THINGS THAT MATTER
There is little promise in the things he left
hanging in the dark recesses of his mind’s attic.
My granddad lapped up the remaining potatoes,
He loved the dregs of the broth and the stub of days left:
The little sleep nudging and knocking on his eyes,
And the crystal crumbs crying uneaten on the plate.
He shredded sweet meats with forked toothpicks,
A tired mouth disdained the rinds of cheese.
The tiny crimps on the suit he missed in the ironing
Lingered like sore fingers of a leprous hand.
All the small words that stuck to his throat like phlegm and the bigger world of remembering of those days,
Those tiny footnotes his life had become
Sat like dust on the oaken table, grey and tangible.
At last he mowed down his once-hot soupand the bistre in his eyes asked not for pity.
GEOMETRY OF THE DAY AFTER
What happens when the sirens
stop? Think of the silence,
or the rhetoric’s sweet sonic
in the city’s cold tumult.
Talk of the spikelets raising heads after the clean shave.
I choose you, a stranger’s outstretched hand, after the unmerciful quiet wears your face to the bones.
I see your ears
Pockmarked in blood, your name, splattered across the city’s grey face,
cake into a totem cream.
The sounds you bear
from rapping the door and flaking the wall
in the city hall conjure the ghost of the last frost.The only time birds sang
in the blistered sky
was when the moon wrestled the earth.
AS THE OVERPLAYED TURNTABLE GROANS
the world holds its breath as if sweet stenches from the trenches were some fetish to disdain or dissuade.
The skeletal threads of fire and brimstone chainsaws to teacups.
Morning hailstorms ground the waters of Hormuz.
Brackish taste remembers what the smell strains to unlearn.
Every step is a swindle of note. Every word a luxury.
Every tap dance kneads a hollow sound in the bones
from the brain that owns a hundred ritual regrets to the trails of ourselves in the shadow overlooking the cliff we turn to for a plunge. We love grunge whether the sun sinks behind hills or
the world frays at its forked ends.We are worn-out fingers on a ploughshare,
the forgotten half-life of a smouldering song.
PARABLE OF THREE TANGLED SPIRITS
Freedom rides in the saddle of death.In his hands lies the reins and the kingdom,
neither sauntering nor galloping in the streets of Jerusalem,
not sweating or wallowing in Golgotha’s fields;
thoughts scurry awayuntil the trial pales into a shadow.
In the remnants of a losing battle and a strained home,
Jesus dreams of marrying a shadow.
Neither flesh nor soft touch stays, but silence
that sways like miracles within.
Smoothly, the water splits into wine,
When Mary and Martha linger at his feet,
it is as if the lips of heaven were kissing His Holy Ventriloquist with the magic words.
How will a spiritual eye choose between two beauties?
One ruby-haired and full-bosomed. The other blue-eyed and sprite. What is the cost of the fragrance in shekels? And the trio spar unclad in a serpent bed
where the sheets frayed in a million places.
A pillow strains with mixed blood and lumps
of a built-in liberty; in the transfiguration of love,
intransigence hardens a garden into a layered city
where bones and walls refuse to die.
Nattie O’Sheggzy is a poet who, often accompanied by his loyal dog, Exhale, finds inspiration in the complexities of simple things. He is the author of two poetry collections: Random Imaginations and Sounds of the Wooden Gong. Nattie’s work has been featured in various literary publications, including Literary Yard, Sandy River Review, Everscribe, Ultramarine Review, Heroin Love Song, Agape Review, SweetSmell Journal, Smoky Quartz, Feed The Holy, and LiteZine. He is currently working on publishing his third poetry collection.
