Sunday, January 3, 2016

David Bankson- Three Poems


"Banished from Babylon"

They're there --
The seekers, the oath-breakers
Hiding in plain sight 
While splattered against the iron wall;
An indelible wall of pretense
In the matters of casual discourse. 

Such stories we tell to ourselves 
Smack of volition's deceit and downfall:
A king overthrown from his glittering throne 
By complexities as knotted as the Gordian twist, 
Sluicing through oily rainbows 
In the totality of extradition. 

Their absolution melts incessantly
Into the gray-green sea foam
Of an overzealous rising tide. 
A thousand thrumming thoughts 
Galvanize through a war of attrition, 
A war they were sure to lose sorely. 

Extracted from the blood of the diseased, 
The virus spreads against inoculation:
A splicing of kingdoms 
In the vast hands of the villainous;
The blade of the sleeper cell 
Cuts the cord on controlled chaos. 

Contact is forced 
In the primal voice of the excommunicated:
Muscles flex in a contest of power
As the thumbscrews tighten on feather...
Thus begins the tale of ages
And ends the era of unity.

"We're here,"
Our chromatic faces loom and sing, 
Belching our familiar rainbow tune
To the unwashed mass of denial. 
Sharps and flats enrobe attacks
In harmony's chant of heroism.




"White Water"

Ivory cogs snag and scrape 
like cuspids spinning on a waterwheel, 
unflagging and free.

Page leaves turn and sway,
Beginning the last chapter
Of your quill's liquid heart.

The glassy calm of the pond 
knows nothing of unnatural pain --
only ripples of leaves across its still surface;

A spider gliding, silent and hungry;
cracked fingernails raking, raking, 
drawing screams from corners of the sun

A secret folding, unfolding 
Of paper feathers bound to spines
Like origami cranes,

Smudging ink across window panes,
Revealing the chemical rainbow 
Of your multi-hued chest cavity.

The water hearing nothing of the rain, 
just the scraping echo of cogs
as they drag across the sullen night:

The bellwether of your written exodus 
From the corridors of divine mystery.




"Omniana of the Zeitgeist"

A tortoiseshell necklace 
wraps throats
in mottled chain link

disconnecting 
the mistake of happiness

a vacant voice in a vacuum.

Faces like lobsters 
press binary glass

monitors for a peak 
into subculture saved 
to The Cloud.

We renounce the patterned 
hangman's noose

replacing locks 
with biometric scanners

Orwellian nature geo-tagged
in 4k video 

quality, life of mice
in LCD, glass, and plastic cases

navigating spot halos
like a child's finger tracing.

Communication 
accepted, friended, networking 
digitally surveiled:

the webcam's blinking red
all-seeing eye of God, 

the irony of broadcast solitude
streaming fiber optically
on an open circuit...

Safe in a blanket 
of pervasive unease.



Bio: David is a full-time autodidact and part-time computer geek with a lifelong passion for poetry, philosophy, and science. He also nurtures an unhealthy attachment to eggnog and Halloween, any time of year. His works have been featured online at Thank you for Swallowing, Blue Dandelion, and Random Poet Tree. His favorite poets are John Ashbery and William Carlos Williams, though he's secretly quite fond of Sylvia Plath. More of his work can be found at https://www.fb.com/davidthewordsmith

1 comment: