Allan Britt
DOWN MEMORY LANE
All those ancestors in the way
of rebirth,
clogging the pores
of evolution.
Damn them & me.
Damn them & me,
well, well, well, well—
love eyelines a moonlit canoe,
her mother-of-pearl atoms
popping like piranha hunting
for heartaches.
Well, I saw a sign made
of mercury & on that sign
your voice over & over
dusted like crabapple petals
littering a tiger-striped school
bus's wooly caterpillar head.
Where have you been
all these years?
PERFECTION
The poet seeks excellence
like a feathery sunrise
sweeping sawdust from
the creases of iguana eyes
hugging volcanic rocks
off the Sea of Cortez,
that is to say, effortlessly.
FAITH
Sling blue.
Wishful.
Ludwig's "Great Fugue,"
like it was written for his mother.
Teddy bear, cotton rag
beyond fascination
but requiring APA response—
nothing but APA sizzles
upper thighs into stainless affairs
across executive desks—neckties
askew, crumpled cotton, top button
AWOL, bussing lips scorpions—
tomorrow's another day.
EVOLUTION
Tax imaginations—as one expects
to gain from such folly—but there's
a dark side.
Always dark when lost in the Black
Forest of neurons minding someone
else's business, someone else's in the
prime of life—orchids saints enjoying
oral sex with nuns, plus philosophers
on the fringes of intelligence,
intelligence, I say, suspenders, fine,
but quasi-divine support of whatever
Existentialist notion bobs its nose
like a Peruvian turtle with banana stripes
from onyx cheek to feral neck that says
this swamp, this earthly heaven is all
I know. . . true, I haven't launched
satellites, & I haven't stretched cables
port to port, but there's one thing,
god, known by many as evolution,
DNA, survival—he/she/it goes by
many names— but one thing's certain,
my shell, this thing that protects me
from you & worships a frog in estrous
shielding ten quadrillion ampules
of eggs from her one trillion lovers
if nothing else has taught me,
in short, to grow the fuck up!
YELLOW MOON
The large yellow moon
slouches in her chair,
a tall rattan
scallop shell chair,
at the foot of the horizon.
This dysfunctional moon untangles
strands of straw hair
with one hand,
while reaching
through thick January darkness
with her other
to wipe dead frost
from my windowsill.
BANYON TREES
In waking dream I saw Beethoven walking
through a field, dragging the Sixth Symphony
behind him. I expected to see William Blake
in the vicinity; instead he was doing laundry
in a strip shopping mall somewhere near
Parsipanny, New Jersey.
I felt like a child, oddly, as Beethoven
approached, looking at me as he passed. It
was a playground, from childhood perhaps, in
Florida. There were banyon trees scattered
around. All of which would explain my childlike
wonder.
He had a look in his eye...intense...a
triangle of darkness. Yet I sensed there was
a polite smile as he fixed his penetrating
glance in my direction.
There was so much I wanted to say...so many
questions. Emotions like waves rolled across
the playground...in between the fairy tale
roots of the banyons. I wanted to stop him
for one moment. Slow down his eternal stroll
for a few seconds. But I knew this was
impossible. Among other things, in his left
hand was a small bag of clean laundry.
—First published in The Bitter Oleander
Alan Britt has published over 3,000 poems nationally and internationally in such place as Agni, The Bitter Oleander, Bloomsbury Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Christian Science Monitor, Confrontation, English Journal, Epoch, Flint Hills Review, Gallerie International (India), Kansas Quarterly, Letras (Chile), Magyar Naplo (Hungary), Minnesota Review, Missouri Review, New Letters, Northwest Review, Pedrada Zurda (Ecuador), Poet's Market, Queen's Quarterly (Canada), Revista/Review Interamericana (Puerto Rico), Revista Solar (Mexico), Roanoke Review, Steaua (Romania), Sunstone, Tulane Review, and The Writer's Journal. His interview at The Library of Congress for the Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. He has published 17 books of poetry. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, he teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.