Waiting

Waiting

The ceiling must contemplate spheres 
orbiting my commotion. 
Colleagues and I improvise 
fluent choreography.
Patrons adjudicate; feed me 
currencies I earn. Their appetite 
for deliverance, I serve.

Yet performance doesn’t appease
past authority. Find something real.
As if what I balance were intangible.
Others say: find someone nice.
But I lack credentials to satisfy. 
Sure, I save for building—but can’t buy
guys I deign to like.

Once, after unmasking, I exited
to moonlight in front; someone behind—
heard footsteps accelerate
in pursuit of my tips. His pacing dropped,
but I never stopped a life
of interminable racing—
when I’m not waiting.

Copyright © by Kevan Copeland

Radishwhip

Radishwhip

A froth or a slash?
From a flask,
foaming slaps
taste, splayed
off the tongue.

Sensation is searching
for shores
in the skull. Past flora
flickers a brain,
flashing the pan.

Fahrenheit
sizzling, thirst climbs
to press prickly lips—
gasping for water
in cacti kisses.

Vegetation
is vascular rapture:
sailing on blush. Waving
splinters the grin:
ravishes!

Copyright © by Kevan Copeland

As A Novelist

As A Novelist

I control words coerced into being
more than myself. A concatenation
of pages, books, brains: manipulation
is my expertise. I shape your seeing.

I appease inspiration with my clutch;
whether tomes, music, lives—I have a touch
of kleptomania. Reined in my fist:
the fluidity of a pugilist

Dancing in a pen. Personality
disorders, so my borderlines are kept
writing, as I create reality

Conforming to my vision: great. Except—
buried in my lather of character
is a girl, and I cannot extract her.

Copyright © by Kevan Copeland