Three Poems by Alan Catlin

Blue Nudes

Not melting as stop watches do
in desert heat but as bodies do
as seen through half-filled
glasses; white wine and colored
water, attenuated edges aglow in
focused light, writhing as if in
anticipatory pain or pleasure;
these revelations, this nakedness
so dangerous they never touch.



Dawn on the Fringes: A Still Life with Piano

 

The piano is an emblem

suggesting creatures from

another world, metempsychoses

and partial hallucination, real

time measured by glowing busts

of Lenin rising from the keyboard

like poison mushrooms, death watch

beetles, spiders with hourglasses

painted on their carapaces; 

decaying body of a dead ass laid

to rest beneath the propped up lid

of a baby grand; the apotheosis

of Homer or the nostalgia of cannibals?

 

 

 

For the Angel Who Announces the End of Time

 

This could be the world after

End Time: the sea dissolved in

sunlight, hard baked into deserts,

exposed shells thick as colored glass

nothing is reflected in, the steel

plated arch to nowhere sightless

birds perched upon flexing their

bloated wings as if they were

bladders of sulfured tea. Once

punctured, a killing rain is released,

slowly descending like some primordial

ooze, challenging the laws of gravity,

on to the unprotected heads of those

lost and wandering below, sun struck

and amazed at the chemical hues,

sunsets that expand the view beyond

the limits of conventional sight.

 

 

 

 

Alan Catlin has been been publishing since the seventies earning him the  title Venerable Bard, not toe be confused with the Venerable Bede, an entirely different kind of writer.  He has published a number of chapbooks and full length book including a chapbook of surreal poems illustrated by collage artist Michael Shores titled, “The Insomniac’s Gift”, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Book Award.