Holding On

H

Richard O. Moore

Richard O. Moore

1.

How account
for dimming
of the lights

baggage
of old age
tagged and waiting?

or light tricks
in snow
at sun-up?

waiting in line

waiting in line

come sundown
watching the horizon
eyes glowing.

2.

Who

not the
other myself
my prisoner

night flesh
ear-skewered

music
in natural
air

screams well-deep
seep to the brain-root

days
Treblinka nights

guilt
guts the ferret
in my cage

sanity puddles the floor.

3.

In memory sickness

eyes unlace

open
as last night’s boots

a glacier of light
saps the air

remember

the torturer’s
tinnitus
starts the day.

4.

The irrationality
of it

mob noise

angels struck
from the block
of darkness

a sunlit sky breaks
through in shrapnel

hard screaming night

feather touch

troops improvising
for the kill

panic

my enemy

my nail-hold.

5.

Of the texture
of elbows shattered
and stairwell falls

hallucinations
of confession

rush to stop pain.

6.

Andean snow-stats
blind me

the flashlight
of the Burglar
of death flares

and holds
on my eyes.

7.

In the Feast Halls

ghosts linger

feeding

avoiding

dogs

and the memory

of cracked bones.

8.

Present danger

colors hiss
from a blue masque

bone-bonded

Autumn in no
year’s season

a nerve twitches
across the path.

9.

Planets by lamplight

street laughter
embraced in being

parallel lines
collapse curbside

cornices fall

from a stranger’s dream
moon-sand ears

the inhabitants
lean in to hear.

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