Howling Into the Void Excerpt
Excerpt Table of Contents
Perception
You who do not
believe
that angels dance
on pinheads
tell me that
rainbows
are not contained
in prisms
that love does not
lie
in the shadows
of photographs
that you do not
lie.
Nothing
exists in a single state.
I am not
contained by these walls.
I can shrink and reside
in the dirty hovel
of a bottle
I can expand and reside
in the mansion of verse.
Overgrowth
Once there was a forest spring
Where Pan did dance and his pipes did sing
The woodland creatures, boar and deer
Would bow their heads and revere
The water clear and Pan’s ear.
When each had had their delicious fill
Dance like drunkards, tumble and spill
Anthropomorphic one would think
Strange behavior from special drink
Pan has told me he’s seen them wink.
Years have grown and closed that road
To where Pan and his pipes became betrothed
Man was meant to lose the path
For he forsook what nature hath
Turned forest spring into boiling bath.
Melinda
Sometimes in the lonely hours
I would walk the hill
Leaving the clamor and din behind
For headstones grey and still.
As I neared the place where the dead do lie
I knelt and bowed my head
A fool is he who visits the graves
Without homage to the dead.
‘Melinda’ read the stone I sought
Melinda, my betrothed,
Only a thief as clever as Death
Could steal the health of Melinda, my love.
Often I hear Melinda’s voice
Soft upon the breeze
I answer her call of eternal love
And grow hoarse among the trees.
Sky City
(based on the history of the Zuni Indian pueblo of Acoma in New Mexico)
Acoma, the Zuni Masada
Defiantly cuts and opens the sky
Revealing dark blue innards.
Coronado came.
Young men fed the thirsty mesa
With heavy blood which held the dust.
Coronado conquered.
Odious timbers were dragged to the mesa top
Then erected to build a shrine
A shrine for the holy and the devilish as well.
Proud Coronado!
You came and you conquered.
But did your soul ever yearn to ascend the ladders to the
great, dark, blue heavens?
That great blue sheet which covered and smothered you.
R. David Fulcher, Writer 