Off the Menu

Out of Range

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a mauve sky	   grey pine	 dawn breaks      out of  the black	ripes       pale blue 
& green	  the painter's eye     steals the words on my breath

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a storm of cicadas	a multitude of the unseen 	chorus in the pine    we are here   
small & large   before invasion  from the skies    helicopters policing the boundaries 
of consciousness

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out of bounds    fucking fences against the skyline  	   barbed hegemony	  for fear 
the world will open like a chasm & swallow you     drone of the traffic closing in    smell 
of human rubbish           dumped   

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the leaning day       belongs where          i  understand  i know i believe        i believe i 
understand i know    who cares    where leaning freezes    where leaning melts    where 
not even shadows are left

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belonging to what	belonging to where	belonging  to belonging     more or less 	it 
depends on the direction	i suppose     i feel like an air spider    out of range

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on a sea of glass    a parade of phantoms	line up like a pageantry of Argonauts      on 
the edge of the world    what is the purpose of such dreams     i ask myself    do i wanna 
play skittles

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a moving pattern of events	    a shape beckons	  to an impossible horizon	  a 
dimension    a spontaneous creation    i live in hope    or perhaps 	in the desperation of 
life before death

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since  the out of range is beyond controle	  there is no belonging     nor reach     but is 
it a direction     as when the arrow's flight disappears in the blue

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or when the soaring bird	soars more	leaving you lighter than air    or am i back at 
the beginning again	  for you cannot go on paying forever    

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enough      who needs  horizons to speak of	       let them vanish large & small	small & 
large     avoid voidness    

but beware       there are no archetypes      other than those we have made        over time    
however animate nature might be	  

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still the shape perhaps beckons       still we sleep on air      like swifts on flight to 
distant skies

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dawn sometimes is a background of yapping domestic dogs     suddenly      somewhere     
deep in the density of the wooded hill	   a single bark from a solitary stray	    i see  
four foal deer today

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everywhere it's best just to find a cover & make it the rest	   a spot is sufficient

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a figure in the distance approaches	       through many resemblances	         before 
recognition      memory is an evolutionary tool	    they say	  but it can also serve 
to betray

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time has many dimensions   it appears     but it's always an event	  for the reality 
of now to be real    time must be real     

what is real   nothing is real they say     well nothing & a bit     even the present gets out of 
range after a while	

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coughing & spluttering on fumes	like the ramshackle motorcycle that's beaten me 
to the chase at the top of the path	    

i breathe after the fragrance of dawn       breaking with it 's mirage of green       as DNA 
sparkles in the dew         wondering next       which way to go

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trees can look majestic       but they can also look twisted grasping & monstrous with their 
litter of dead wood scattered on the ground       

like the bones of the countless dead      mostly when evening rots

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below me now is nothing but the tinkling bells of the goat herd & shouts of the herder

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everywhere is strewn the ruins of the dykes	      amidst a deluge of rocks       stones & 
boulders    fallen to uselessness in less than a century from their hand built toil       less 
than a century before    

now they form only in their overgrown tomb      a fading phantom history

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a  full dawn moon	 mere earthlings we exist because of her bounty	     despite her 
indifferent scorn     insects scurry    we tread       soon i'll get to water	      where 
now she fades out of day                                                         
                                                                                out of range

Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)