dreams caught around a fire by leum

dreams caught around a fire

poems by leum

for my family

dragging, fragile in the cover of my foreshadowing a blue dragonfly

afternoon. tender everyday tapestry. i once was a judge on a hallmark tv show hosted by 621 hostesses and every night was juggernaut jeopardy with one of the categories bloodshot as a diaspora masterpiece on a ham blanket but enough about me, where were you that night I wrote on a plate with a knife, my eyes in a forage of passion flowers It’s fine, the afterthought of spilling the soup something only a spaniard would approve but i’ve come to my senses, or at least I’m led to believe so by the songs I hum in my - you’re not getting it, this is all a drink in drum tumbleweed top of the morning skin and you just learned how to sing it.

A shambled shack at the edge of the Mapocho river local modalities bitcoin bitches drink by the gallon but nevermind the drought sitting up on these spruced-up violin necklaces made of diamond gold charades I never had the time to say, dear Lord

A modern post-contemporary Frankenstein With a heart for an eye The hour after it’s golden Dreams the fountain by yonder tree like Running severe the river looms like loss In flashing veins of God on high As dust rises from the well All in the cherry sun rose tide

Tonight is morning coffee before the drive to the sinks like the valley summer heat on the hills to the cross atop the Andes.

Now let’s talk about the weather and how you’re more inclined to read sonnets in the rain with half of the day spent chewing candy wrappers spitting about the crumbs, the reeds of gluttons ricochet and ricochet underneath the burnt stairs and you think you’re right, gold chainsaw gargoyles where the sun split in half and you scream the lord but you live in a hoard full of satin drapery and you wonder why the sky opens up and we never jump in to drink the stars clean of light

Why diminished? Impervious lichen rainbow dripping huts of metal tin foil sheets in baby blood gun money, hot cakes biting me alive explosives, nothing to do but wait around and die like the day was chosen by someone i have never met.

After tomorrow, then, when the sun starts her sermon, A woman webbing a tangent happenstance And a man burning the very web made.

trinity trilogy trigonometry pointless points of reference let alone counting time freckled winding wanes of abolitionist consternation as if it was all charcuterie cloud-clearing cellar doors around June’s autumn opening lines in the globe’s eve reckoning

everything’s reverting evening sky blue teardrops & heartbeats the sun with her purse on a fountain lake and Chester laughs moon orange Now you can breathe

Walking river breath, strong of sleep, I consider solitude a shadow in the heaviness of wherever I wake, the road letting go of its leaves the feast of years toasting good luck.

Before God, when Gabriel was silent to the frightful torment when red clouds were the roof splitting at the horns, alone, bound by anchor, turrets of eyes, the absolute ocean waltz, heaven in hell, the sound of a sunset bird gathering leaves, the pink twilight hunchback superfreak like a serpent, wrong from beginning to end infinitely dark, I dreamt the original rose and now God leaves branches outside the window.

Without you, I’m sunless, without the moon, I’m doomed. O sirens, O reapers… How many names do you think it would take for towers to rise in the dark? O Beast! I wash the world wrong? The sun microwave here my angels gather. Silent stars inside this jar drawing water, dust the colors of oblivion’s prayer. And I’m hungry living in the reverent womb, and the dead end the day. Cocktail parties, second thoughts, tethered scalding whipped again and again. I wish, in other words, the weight of the palm trees, that nakedness of petals riding the marrow of the evening bees. The sobbing question of mercy, engine burning twig and bird elsewhere, tears your own children think beautiful. As I once tumbled without promise.

It is night now. The sun is at its lowest. Even in the devils I love Trying to - no, not trying, Saving God At a bar with Death on guard, at the entrance Kissing my lips as if I was alive, as if There’s a candle still lit somewhere Sounds of the pedestal dropping on my knees. The hazel clouds under the moon suggests otherwise.

even the spoils of the land of the free cannot help the waves sometimes, sometimes a fire called me a fool is lastly footsteps the moon took I forget not my first God is not joking I slapped my heart and laughed so drunk a biblical sentence nobody spoke because eternal twilight salt of the orchid bloom bleeds a love song I’ll write soon

we all spin around and orbit hollywood stars while we cut away at the diamonds in the village down below the youth transfixed by the tick tock of doom the hellish nightmare of tomorrow covered up by a big bright painting of gold and lead the ending already written by our bloodletting hands what serendipity what singularity all these dreams caught around a fire and no one to put the damn thing out of its misery

i am out of breath holding my dead body like a skull and so now the trees hang from the sky

on the cusp of infinity blooms & nightfall fireworks where the water swims in the air in the golden meadows under the neon moonlight sits a star that fell

Down the left, to the right, ya can’t miss it Al, call me for Pete’s sake In all my years in the warehouse playing pool Trust in Sofia Something in her mercury, can’t talk long They have eyes all over my eyes He’s watching, so it’s fine Look, you need to get to the chopper Find something miserable for the zombies Ride the dragons if you must The lake of fire grows… O yea, grab those double A’s For the flashlights, the power keeps Running its tail off O my call all over

O my call all over the way dust moves in the air falling off the trees like clouds in despair the night with her eyes the day and her moon the river holds her dead for the beasts in the woods O my call all over yonder wing and wind firestone metal in the sea, a virgin over the red petals in a day night past the rocky bough the world was made in a day O my call all over

You see the temperance. A religious bookstore selling taxidermy heads of the holy dead. And ain’t that a devil, screaming in the middle of the road, pointing at the gas leak forming over this lost city, screaming, “Finally! A sin.” I heard there was an obsession of colors draping the lakes & rivers of God’s young. Why else do you think I’m still alive? The world is a whirlwind motion capture of fine aphrodisiacs in planted caricature of its limited infinites and postures, diamond wine Picasso’s in yoga origami. Loose screws and cogs, all children of God. I’m beside the tide of welfare warfare but that’s besides the point. You stretch channels and canals I could never swing. The edge is a milky way of dreams. By the time you hold my hand, I will already be halfway across the galaxy.

jives in zenith the leaf keeps falling and falling and falling it’s the river in the rain

a/part

poems by leum

part one

Hot shimmering glades in the Florida gold. I need to be clear. I am not dreaming. Mushroom clouds surround me. I am a tree and my leaves singe. God once said something about candles but no one ever listens and I forgot to write it down. I need to be clear. I am not drowning. I am weathered, tarnished as so, a memory of a memory walking the amber fig trail to the most dead of ends but all my friends surround me, I cannot be fallen. Here is Rimbaud now bathed in blue seashells without drink, hand-in-hand with Pearson, who was just in hell and told me all about it. Whitman mutters his songs while Ginsberg is howling, “All this sex, not enough bullets! Moloch is still not pleased!” He is unaware I ate the bull’s head.

part half of one

Here they come to paint lead over the sun. cloud-full melancholy lightning flowers the heart like a black sky the broken moon screaming and I dream we walk on wine your whisper between my skin And with the soil gutted and felled, Death picks out the remaining flowers. I was short-wisped grafted on the scram of what-ifs pulling my thousands of eyes out on the noir of another holocaust don’t give me another damn metaphor it’s not worth the drum of bullets In short, I am waiting for the trees to grow back the silence of words they so lack. Who will mail my letters once the mailman is dead? jellyfish tattoos mercy pies another sunset thank you snake skull neighbor a poet’s carnivore goodbye if you let me hit that last note I’ll press the button sky-high

part none

fissures figure eights a dozen apples warner brothers coney ashes a dozen appeals what proclivities rage against the forthcoming sun