Poems by Robert Morrow

8/6/2019 Poems by Robert Morrow

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Colors

Shedding the silence of cocoon,Sputtering in light-sucking street color,

Drenched in hormones, fluttering between limosAnd losers in the great city, landing on a pay phone

Out of breath . . .

Aching for colors—pregnant moon, sunset tides,Subterranean rose—your voice always filled me with colors,Delirious colors—but when you picked up the phone

I heard only the lowest tones of the piano,

Distorted, ungraspable, building with furyTo catclaw dissonance.

For while I had been frantically recreating myself,You’d been busy in the projection room,Shattering my image into a thousand pieces of you.



Nuclear

One summer night I split her like an atom,

Releasing waves of energy that could nourishAnd sustain populations for half-livesOf fifty thousand years:

She loves to fuck; I accept no rewardFor discovering fission; my role is the thumbIn the leather glove releasing the payload,A simple reflex in a maze of events.

Before her terrifying manifestation there were years

Of development where she spun like a model protonIn dead stability, between pressures of diseased moralsAnd immoral disease.

But now she is safe,Free of judgment and sentence,Exploding in furyWith incalculable joy.



Poppy

While covering familiar ground on a luminous night,

I happened upon a poppy which had spun itself Into a tight little roll to guard againstThe influence of moon and stars.

And I stopped to consider this problem,A problem of will and desire. But I foundNo solution, and left myself wishingThat the poppy would spread its full beautyAnd give passion to the night.

But it was not in the code. The next morningI saw the poppy unraveled by the sun,Predictably pleasing, in fulfillment of all expectation—But much too obvious; the colorsWashed; the display uncomfortable.

And again I found myself wishing that somehowThe programming could be disrupted for one momentAnd that the poppy would silently withdraw from the sun,To wait in joyful anticipation of the thrill

In surrendering beauty to moonlight.



Two Versions

I wonder what you would have been likeIf you had been born and raised

In a world without tradition,Without specifications, without scripts.

In one version, I see you scamperingOut of the womb towards a dark caveWhere you crawl to the back and shiverIn moist paroxysms of rejection.

But I dislike that rendering and so I imagineA child and woman filled with endless fascination

For experience and sensation, chasing butterfliesAnd souls with equal rapture.

Growing with the sun as melody to rhythm,Syncopating on occasion to unnerveThe symmetry, dashing any impressionOf habit or rite.

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Poems by Robert Morrow