Issue 14: Philip Byron Oakes
Swinging Gait
Salient sway to the march putting a lean into
play the stagger homeward bound. Balancing
a hop with a skip over a gruesome gloss on
the mirage of amenities. Checking under
auspices to see where the giving shrivels and
the grasp begins warding off a slippery
insurgency of gleanings off the top. The
doctrine of missteps lauding the fullness of
circles, come clean in the roundabout half
past here we aren’t. Very well able to say in
so many stumbles taken towards in retreat.
The commute to principles relied upon in
ignoring the jaggedly obvious. Pulling the
hastily sketched from the shadows for an
exercise in incompletion, filling the room with
spare parts assembling a mystique, of which
ghosts make the most of holes in the story
shading the ruthless from the rue. Putting the
turn on a dime at risk of inflation, bloating the
sense of a candidacy for here and now. In real
time only slightly ajar of the calendar, doting
on dates in red letters calling Lassie home.
Leaving footprints without a trace to follow
protocol to what made it all worthwhile.
Leading questions to the brink of being asked
to serve a greater purpose. Campaigning for
nightfall in the sturdy rhetoric of an
always uncertain time of day.
Heir to Breathe
Waiting to die only gets you so far. Round the need
from which the wants emerge. The swoon into facsimile.
Where malleable meets immutable, mesmerizing the
pensive at the paradox breathing easy when all is said
and done. The party line straight home, to faraway places
in a haze of familiar surroundings. Tempering the
trajectory slowly shaping the thaw, running rings around
the passion’s play on words to the effect. Dissolving in the
warm ilk of a distance fashioned from all that comes too
close. A soft touch of places hard to describe. Stalking the
merge into walls crawling with people you know. Calling
the febrile to the frolic of night sweats. The plummet
from perch to ravine winding its way to deeper waters.
A last dance with redundancy carving out its frontier, in
the slow drone of happiness on celluloid mountains of
faith that one more time will do it. Sporting euphemisms
to fend off an uptick, conflating voices as a consensus
only silence shares with the nearness of
its dearest friends.
Philip Byron Oakes is a poet living in Austin, Texas. His third volume of poetry, ptyx and stone, (white sky ebooks) was released in 2013. For more, see http://philipbyronoakes.blogspot.com/.
