Sean Burke
3 poems
**
The Fearless Sleeper
Assume that which is
unconscious
is more honest
than thought
pulled together
with resin
and red yarn.
Blue hands
shift emptiness
around the room
as elephants
collapse
in star-soot.
Everything persists
in demure folly;
a blistering sun
is attacked by balloons.
Always light
aping gestures
taken from dreams.
Fear, exultation,
habitual lusts.
Grease-spot
galaxies
seep into little cracks
of dark matter.
This girl sits pensively,
perfectly still
in the chair
in my lung.
All sick to death
of all likeness.
Let life be
the workhorse
of dreams
and the heart
beat reason’s
arrhythmia.
**
Interlude
Sight sore with golden the foxes divine.
Sky lit with ancient birds weeping divine.
Mouth leaking wind damasked thimble divine.
Thick song moth orange toward leaving divine.
Femora of heavenly communing divine.
Scrolls of rain paper diamond divine.
Twin evening hands are a fire of horses divine.
Concoction of bright slowly forces divine.
Bees of sleep outward soft hours divine.
Demon-flecked egg of twilight.
**
Eidola
The cauterized beast
likes my Bob Dylan haircut.
A three-headed, red-
throated bird. The patron saint
of pinwheels and nickels
whispers palsied hymns
to withered hydrangeas
between slugs of sea-
foam and wine. In rush
accompanying strings;
an elephant burns alive
in holy fire; molten eyes
leak down creases
in its face. I think of
words as mineral, but no
they’re only fauna
of the floating world
and neurons. After all,
I was there and it was
nowhere, their heaven full
of ugly blondes; a pack of wolves
under the moon, jacks
beneath a rubber ball.
**
return to sawbuck 2.2
**
Sean Burke lives next to a bird refuge on a small island off Massachusetts. His poetry has appeared in GlitterPony, Bombay Gin and Pinstripe Fedora.
**
The Fearless Sleeper
Assume that which is
unconscious
is more honest
than thought
pulled together
with resin
and red yarn.
Blue hands
shift emptiness
around the room
as elephants
collapse
in star-soot.
Everything persists
in demure folly;
a blistering sun
is attacked by balloons.
Always light
aping gestures
taken from dreams.
Fear, exultation,
habitual lusts.
Grease-spot
galaxies
seep into little cracks
of dark matter.
This girl sits pensively,
perfectly still
in the chair
in my lung.
All sick to death
of all likeness.
Let life be
the workhorse
of dreams
and the heart
beat reason’s
arrhythmia.
**
Interlude
Sight sore with golden the foxes divine.
Sky lit with ancient birds weeping divine.
Mouth leaking wind damasked thimble divine.
Thick song moth orange toward leaving divine.
Femora of heavenly communing divine.
Scrolls of rain paper diamond divine.
Twin evening hands are a fire of horses divine.
Concoction of bright slowly forces divine.
Bees of sleep outward soft hours divine.
Demon-flecked egg of twilight.
**
Eidola
The cauterized beast
likes my Bob Dylan haircut.
A three-headed, red-
throated bird. The patron saint
of pinwheels and nickels
whispers palsied hymns
to withered hydrangeas
between slugs of sea-
foam and wine. In rush
accompanying strings;
an elephant burns alive
in holy fire; molten eyes
leak down creases
in its face. I think of
words as mineral, but no
they’re only fauna
of the floating world
and neurons. After all,
I was there and it was
nowhere, their heaven full
of ugly blondes; a pack of wolves
under the moon, jacks
beneath a rubber ball.
**
return to sawbuck 2.2
**
Sean Burke lives next to a bird refuge on a small island off Massachusetts. His poetry has appeared in GlitterPony, Bombay Gin and Pinstripe Fedora.
