Saturday, May 29, 2010

Tumble between the atoms

Photobucket

Relativity Poem

If you want reality,
then read the directions
on the back of your anti-
depressant bottle.

If you want to tumble
between the atoms of
what you are afraid of,
then read this.

Joseph Gallo
May 29, 2010


Photobucket
Contemplation In C-Minor & Kim Forges A New Life In Santa Fé
by Joseph Gallo.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Restless land, unsettled sky

Photobucket

Featherhawking

Once again, I am no different than you.
We make time to walk the after rain,
look where the looking takes us. Down
the stealthy draw among the empty patches
between rising dandelion and where rocks
snailed off to since the last storm gave us
what was not its to keep. Small stories
chalked in owl scat, coyote tracks, the
living parameters that mark fluid lines
between restless land and unsettled sky.

Careful then not to mar the mud traverse
of quail, the light verse of their transitory
scripture leading into yet another density
to remain as indecipherable as sacred thicket.
We know these stories, by heart almost,
as if we were born to read them. The names
never change, merely the readers. We almost
miss them: two twists of fine underdown
strewn and stiffening in the striped wind.
And there beyond those, two grand airships.

Photobucket

So we collect them, gather them into our
keeping for the swift stay they surrender
to be ours. We will, in equal time, give
them all back. Mockingbirds round and
rouse our brief connoiter, wring water from
their brooking song, call out to anything
that might listen. Like you, I turn alone
for the house with these tokens in my hand,
cross spring grass as buckskins snap the wet
weedtops to stain in lingered storm there.

Joseph Gallo
May 18, 2010


Photobucket

Friday, May 07, 2010

Bells more prudent than ladders

Photobucket

Winter Sun


It may have been caught up in some forgotten
branches, left untended as so many parts of my
body, nothing touching to touch it out from where
it hung like a stubborn leaf or a treed kitten too
far climbed for its own good. Firemen may be
summoned, but it will not help. Bells may prove
more prudent than ladders for what is far kept
will only be rung down by the pull of a monkless
moon. This happens every year whether winter
arrives or not, snowless, deadstilled under drifts
that make bleak ziggurats in the night.

Photobucket

These are the hours that seek sun in no allied
corner of the world. We need stories read by
willing lovers on days like these. I will read a
cold tale to the sun that might coax her down,
siren her to crash among the rocks of my bones
where keels of lost cauldrons kick against the
swells of this unseasoned hunger. For all the
good it might do, I will send vapor to hide her
deeper in the dead trees until she says enough.

Joseph Gallo
January 9, 2009


Photobucket