Feeling good for no reason
I rise from my bed, early
in accord with all the quizzes
and queues, as they may come.
I am smiling, like a fool who has
forgotten all his needs, and
who then begins to laugh
upon remembering.
Author: G. Paul Randall
Cover Art and a Poem
I’m thrilled that editor Kerri Farrell Foley of Crack the Spine Literary Magazine has accepted my cover design for their very first themed anthology “Routine” which is due out soon.
They have also accepted one of my poems, Still Life with Meals for inclusion. Looking forward to seeing myself in print!
Update: Routine is now officially in print.
Clueful
Debate
A conflict settled
by debate, away
will rise in appeal
some other day.
A Hybrid of Life and Death
The disease will not settle
for medicine, nor will the
remedy quarter the disease
doctor bills, they are piling up
a shot of whiskey, please.
Continuance
Things appear
to die, and I appear
to keep living
the welders are in dry dock
assembling the hulls
of sunken ships
at what point in the
figure eight of continuance
can one say end, or begin
at all points
amazing, how gracious
how sweet it is.
Clueful
I’m feeling clueful
today, little hints peeking
out from under bushes
the neighborhood jingling
like a phone full of urgent texts
bits of the crux of all matters
sparkling here and there
like gems tossed out
over beach sand.
Epitaph
Long in the hair and
gray in the tooth
he learned how to dodder
then he died, forsooth.
Pray (sol dep)
In the six regions
throughout the three times
under the one sky
peaceful, happy.
An incoherent notebook-dump from October 2018
Lapin Agile
rabbits do not frighten
easily, they live upright
in hastily adopted meadows
at the edge of danger, they
play at being ready, jump
at the right signals, not
fearful, but ready
Delicacy
I bumped it and it fell
and shattered, that notion
that delicacy meansspecial
when it really means
short lived. Now the broom
straw is knocking shards
into a dust pan and I begin
to notice the sweeping
nature of things.— G. Paul Randall (@GPaulRandall) October 10, 2018
Before and After Light
The horizon passes overhead
a blood-rimmed eyelid and
we staffers of the night
gather up behind, slant shadows
spilling from a Trojan dusk
disperse, we spread out.
Unevenly, so that the twinkles
invariably pry through, and the
street lamps find a place to stand
leoparding the glimmer tippled
grays, halting it, blanketing
spangled with light leaks.
We ply the night, shark fins
slice the sea of it, cool bodies
unseen, bump up against the little
glowing beams that stab the load bearing
columns into the strong coffee
of a down hollow—we are enviably
black, defiantly not daylight.
It seems pitiless, this work, this
arthritis of sight, that climbs
up the bone ladders of otherwise decent
afternoons, to deviously withhold it
from those thirsty eyes that
will look at damn near anything
just to be seeing.
What to do if You See a Bear
On the morning of the day
that you see a bear
you should jump out of bed
and decide what to wear
get out on the highway
the wind in your hair
you can’t stay at home
you won’t find one there.
Divination
if I possessed prescience
I’d spend my time peeking
like a Tom, at the future
while the present is leaking
into yesterday’s visions
where fortune tellers say
not much going on there
‘it got frittered away’
Same Old
an unattached hankering
comes eager to serve, any
purpose at all, what nerve
let be, it will christen
you’ll see, with too dear a name
take shape, like a camel in
a karmic drinking game, oh
that it not be just more
of the same
Sky Burial
the vultures need not wait
for a beast to grow old and die
but soon, a creature will cross the road
just as a car comes racing by
