David L. Paxton- Three Poems

Foreign Terrain, Third Month

Buried behind rims of steamed glass lenses,

Breathing deep the smoke’s coffee aroma,

He balances with a book, a quota

Of figures from his bank account, creases

Accentuating his darkening hands

Scarring with frustration, the cold daybreak

Stressing his bones and joints.  He chose the shock

Of sitting stark naked inside the rounds

Of daylight misting through the window screen

Though the temperature froze guava trees

Orcharding the yard, his fingers tense, knees

Trembling, eyes dry, hair erect, and scalp thin.

The young man chooses his suffering well

Especially after the move, his flight

From standard home to new home.  To his right

A balance book, to his left a gray cell.

Kapoho Mongoose

Out of a whistle, a bolt of brown fur

Shot scampering for banyan safety roots,

Belly tight pulled by pain from a hunger

Screaming with infant tones.  Kukui nuts

And flowers struggle with satiating

Centuries of inherent grooming.  Plates

Of asphalt cracked and pushed by thick reaching

Roots the mongoose jetted for, leaf terrain

Where a coral or corn snake coil resting

In wait for a meal of its own, the sun

Filtering through red-brown bark arms, maybe

The mongoose might be able to sustain

The devilish hunger in its belly

Only to discover a scavenger

Built the same, no extinct snake, no treaty.

Springtime 2009, Sunning On the Deck 

The mountain and the ocean are neglected.

Flesh foams over lava rock. Brush webs over dead tree trunks.

Everything between these two is lauded.

From onset holiday seasons, men and women,

Groped over by necessity complexes,

Dispute which are real and which are fake by sign

Of a paid day off from work or day of rest – 

Pending they can stand family or solitude.

The gods don’t seem to stress their mood

Over these days even if they don’t exist.

But if they do, we would mean little more

Than blip jokes under their feet.

                                                    Our lives whore

Out for tasks that break us down; and once finished,

They hold insignificant reward and missed

Economic independence.  The mountain

And ocean rely on good looks as they strain

Their resources.  They pawn off their fish and chunk gold,

Divvy their innate nutrients to provide

For symbiotic lice fattened with pride.

After conceit fades, we shiver reflexes,

Considering shivering repels internal cold.

 

 

 

David L. Paxton (website davidpaxton.com) has previously been published in Poetic Hours, The Flagler Review, Splizz, Purple Pig Lit and The Nocturnal Lyric, and received his Masters of Arts Administration from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2013. He currently resides in Middleburg, FL. working as an independent arts professional as a painter and poet, growing with various curating opportunities for exhibitions. His poetry deals primarily with situational location and reaction due to his travels across the United States from the East Coast to Hawaii.