3 poems by
George Freek
> bio
PARENTHESIS
Stars like cold shells, curled
at the edge of an arctic sea,
and under my creased shoes
the grass is brown and wet.
I make progress towards nothing.
There is a cabin in the woods
by an ordinary lake,
where an old man with eyes
like eucalyptus leaves
fishes for ideas among memories.
You know what I mean.
You have seen low hills,
and observed the moon
when it seemed to be singing:
a tumultuous song, but brief,
as dawn melts into morning.
THREE KINDS OF MORNING
A somnolent parade of autos
crawls like a snake
shedding its skin.
And the dawn is green,
and has the taste of ashes.
Leaves flash like trombones
And fall like wet confetti.
Blackbirds steal the sun,
and clouds like white stairs
break, with a sudden moaning.
We embrace our terse enigmas,
imaginary lives, full of
baubles and a chaos of music.
Gravel cracks under our feet.
And we close our eyes, as the moon,
without a shadow, stops, then passes.
LANDSCAPE WITH CITRUS
There is no subterfuge
in these heavy stones.
They are black and morose.
And from my viewpoint,
two crows seem to cling
to the edge of a miserable moon.
There are ideas we cannot
avoid. They are like assassins
smiling in stark moonlight.
I suck a lemon and watch
those crows turn to stars:
the moon a pecadillo.
And my dreams are abrupt
and inelegant, snow having fallen
like a fantasia for a guitar
and a peacock: life as we
know it, not as
we'd like it to be.
