Now Playing: Mark O'Connor, "The Fiddle Concerto". Cadenza to the third movement.

In honor of our class poetry reading tonight, here are a couple of the pieces I've written for class this term.

~

Dark

“Though I walk through the valley of deep darkness”
Honeycombed brain twisting heart roped throat
labyrinth aorta ventricles feeding minotaur
in dark places of world, fill habitations with violence
valleys of deep darkness, armpits, eyelids, neck
soft folds, tendons, bones, freckled skin

“characterized by absolute or relative absence of light”

Standing under medulla medusa wrapped stingers
tentacles along spinal cord, this inside minds
writhe gloom consuming by enzymes

“A dark house was formerly considered a proper place of confinement for a madman”, obs.

Shining on floor, yellow rectangles, three-by-six,
eyes invert images automatically match medusa
walking through the valley of deep darkness
“I will fear no good, for you are not with me”
Crawl away from coffins shining on carpet,
away from holes onto empty iridescence,
skull, entrails, epidermis quivering
into

~

Sun

Photoheterotrophs sip liquid vitality—
his ascendance enriches their pedalfer,
slow multifoliate unfolding face by face
downrushed viscosity spreading veins
eternal biosynthesis of wholeness.
They reach arms forward, upflung heliochryse
in jacinth foliage of foaming flesh
fingers’ mesmerism stretch toward the source:
no heliodon needed to track his path
metamorphosed chrysalises sprout
his swath’s cyclosis, infinity’s heliotropes.

~

The first one is an inversion of Psalm 23, to some degree. Intended as an exploration of the darkness of the human being, physically and spiritually, and what we do to God's promises.

The second one is a depiction of the final resurrection through the frame of biological language.