Poetry By DERIC HENRY - Poetry - http://maxpages.com/nichola/Deric

"DESERTED"
I.
When you left
I broke out in welted blemishes
like cancerous sagebrush
erupted polyps on desert flesh
itchy sprouts up my arm red
as white hot-tipped legs of housespiders

-I got a dry shave
three blade
unassigned option
and firewater
in my ears-

My teeth have become
untethered and boisterous,
sneaking out of my room
late at night for rowdy
unruly rendezvous and
drunken chattering rants.
They come home unrepentant
and disheveled, masking
their malfeasance with
sagebrush sprouts surreptitiously
crammed into unfilled cavities.

My tongue runs across that cancer
every morning - my flesh becomes
the desert flesh - the poisonous
parasite adheres my saliva, a fitting host.
The sagebrush rolls round gums
lonely desert dirt road
Providence's unnatural wood tick.

And I spit it out black
watch it tumble away
and spray malignant seed
of black alley asphalt
where the blacktop takes it in
nurturing piss and broken glass
and the city's night filth
spilled beer on worn heel steeltoes
rubbed in good like scraping
dogshit off dress shoe soles
and one contrived image of your face
it takes for the sage to erupt.
My turncoat teeth collect
and smuggle the flowering bud
back in
in a few hours.

I tried to name
your toxic cycle at first for
monkey-fool scenarios
of harness, bridle and bit
- vague attempts to isolate
multiplying cell and distill
the essence of its chlorophyllic
caustic propogative properties -
but furtively labeling the
acidic encompassing sensation
yielded only the futility
of hollow words.

I spent one full week wide awake
playing possum with my
unfortunate dentine attachés,
crudely attempting to hoodwink them
into some ill-timed misspoken murmur
or performing for my benefit their
grinding, clicking logarithmic communiqués
as indecipherable as U-boat enigmas;
a subtle method surprisingly related to me
by a maldeveloped and nearly rotted
sympathetic canine, exiled by the others for
some long-forgotten periodontal transgression.
This whole time I listened intently, but
observing nothing amiss and feeling my strength ebbing,
I concluded the incident to be a fading,
isolated event embellished and empowered
by my own curiosity, and finally retired
for a considerable yet torturous period.
I awoke to find the cycle started anew,
and a gaping, painful recess
stuffed with sagebrush blooms
the only remnant of evidence to my
lone and disconcerted loyalist tooth.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"DESERTED"
II.
Two weeks after you left
the cycle progressed -
mutant and dishonorable transformations
ineffectively countered at every turn -
left hand fingers curled in chemical
and dermatological cellular reassembly
bloated sage-filled blisters
webbing the palm, weed roots replacing
tendons contort the physical structure
to a useless club.

I began preparations for
the appendage's removal, however
unprovoked images of thick green sap
congealing around a bloated red stump
each instance invariably violently inverted
my gastric processes with the utterly
inexplicable yet powerfully nauseous
recounting of a slightly rancid
Christmas fruitcake I once mistakenly
consumed as a young child.
In the cool omniscience of hindsight,
I am convinced the teeth
were responsible for this
conceptual atrocity:
they would quite purposefully recall
the debilitating, sickly-sweet odor
of the upheaved remains of that
cursed Yuletide confection wafting
up to my stained child face,
reconstitute the vile aroma through
their extensive root memory system
and release the decayed and rotted
stench directly into
my nasal cavity.

After only a few pathetic attempts
at stifling the revoltingly stained odor
through will and producing the hacksaw
I always keep safely hidden
under my bed, I realized amputation
of my afflicted hand would merely
serve as a pruning measure; although
the brush obviously desired my
physical status remain intact. Sullenly,
I resigned the idea of removing
the grotesque, throbbing mass from
my arm's end. Curiously, the moment
this plan of limbic separation was
annulled, to my horror I instantly
and completely experienced the
overstimulation of every sensory
input node by the entirety of
blooming sage - seemingly a
biological reward from my ever-
expanding and powerful "guests"
in its recognition of my
abandonment of the struggle
for the left half
of my upper torso.

My senses muted and
physical attributes swollen and
disfigured, most nights I lay
in repose - dreams of desert
flesh - my left hand - and
dead sage tumbling over
my dirt road thigh.
I wake sometimes immobile
in the filth of city night
and quietly laugh at the
retreating raucous discourse
of my now drab-green,
chlorophyll-stained teeth.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"DESERTED"
III.
Time flows quickly now
like frightened rodents
on the desert floor
scramble sudden for burrowed havens
ravenous predator stalk
some disguise their lairs
and nest with sagebrush -
wait for the sniffing cold nose
and dispassionate black eye
to pass and carefully
discriminately
lift their fragile frames
to survey their tiny tract
of desert flesh.
Sometimes
they feel the stiff desert wind
and the confident closeness
of the green sage.
Sometimes
a quick pinning paw
gnash of teeth and
white hot screams from
the back of the neck,
and a soft dim light
filtered green by sage
fills the empty nest below.

I see the desert logic now
as one painful process
all subjective sentience
I observe through drab-green eyes.
The half life of sage
my teeth long since come
to rest - my limbs flexible.
I am blessed with truly
astounding properties of
functional recuperation.
My mind no longer flickers
mammalian warm blood
biped subroutines.
I've reduced you to flashes
infrared light on a textured screen
projected through my coiled limbs
of rolling brush.
A short lived episode of unending grace,
I have ceded your lineated frames
of reference to the desert flesh
but for one brief impression
of warm blooded hands on my waist
and the tinged electrical response
of your slow breath on the
nape of my neck
a final sigh -
and you twist and tumble
in the wind
swirling around my desert teeth
and through gold dead sage eyes.

The sage bristles overhead
silence
a quick pinning paw
gnash of teeth and
white hot screams from
the back of my neck
and a soft dim light
filtered gold by sage
fills my empty eyes below.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"DESERTED"
IV.
I come and go now.
When the mood strikes.
Hands still function and
teeth no longer chatter.
I'm under
perfect trance
of the art of
sitting very
quietly.

Sage still blows.
Flesh is still uninfluencable
spectacles of desert.
Time quickly flows as before.
Nothing is changing.
No thing is perpetuated.

But when the trance envelopes
sometimes I see a glimpse
of the tumbling dead sage
you once named in another place.
And when the desert blows cold
and your brush rolls closer,
I can feel your slow
steady breath
against the back of my neck
restain the teeth scars
from gold to drab-green.

I close my eyes
as the desert's warm kiss fades
and through the sweet smell
of blooming sage
breath my distended
perpetual
sigh.

Visitors: 04140

Page Updated Thu Apr 29, 1999 6:39am EDT