Sunday 30 October 2011

Halloween Prayer


Halloween is coming
And the dead slough off
Depression with yellow leaves.

She turns from him.

His rictus grim smiling
Through days, alone nights.
Time, too, has a skeleton smile
And yellow leaves fall,
Skeleton trees grow bare.

The children laugh and scream and fight
As children do,
Embodying the monsters they don
To scour the neighbourhood.

Their nights together spent
Alone, each to each,
Not so much loss as separation,
Not so much ending as transformation.

Let this be a costume, too.
Let it come and go for a season
Until the cold trick is spent
And the treat remains,
Sweetness enough for another year.

Let there be another spring
                & love bloom again.




copyright (c) 2011 Daniel J. Bishop

Monday 24 October 2011

Parking Haiku


If joyous parking
Cannot be arranged Friday
Please ignore haiku


Where I work, I don't have regular parking.  Sometimes, though, one can request parking, and, when possible, those requests are honoured.  


After a long string of parking requests of the standard "Is it possible to get parking for tomorrow?" type, I ended up writing some more interesting requests.  


Haikus.  A sonnet.  A limerick.

You really can have fun and be creative at work.

(Well, I guess that depends upon how your workplace responds!)

copyright (c) 2011 Daniel J. Bishop

Monday 10 October 2011

Untitled

We begin
hours of joy
cut by sharp pangs
of loneliness.

We end
hours of loneliness
cut by sharp pangs
of joy.


copyright (c) 2011 Daniel J. Bishop

Monday 3 October 2011

Far Dance Thrilling


Through the cotillion of hours two strangers met and met
and
would your music have fractured like the glass of the
screen,
    and would you have
                         gasped
                              as I kissed you
              there
                                       and there?
Wondering what your hair smells like fresh from the
shower or the
    grains of your skin pressed backwards and up.
         Can you exonerate me for letting you go
and for dancing with you under clouds and rain and
    what does it matter if I let you?
                                      Go
Stars and explosions and yellow confessions crossing
      Crucified decorated in yellow late at night on amber
screens,
                                               moved me.
      We wrote on the electrified walls and Jung synchronicity
           and Jung exciting motion,
            Brownian reflex motions,
              charged strings pulling the universal
                   fabric pulled us too.
      Willing, thrilling, cursor for cursor
we never met and the dancing was sweat, sweaty motion
      that leads nowhere pacing around and around electric
walls
      forever and nevermore words.  Worlds.
Will you forgive me for being your friend?
      Will you permit me to say it’s all right, to desire
            another’s arms provide you where I had aspired for
mine?
Pleasure that motion of words to continue without the
sweet sweaty
dancing,
      and what matters the sweetness when we never even
                                                        met?




By Daniel J. Bishop

Copyright © 1994, 1997, 2008, and 2011 Daniel J. Bishop
All Rights Reserved

This poem first appeared in Pandora's Box (ed. Mellissa Last) in the Fall 1994 issue.  It was scheduled to appear in a "Best Of" issue of Pandora's Box, which, as far as I am aware, never came to pass.  It was reprinted in the Sangreal Limited Edition chapbook.

The poem is about the nature of Internet/computer bulletin board relationships.  Naturally, times have changed since it was written, and the computer can now supply far more than a monochrome amber experience!  And we can share more than mere words, instantaneously, across the aether.  We still have the cursor for chatrooms and instant messaging, though, and I think that the general gist of the poem remains true.  


What matters the sweetness when we never even met?