madness

and brings the magic of truth

and the colours of the worlds

from beyond the solar system

to my own dissolution and decay

 

I walked to the edge of nothing

a hard scarp with ragged cracks

felt the sharp wind-thrown sand

and grasped the last crystal standing

as I walked the roads in false dusk

at the end of the bargaining souk

in the silent City of Never.


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