M. Andre Vancrown

Welcome to the site!

As always, my thanks go out to all of you, without whom these streams of words I find myself writing would be dull and patently lifeless.

Enjoy!

.

What nectar tempts you, bee
iris. penstemon, gilia, or phlox
to dip, fuzzy and electrostatic
sun-golden, shaman
sprinkler
of magic dust,
so often destroys you
as you are caught
by sticky green
assassin bugs,
ambushed
in your moment of rapture
by devious crab spiders
or snatched
right out of thin air
by hungry birds in flight.

01/21/2007 M. Andre Vancrown

posted by Vancrown at 6:34 PM

I.

time was when sunset’s
shattered voices
eclipsed these grasping
ghosts like morning
sugar mists

came, and burned it all
away to blue
crabs’ click-clacking, side-
wise mechanics
across bird-

lime’s shiftless white, when
all of it made
more sense, and sparkled
like particles’
swirling sea-

shells rendered silver,
strung up on strings
like miniature
moons spooned into
soups of star-

                     light.


II.

Now . . .

Eye close my I to the (muted) glitter

of sailboats streaking tinsel
                                            on starlit
                                                          black
                                                                  light
                                                                        seas.

Until lashes flex like the crooked
                                                    legs
                                                         of drowned
                                     spiders,

filaments
                attuned to ultraviolet,
streak
                their sooty vapor trails
                                                     on smarmy skies.

Become . . .

                       prism-ships cresting mercury tides.


III.

Yes, the Sun’s gone back
to the Aztecs.

To the Blue Man
with a crown of hummingbird feathers.

And I, old and stark as a stick
stripped of its juicy bark—

I was born not of this thirsty
world desert.

But I’d tear out my own heart, toss it
underhand up into the sky, if only . . .

They’d accept it as payment.


IV.

I remember mountains
and snow, the way it filled up all the world
with its gentle pristine silence,
and I can still feel rain’s huge droplets
splashing wet the palms of my outstretched hands
bruising each hot cheek, oh, so cold,
so cold the breath turns to fog
and the body shivers
as it huddles inward.

And I can recall
fishing for nicklebacked fishes
and wading through wide streams,
sluiced to the hip,
silver glittering in the sun,
the wriggling flash of the catch
that catches, now . . .

A needle-bone to choke my throat.


V.

Starfish
dazzle-dances
as
a
pinched
grapefruit
peel
stings
my
eye.

Plunging
surf
roars
like
a
lion,
forlorn
in
the
distance.

They pass like raindrops into oceans of memory.


VI.

It's a long time dying.

Eyes bleeding up to suns,
razor-clawed crows circling sky,
just dots now, silhouettes spread black
as death hovering
far up overhead
all caw-caws and coathook-clawed
soliloquies
caw-calling

Let them come.

That’s it
come down and get me,
I still got a trick or two, well—
if I had a sleeve—
I’m still the dominant fucking species
on this planet

Come get some, come get . . .


VII.

and she does.

we dance into thalassic undertows, erythrocytes
riding a slipstream of pumping beats,
and how sweet
seems
each promethean

                     moment

                     when we meet; summer snowflake
                                                  to arctic snake.


VIII.

You know . . .

time was when sunset’s
shattered voices
eclipsed these grasping
ghosts like morning
sugar mists

then Death came,
and burned it all

                          away.


08/26/2005 M. Andre Vancrown

posted by Vancrown at 7:06 AM