Water Bellowing & Red Lines, Poetry (Michael Paul Ladanyi)

~Two poems for my brother,
Billy, (Joseph William Ladanyi lll)
whom we lost in 1997. Miss him like hell.~


Water Bellowing

Gutter-leaf rain is clack-smacking
a basement sidewalk somewhere.

In a hornbook corner,
spiders are holding rust-lid
jarred tomatoes hostage
on penumbra skinned petrified shelves,
as child-hid, glyph-deaf church tinsel.

William would take the gun out
of his mouth long enough
to hear these things,

but swollen vanilla sun has rested
in the gordian brain,
a moon-fisted,
bushy water bellowing.

Windows fingernail blue,
color of snow at 1am,
rain still tap-scratching;
I’d hold your hand, William, if pillows
were not your ocean washed birds.

(Copyright (C) Michael Paul Ladanyi)


Red Lines

There are swirling wraiths
in William’s closet, they trip
over skulls, beautiful war, cancer;
he understands their silver-crush rules---

that things must die and dream,
a mirror hanging like dead horses,
purple-doll crow painting.

The crooked hall is tangled and blind,
William does not need eyes,
thigh-taut faces,
white/melt/fish/suns.

He opens his feather-want city,
dogs gnawing baby teeth,
star-thumping, plastic thighs---
he is pelvis-cotton, pain that taste
like yellow sandpaper.

The street corner is boxed apples,
red lines that throw themselves
at blue jeans, fever-stones spinning
because mountains are hollow,
are all white clay,
river-swirled closets.

((Copyright (C) Michael Paul Ladanyi)