Peter Horoszko

She Looked Like an Alien Under the Surface

Never met a blinder poet
Sung down on the foreign lane
Or praying on the frozen landscape
Hallowed by the evening saints
Sanctified in the sun’s holy kiss
Falling asleep in the sick-girl’s innocence

Mother’s filling up her hungry soul
Corrosive tongue on the tired skull
(We lose our sight and walk blind together
Told her, “darling, be but a pointing finger”)

Kiss her head before you lay her in the river
And when she quivers, smile blind with truth
She'll wave at you when she’s underwater
And smile while you're dying in her dreams

But with tired eyes and aging teeth
Regard the trees
And their Northern lean
Ask the dirt for the impossible word
And send her disease down the stream

Infected with the wild dancers’
Soft ballet on the melting ice
The current bellows razor kisses
Pouring out like a guilty conscience

The branches feel her dark design
And they quiver and twist and bend
Forsaken, she forgets her lines
And pleads with empty lips to the leaden sky:

Heaven be told I am not guilty of it,
You never know what a mind will covet!

I said: In her stillness I feel the winter
 

© 2008 Peter Horoszko

When Animals Die Quietly in the Forest

In torrid morning, flourishing forceful 
And feigning natives blinking idle 
Slowly waiting to sit and wonder 
At the fading parade playing thunder 

Autumn rushing, fast weather forming 
High water mourning the sick ones floating 
Hide my face in the dark of clinging questions 
And the infection comes knocking if only I let it

But the words are spilling, weak lungs healing 
the two of us sleeping, twisting and fearing 
Helplessly tangled up tight in each other 
shivering, sweating out the sickness together 

The heat of the fever is a forgotten daughter 
Her tantrums screech through the boiling water 
she murders and melts all the brilliant colors 
while the flames flick dance and silently smolder 

The worms writhe, birds crying in malady 
The forest in unison singing the tragedy 
Devoting their last living breathes to the masterpiece 
While in the dead leaves whimpering, we lay hungry 

And with wild fur in form for summer
The animals feel no reason to run
The sick give their bodies with smiling surrender 
To the others who are trying to feed each other 

Chills dart through the starlit quiver
Not from the fear swarming in my skull 
Or the fever frozen in the seething cold 
But from faithful brightness craving lightning 
When electric people cease their fighting 
On starving streets and cracking concrete 
Under glaring heat that is always watching 
The pacing eye in every person 

I catch my breath in the wilting wonder
Pretty, swaying like a weary mother
And I won't forget the evening under
Patient ringing, starlight terror
Silver in my sleeping face


© 2008 Peter Horoszko

I Said Burn Softly Again

Sleeping angel-calm and burning blue 
Wretched hand-made moonlight frozen
And the ever-ready pragmatist
Cant 
    Stop
        Wondering 


© 2008 Peter Horoszko

Thieves

People are eternal 
But arrogant
Thieves! 
So patient. 
I'm feeling 
So hungry and sick
But I haven't forgotten 


© 2008 Peter Horoszko

The Tired Hands that Fell Asleep

Light shines on the dancing puppet 
The crowd hushes, and the music swells
The show is in its final moment 
And the audience is laughing at themselves

The strings tangle as tired fingers 
Fight what their tendons won't allow 
The puppet falters and lurches forward
As he clicks his heels and bows 

The actors lie in a tangled heap
As the lights dim on the empty seats 
Frantic a stage boy reaches out
And shakes the hands as he shouts: 

Why are the actors silent? 
And not dancing for us all? 
The hands responded that they didn't notice
They fell asleep at curtain call


© 2008 Peter Horoszko