Inside Out (Michael Paul Ladanyi)

Whatever was thought or said,
these persistent, inexorable deaths
make faith as such absent,
our humanness a question,
a disgust for what we are.

Robert Creeley

november has opened as exploding
war silence, 26 reasons to remember
dead brothers have eyes like orange
music trapped in smile-thimble-laughing.
we never listen to the inside out.

shannon is reading creeley again/

is trying to erase a gnawing spider
from his blue-palmed hand/

is singing green violin-paper songs
that scratch cardboard sidewalks/

he doesn't remember writing
why? across his forehead.

i called william yesterday,
we talked about canned peaches,
pale/cross/covered/hands/peeling/clothing
from thigh-frozen children,

how afraid we are of cold-tongue
things that live in our ears.
we both agreed it is better
to color the sleep of our sound.

(First published in Magazine Shiver, (UK) December 2004.
Published in March of 2005 as part of a chapbook
written by myself and Patricia Gomes,
titled: Simple Truths and Coughing Things,
and published by Little Poem Press.
Copyright (C) 2005 Michael Paul Ladanyi.)