Song of the Broad-Axe Publications

From Spring Onwards --- a poem by Tom Porter

Through temperature level with the skin,

Depictions for which God ascribes, the pool,

The great lake pimples a ringlet nocturne,

This night’s only light blue on black water.

 

The color of motion on motion sifts,

Instills a whisper to feather and flee,

Bade my misinterpretation ‘fare-well';

And bright rings a shape fasting keeps in brief.

 

Focused attention, you perfect, privy things,

Do you account for the whole crescendo?

Are you bright tones I sing because you sit,

A key to all heaven’s hierarchy?

 

To exist on its swinging frequency

Is to exit time. Then, and properly,

Man first assumed these recast strands of moon

Were once living too, surely were until —

 

Morning feels twice a dream as though nature

On nature was corrupt, so we sojourn,

Once more, in marvelous day’s light

That colors where one time there sat contrast.

 

A youth holds girdled at her rib,

The breast of spring that trees bereft await.

And opening to any jacketed

Masculinely, a gesture sings her freely.

 

The incision of reason but bobs on

That most thunderous sway plunging a stage.

And, born again, a scream departs the scene.

For subconscious dopes; love eternal gains.

 

You and I sit, reposedly, heathens

In the reflecting grounds, interlocking here.

A boundless monument absorbs to stone,

While the sky hides away such idiot things.

 

Not foul, in dilation it becomes clear

An untraceable ocher the veins smear.

That these violet tracks are so profound mending

Suits us who once ranged with yond western sky.

 

In gold and purple, not regency would

Feel satisfied, yet these contrasts suit us

Kingly poets who but by wings of love

Can pierce deeper than on reason’s waver.

 

We select of ourselves a lesson,

Of the waves, that but for perception choose

The sublime moments of this existence,

To compose man freely and sing of love.

One Wandering Eye --- by Jesse Smith

Excerpt from Amber, a forthcoming novel by Russell Block

Excerpt from Amber, a forthcoming novel by Russell Block

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