rd king DOT net : Poetry : Larry

Larry

(this page requires javascript)

» Click on title to view poem. Press Ctrl/F5 key to reset page.

Larry:1

How arduously he enlisted his random tasking
of quarrelsome memory! A trader he knew
      named Frank
insisted on a monument to our quiet dreams—and,
there were other things he longed to suggest

with demands tendered from a treeless expanse.
Rolling across in strengthening waves, they left us

rebuked—so we gathered our assortment of packagings
and disposed of them in the appointed receptacles.

Deluged with offers, deluged with refuge, I, simply
wanted to stand close to him and feel young. Even so

a man at work propels the incendiary; he remained
stalwart, listing random memory with lithe courage.

Larry:2

Her light found him squarely like an excited
heart beating. As he wanted his heart to beat,

knowing it was truly powerful to appear calm
and contented. It was a short form of courtesy

to display his venerable horns and desirable
notions. He wanted to disrobe before her

and wait for a few virile reasons to begin
the lineal, loosely-structured passage beyond.
      But first
he would share some food with her. She too
would want to eat before pausing long enough,

before he could press his chest against hers
and hope to interpret this first uncertainty.

Larry:7

In love among the outlayed nations, his eyes strode
upon sepia roses as platitude insisted upon motion.

And the movement was found to elicit anticipation—
we marveled at the oracle and her selfless courage.

Waves broke along a narrow beach and I could only
imagine it:   the delicate music of silkscreen.

Sand traveled everywhere without packing a bag
and still left offers unopened. Larry knew a barrister

named Frank whom we all despised. His behavior
was embodied as our observations were reaffirmed.

Yet Larry retained his service:   'the defendant awakened
harbored by the feeling he had not been revealed.'

Larry:8

He shook his head while the likes of resource
ascended ours. He shook his head

and from it fell a resplendent love
garnered from unstable notions. There were things

Larry enjoyed as service while the rain renewed
its luster on the pavement. It fell in a deluge

like offers at his feet. The restroom was unoccupied
even as existence spooled unabated across it.

So he stood naked before its mirror and recalled
his youth. He found he could now move through life

without its usual tremblings and exascerbations;
he saw delightful things in the fey, artifical light.

Larry:10

Rain fell and the sky shed its lightning with thunder
on an oddly altered landscape—dark blue hills

softened with live oak where evening was struggling
and Larry was both angered and tempted with offers.

Outside the yellow rushes of desert grass swayed
with its associate bushes and seasonal gulls.

I too am drifting and moved by life's hypnotic
motions and by chance I turn briefly to see

his beating heart beating now against the pillow
and the bathroom door left open and still lit.

I listen as his plasma enters the respective chambers
noting that even the plaintive will awaken, rested
      and astute.

Larry:11

His early data was disassembled and queried for bias.
What continued to take place only did so as long
      as Larry
enjoyed its service. Rain renewed many aspects
of this life, then quietly withdrew—leaving us a splendid
      crescent moon.
Again waves broke along a narrow, sheltered beach
as if this broken music could be translated anew—

and still we failed to sense what was truly powerful.
Larry knew a near mystic named Frank who insisted

this movement was meant to exist as anticipated...
The restrooms were oddly unoccupied and something

wanted to stand naked with us and feel loved
as a blowing rain fell against the piled sawlogs.

Larry:12

When first it fell as downtown, resplendent love
the movement was thought to exit as anticipated:

the plaintive and the rested awaken; this fact was noted.
They gathered their assortment of admissables and left.

Larry knew a broker named Frank who had insisted
the offer be not quite revealed at the Orchid Bar.
      So,
it was riding on how cleaver the moon was that night
as if the broken likeness of truth could be captured

with offers, or deluged with spectacle. Larry, simply
chose to brood about it. The young have problems

which may seem benign at first, even surmountable
as rain leaves diamonds upon the city and its lights.

Larry:13

Nothing marred the thick lines of his black
leather jacket, yet when it ceased being ceremonial

was his hope to find love among the rural stations?
Smaller in scope the plaintive and the restless dream

the other is not quite revealed at the Orchid Bar. It is
as if the evidence of broken cigarettes could be translated

into a verse suggesting an original purpose—one that was
just not met. The restrooms are plainly unoccupied

and longing for a fresco of graffiti. Barring
the moot discovery that nothing has been obscured

by the evening's arpeggios, Larry quietly withdraws—
his Harley roar quickly receding into what is still
      the night.

Larry:15

Bounding up the canyon was a truck in which
some boys craftily inlaid themselves—what more

was there to do other than lean on the porch rail
and watch the alluvial landscape change

in ways that would never seem odd or senseless.
The opuntia vigorously impaled feckless tumbleweeds

as the first chords of 'Purple Haze' subsided;
to get to that place where a pact could be stricken

our lives begin and expand toward something fertile.
Larry clearly enjoyed this feature as the afternoon
      moved on.
If the broken magic of high school could be assessed
he guessed it was this frail, columnar light receding
      from everything he knew.

Larry:17

A Sunday in late summer, dusk; shadow en regalia
as our man leans against the porch rail
      and contemplates
animate leagues of clouds amortizing the light.
Their likenesses amused him like electric tools

and those shapes that happened also happened
to drift away. The trees reached into a sky
      that seemed
at the edge of deliverance. He suspected something
that was too deft to manifest; it was so quiet

that evening that his breath, that his pausing
to breathe, was met by something else pressing
      against his chest
like a landscape with handsome ornamentals, scattered
boulders, and a dirt road evidently leading toward
    distant arpeggios.

Larry:18

Was she brooding, or assiduous, he wondered
while she disrobed before him and looked

for direction. And what might she think
of the body's pageant, later—post-encounter, when

now slips into memory and then...  She feels
his warmth reach her loins and things change

correctly for a few minutes, followed by a few
casual moments of examination and companionship

until a boredom returns, headed toward loneliness.
She dares not scratch an itch and instead

turns toward some calico hills where, already,
a few scurrilous things are starting to assemble
      and shine.

Larry:19

Larry thinks:   my hopes are sincere, modest; I have
a friendly view of these moored, pleasure craft

settling upon the blue bay—the dirty haze above them
only enlivens the sunset. Yet the background music

starts like a sign buzzing-on above the entrance
to an empty dancehall. It mildly surprises

the security guard in his continuous wait-and-see
reluctance—he is, without doubt, the scene's most

discrete dancer. How awkwardly the light
now spreads as if this were the Evening Light

as Fate would have it—full of raw contempt, bored
with drunken enthusiasts, but ready to fuck the night.

Larry:20

Approaching glass doors, narrowing to entry,
their sullen looks fell like a virus. The pointless
      rest of us
may well be content to merely be a piece of it—
an essence of being, inarticulate dispute, atom

of the universe—but deftly immune to this
cryptic elegance of uneven life. Congenialities
      for some
are just not enough. Larry stood tucked in shadow
and tired of these neighborhood vagaries. In this
      place
one might eventually come to believe in
the weathered light from a frontal. But what remains

is the outcome, the wetted pavement—each day
ground to a point, wavelets licking at his ankles.

rdking.net

Poetry

Larry