Poetry Parodies Gaming Home

Poetry Archives

Newer Poetry - Some newer work that I've turned out.
Zodiac Vignettes - Collaborative astrological poetic/graphic project by me and my friend, Angela Cooke.
Parodies - Parodies by Devon Apple and Dominick LaLicata, in affiliation with Conqueror Productions.


Amoeba Soul

On the crystal plane,
Indifferent eyes and ears
In one dimension.

I'm the recollected
Dead
But for your re-collection.

Rapt in and in
Throughout my
Cool translucent skin
My shell, light and dark
Open
For this or that one gaze,
Waiting
For the flicker to return.

But will it come?
Down the lens--
I'm molecules with spaces,
Blue and green dots
No longer animate,
Nor flesh, nor flowing ?
Sparks without the phosphor trails.

May, 1998

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Anything But Love

The sunset passing, golden,
Shot with lavender and doves,
Cascades across the wrinkled
Velvet veil of night;
It draws so close,
But I'm not looking at it now,
No, I'm not thinking how much better
It would be if ? no, I just
Don't care to think about it now.

The rolling hillsides, ever
Green for summer days,
Recline beneath the stanza
I just wrote above;
It looks so cool,
But I'm not laying down beneath
That knotted oak, no flowers waiting
For that one, her ? no, I just
Refuse to think about it now.

The water sprinkles down that
Crenelled granite hill, with thyme
And chapparal atop each
Moss-hued boulder-shaft;
It sounds so soft,
But I'm not there, not sitting there,
No summer dreams, no sharing soul to
Sing with me, you're ? no, I swear
I will not think about you now?

1998

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Jorge Luis Borges, a wonderful Argentinian writer; much of his work is suffused with "magic realism," a liminal space where reality, memory, perception and imagination converge. Absolutely beautiful, even in translation. This poem was inspired by his work.

Borges' Minotaur

Polarized, the red trails fading,
Step by step upon the firm
Unyielding stone--nor in, nor out
Beyond the keen of those
Passed

Out, out--
Like that which I
Neither forgot nor saw
But always feared:
Those unknown skies
Beyond my velvet skin and
Jacinth eyes.

In--my brother,
In the pool's refracted glass
So terrible, but pure.

January 1999

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Broken Dawn

There was a time when words were more than air,
When hands obeyed the promptings of the soul,
When eyes breathed in the scent of silent joys,
When woven destinies would never fade.
Then came the day 'forever' was unmade,
The angels died, the stars were spinning toys,
Though dawn broke, it was but a glowing coal
When morning mutely wept, for you weren't there

3-15-00

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"Dark City" starred Rufus Sewell (who played Fortinbras in Branagh's film of "Hamlet") and Jennifer Connoly (the heroine from "Labyrinth").

Sinister, pale beings in black hold humanity in an artificial, ever-shifting simulation of reality, tampering with their minds, until a messianic figure comes along and uses their own reality-altering powers against them, freeing his people from slavery...

Sounds a lot like "The Matrix," doesn't it?

Dark City

The death-pale shadows, wraith-black widows, glide,
They stand apart as rooftops shift and slide;
The puppet-fingered ghouls with leech-white eyes
Whose breath bleeds mockeries and silent lies
Communion blood collects in skin-wrapped bowls;
Their poison sown, their scalpels stroke our souls,
They're cooking up our minds to fill their vials,
As memories collect in tidy piles;

They study us, unraveling our seams,
And rasp the marrow from our mortal dreams.

12/21/99

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Earth Lover

Reclined upon a mossy rock, nowhere,
A breath bestows a face to misted air--
Her dress, the sun, the wind,
Sunset glimpsed through cords of snowy linen,
Clouds drift across her skin,
The green hills roll beneath dusky heavens--
Falling towards the sky,
My hands upon the earth,
A warm embrace, pulses stir, and then rise,
The tides within bless shores of salt and sighs--
Lightning passes casually but nothing dies

April 12, 2000

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Fog City

On a hill above Fort Mason
I sat down to watch the sunset
Reading lovelorn lines of verse
I'd bought for $14.95

May 29, 2000

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"Macbeth doth murder Sleep"

Macbeth

Not indeterminate, nor penitent,
Aspected murder, elemental assassination,
The death of may and yesterday,
The sleep that never dies has so in him --
Oblivion of night and nigh,
His sleepless eyes,
Wraith-wrapped arms and brow,
Tomorrow's bloodless corpse,
A dying death, no tragic fall --
A mirrored memory, quicksilver in the rain,
A bank and shoal of tangled nots?
The skies grind kings to salt.

April 25, 1999

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Momentary Love

Not good enough to ask how fair it is,
No remedy to "whether/whether not."

The heartache and the thousand shocks
Unfold their petals, water-dewed,
But you don't touch them, won't decide
On moments or eternity,
Your psyche spent,
Tied up in spiritual legislation,
Too tired to sleep,
To dream, to be, to act reflexively--
Each path is counter-checked by warm redundancy;
Secure, more fair than foul, it's penitent intent.

Incarnate, yes,
Alone, no way,
No yesterday--
How can one ever know?
The past like water
Slips unseen between
Your sleeping eyelids.

Encapsulated memories in crystal globes:
We take them out to gaze upon--life saunters past,
Perhaps like all those opportunities you missed
To kiss your one and only momentary love.

April 13, 2000

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I may be self-obsessed, but at least I admit it.

Or is this a poem about memory?
Whose memory? Oh, mine.

It all comes back to me.

Narcissism

Around they stand:
Beckoning pools of alternating echoes,
Back and forth--I touch them.
No release, no conflict, only glass
And myself opposed to myself.
In memory, the quakes of lonely circumstances,
Nipping at my reveries--peace comes.
I take them out and stare,
To find a moment elementary and sweet.

January 1999

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When the world tugs at you, but the sun shines and the scent of flowers drifts through your office window...

No Marionette

The universe is tearing
Pulls at me with stainless steel
And silver silhouettes
Of gears and elbow joints,
From all directions,
Flexing arms which fade from sight
But still I dance

March 8, 1999

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The line between writing, and audience, between speaking and communicating.

Pollen

Throwing
The wind accepts it     
               C     h     a     f     f     

               It flies past
Into eyes, nostrils
And chapped lips not unlike my own.
Drawing it inward--
My cast-off imagery

January 1999


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A fictitious fairy tale.

Serena Pram

Serena Pram within her barrow waits
A giant loom between her slender knees
She weaves as quiet as an autumn breeze,
Imagining herself one of the Fates.

She does not spin the golden thread of doom,
But silver sheets for dreaming little girls,
So velvet soft, embroidered full with pearls,
Such are the wondrous things borne from her loom.

This maiden weaves no ordinary yarn,
But from the silver moon plucks silver light
And as she spins, it dwindles every night,
Until that shining ball of twine is gone.

And as our daughters dream the counting sheep,
Serena Pram their fleecy wool does shear,
To feed into her magic loom so dear,
To spin the moon back whole while we all sleep!

3/16/00

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Sir Valence

Whilst Arthur was away at jousts
He'd trust one knight to keep an eye
Upon his hearth, his home and spouse
T'alleviate his jealousy.
Sir Valence was that watchful knight,
Whose keen, discerning eye was known
Throughout the realm the sharpest sight,
As sentinel he stood as stone.

When Launcelot & Gwenhovyr
Did sport whilst Arthur was away,
Their one true King would never hear
How those two lovers long would play.
One night at supper, Launcelot
The watchful Valence took aside,
And asked "How come you never tell?"
"I like to watch," the knight replied.

June 17, 2000

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All poetry © Devon Apple 2015

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