Obsession
Life under your eye
is bleary. Business
handshakes
have no business
touching me,
In your view. All touching
gestures are suspect.
I’m not to trade
a laugh, or love
anybody else.
Winding through a city
afternoon, experience wears
a weary glaze. I must
wonder if it’s being
watched. Now, after
All you’ve drained, here
is something real: it’s not
my image hanging
in the lining
of your mind; it is a void.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
Bump, Set, Spike
Someone volleyed the moon
above a distant net. Intuitively
knees bent, ready, as learned
in gymnasium days.
Rising hands aim at delay
of conscious rays, adding
few minutes to golden
hours. Pause, rewind. Replay
Slow motion approaching of toes
whisking sands to volcanic flash.
Athletic memory melts
horizons behind the eye.
Somebody serves the moon
illumination. I leave
fingertips of playful trees grazing
games that should have been.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
Amoral Ice
Avalanche! From the inverted
cup to a querying
face. The vertex
observes an unbroken
focus, ignoring abuse
from querulous cubes. Fingers
twist a cold telescope
probing Arctic altitudes—
streaming a floe
past enamel, now Andromeda
dropping—the esophageal
pull. The infusion of cool
moves the skeleton
to eject a wintry “Ah!”:
opening intergalactic
gush. Here, imbibing
among the stirring
of planets, the atmosphere is fresh.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
Seagull Attack
Suddenly, something went
for the head, and I
turned German
Expressionist, elongated
and aged in a vicious splatter
of American Abstract.
Through swoops, batter
and blur, I saw claws
scratch and extract
thick pigments, interrupting
watercolour assumptions
in my innocuous walk.
I think, observing
in furious whites
and occasional yellow
frenzies of angle and edge,
was a visionary eye
crafting something undone.
Now the physician is finishing
the image with pointillist
tracks, splashing tetanus
vaccine through avenues and cracks;
and as representation, when I am seen
I am more accurate than I have been.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
Spring Explosive
*after Dalí, and Eiseley
For a frost, offspring
of a sunrise is corrosive,
while turmoil of a kernel beautifies
to violence. A chrysalis
Liquefies cracks to knives,
striking psychedelic petals. Burning
dyes intertwine a pulsing
green that drives the season
To kinesis. Inside a pod,
an upthrust grasps what thrives,
spuming: fruit and flower
subsume an epoch. Storming
Chlorophyll balms the crust
of unclothed globe. Colossal
palms warm to holding
life, divining: into form.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
An Artisan
The persona is a bruise,
not a self. It builds
being via craftsmanship.
Structure covers lack
of formation—scaffolding
camouflages decoration.
The body ages, contains
something young—
in him performs
The play
of discipline and inspiration.
Calloused, grasping
Is now granting
shape: into fabrication.
Construction is cacophonous:
Beams pirouette
before steeling; a father
once latent, now testing.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
Nuclear Dive
Reactor, your rods
flicker and slither—hair
beguiling me, swimming
in spent fuel. Refusing
perimeters, I want an excitement
Dosimeters read. Your criticality
initiates frisson; I risk
beta burns, dodging
your doses
strewn throughout cooling
Cherenkov
hues—though I’m losing
acuity. Why am I
diving, reaching? Am I
an Ama, searching
For Japanese pearls? Am I
a Fukushima girl
caught in a seiche?
No, I’m whorled into your
geisha chicanery,
Pool of blue fabrics winding
to you. What is the core?
A murderous thrust, a phosphor
essence I’d forgotten I knew
in me, before you.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
Cataract At The Lip
Of the glass, vision sipped
from the gush of amygdala—open
your brim to the lush
of Monet. Pour from the frame:
Chardonnay in a quiver,
disperse and flow—livid
strobes of Van Gogh.
Then, harden and flay
Off clots to metallic
coruscations—figments of Klimt.
Now: stiffen to spirits
dispirited, and disparate—pause
In thoughtful paralysis: Hopper.
No stopper for an Imagist
cascading the palate: paint
an intoxicant; the body, a blotter.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
Vacation In The Inner State
There was a singe of summer
barbecue as something warmed
her, sipping. There was no curfew
on desire, in her wineglass,
or outdoors.
She scanned the span of backyard
grass, the unshaved blades:
her ocean, shattered
tiles: her shore.
Her body waves to bathing
suits never bought, only savoured
on a screen: now her mind.
No money meant a richness
grew, in spite, as did appetite
For one she writes. He likes
men. She craves
him, still. For in exchange, words
are close. Her husband’s
Touch is otiose, while her beloved
prose projects
a tenderness that sculpts
deserted sands
to ecstatic glass within her.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
Skyscraping
*Patti McGee
Surely the sky is for swimming.
Kissing the curve, the perimeter:
a pool built for my skimming.
Palms swivel in the breeze,
fluid: an inverted aquarium freeing
soles swirling, upturned.
Blonde was conceived to unfold
strands of sunbeam, concentric
streaming from my acrobatics.
The whirlwind is watery;
somatic craft pauses
within photography: skating releasing
Wheels and blades—transfiguring
imitation to pure ideation:
culmination into liquid motion.
Copyright © by Kevan Copeland
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