The Creative Obrst

Poetry, Criticism and Commentary by Leo Obrst

Browse Poems

Cynthia Says Something Yellow Now in the Middle

by

Hey, liquid, lacquered one,

There is nothing left to be.
There is no other eye to catch
And hold. The light flickers out.

There is nothing left to seem.
The dark in your eye
Is blackness in God’s eye,
Obliterating light.

I’d say knowing what
Is not what. That what is obscured
By the eye, even now blind.

Which which was this?

Which what? That what.

Cube the angles of your face,
If I could see the separating,
There would be no what.

Cynthia says something
Yellow now in the middle.

There is nothing left to see.

There are no wheat or corn
Tassels you can fly with now.

O blind, languorous one,
We near now, here know,
Only the purest white time.

 

Stradivarius in Purgatory

by

From “Stradivarius”, George Eliot (1908):

” ‘Twere purgatory here to make them ill;

And for my fame – when any master holds

‘Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,

He will be glad that Stradivari lived,

The masters only know whose work is good:

They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill

I give them instruments to play upon,

God choosing me to help Him.”

 

Stradivarius hadn’t meant to be aware of us

Listeners hidden in the violin’s future. Instead

He knew the sound he wanted to come out,

Soul of the human voice, the deepest tone

Able to fly up to the ecstatic cry of angels

And fall far lower to the dull moan of devils,

Encompassing in passing we in purgatory,

Caught just lower than the Earth, who listen

To the furniture being moved above us, chairs

Pushed back in anger, fists thudding into bodies,

Shrieks of feet on floors, tremblings and stampings

Of the tumultuous world we’ve left for another.

 

Some say the wood density mattered most,

Maple from northern Croatia, found along

Borax bogs, then stored overlong in humid Venice,

Decomposing like us, waiting for a second forming;

Or the length and width of the various pieces fit

Together meticulously and overlaid with fruit gum

Mixed with quartz from the mountains, finish

To keep the worms long away from our wounds;

Or it could be workmanship prodded by the devil.

 

So now we strive to be Stradivarius, in the wail

Issuing from our luthier tongue, its sense,

Often brittle, because not naturally seasoned,

But strident, frenetic, as we cry up the groans

We feel rise from the damned ones below

Stumbling through the dark, their murmuring,

To those shuffling their feet above us, not hearing.

 

 

We Inch Forward: Elegy for a Friend

by

We inch forward like slugs or snails,
Slouching toward bug Bethlehem,
Knowing no one finally arrives.
We reach the end, our imagined death
Battering wings against the light,
As if we had suddenly taken flight
And seen the darkness, whole,
Swollen before us, solid night, and
Chose our own lifting into the fire.

We leave all of you behind today, friends,
Family, and others, even enemies who
Would push us into the charnel house
In imagined glee, shoveling our bones over
To correct a dissonance in conversation
We had once, a thousand years ago, when young.

When I die, you die too. The compact was
Written in indissoluble blood, wrist against wrist,
Spit driven into wound, issue of tissue,
Heart spurt so soon dissolving into common talk
That one could have missed the consequence,
The fact of bleeding, the actual dying.

Today, now, is that time. You go off into nothing
With an army swarming around, behind you, countless
Insects who still inch forward, moths and butterflies,
Flying, footed, armed, with voices full of song
Singing of that last inch taken up into the air,
Beating the heartlessness out, flying into light.

 

For Mike Dean, November 19, 2014

Snow Came Late Last Night

by

 Poem 573 from PyroWords, 1996

Photo of WV snow by Leo Obrst
WV Snow (L Obrst photo)

Snow came late last night after winds all day: ice now is no
stranger, arranges neighbor, shadows, cypress in an
accolent coldness; partake, caress, infer from all to 1
I am the only water course through tomorrow.
Who would want to change time from now to summer
when the willow is woven, the light dark underneath, heat
hotter than your hand there, hot cider not cinnamon stirred,
only an incessant green pressing down, up at us, no white
to cool forehead or brown to knead shoulders, no silvery glint
of teeth open-mouthed off a low yellow sun? Which six
o’clock would you rather swim in, hands cupped high, legs
kicking steadily against the constant current? What sound
curls in your ear now, mimicking the storming ocean?
This is the muffling season, hard breaths gone suddenly silent,
wreaths curved in their splendid green atop the doorposts
silently whirling behind thick oak boards. Shh. It’s Christmas.

The Cat at the Bottom of the Garden

by

The cat at the bottom of the garden is a little cat.
She lies in the middle of the maple’s roots,
peering through the loamy, tendrilled dirt
to wonder at the worms wriggling up
towards the radishes. They seem to think
that it may be raining up top, they’ve heard
a drop or two bounce up and down a bit,
a pitter-pat upon the top, and so hypothesize.

 

The cat recalls a different tale: she remembers
rain pinging like stones on the window,
rocks you had to stare down with your widest eyes
or flinch and squint, or blink. The dog on the floor
below might laugh, if he was awake, or chase her
harder around the corners right before dinner,
pushing her farther for the fear she had felt.

 

Once one knew raindrops were not rocks, or birds,
one could settle easily onto the windowsill,
in one’s own bed of flattening belly fat and fur,
and look out into the yard, at horrendous weather.

 

Storms with roar and streaking light would make
the dog bark gibberish, melt his bladder into pee,
as he skittered across linoleum for an underneath,
any underneath, a solid mahogany well-protected
deep under beneath, a four-postered bed preferably,
somewhere he might spend a week or two in peace.

 

Instead, a knowing cat might sleep on demurely,
dreaming of all the old and simply vanquished
future weathers, sure in the warmth of knowledge
like a sunny spot emblazoned on the living room carpet
that nothing under heaven could be too much of a surprise,
even curled in the rose and radish roots,
given such lit emerald eyes.

Misty - Ann / Mark / Emily cat d. 2023
Misty d. 2023