Dustin D. Pickering- Three Poems

Limbo

"Lie beside me baby now that's an order." 

--Leonard Cohen

I'm edging my way from Limbo,

chasing the great godsmith.

I cannot see why this dream is true,

and not mine.

Where is this struggling god whose

perfect tears fall to the earth,

watering our desires?

She also is in Limbo--

  waiting for the miracle to come...

I know of many things from the night's

thin veil, lifted as the stars compromise

in conspiratorial fashion.

o God, so miraculous I cannot understand

your promises.

You insist on errors and the abiding

faith of love and hope.

It is a scandal lost to my eyes.

Knife the Horizon

Let one slumber

and let two awaken.

There is enough clarity for intrigue.

There is enough mystery for pleasant wanderers.

Stars of frenzy--

motors of our sweet desire.

I am another waste of worried years.

I stir the investigation

and bless the wine.

The town hall is full of sneaks--

no one is safe with this dream.

I knife the horizon to watch it bleed.

I look into the classless mirror

and see the penultimate words of dread.

Heaven passed above me

and the Holy Spirit commands me to read.

Petals of Time

Imprisoned by a light

beyond the darkness, a chaos

of sweet distance.

Nothing else will forgive me.

Water to my gentle lips,

bread to my forgotten soul:

the Word will harbor me

from the cold night.

I am the voice of Love,

the mind of your stolen life--

looking toward the Cross:

a fading beam entrusted with existence.

Love, love, love: the children of the Covenant

will find you in this forest of Memory.

You will lose your senses, your faith.

Don't be discouraged by these petals of time.

BIO

Dustin D. Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press, a Houston-based publishing company. He is editor of the print magazine Harbinger Asylum. He has been published in the Avocet, Blind Vigil Revue, di-verse-city 2013, Writers on the Rio Grande and The Beatest State in the Union (to be published by University of Texas Press), The first Muse for Women anthology, among many others. He was a special guest poet at Austin International Poetry Festival in 2013, and is the author of The Daunting Ephemeral. The Daunting Ephemeral is his first full length poetry collection, and it seeks to explore religion's truths in a godless existence.