Sand between the Toes

by Richard Martin

  

I am a cabaret of pure joy

A bungalow under siege

Last night the moon wept into a wet rag

Language leaps from the mouth

Into a collage of destiny

The sun rises in an airplane window of regret

I have a friend named Daphne

I could sleep in the excessed memories

Of our brief encounter with meaning

The clock is a storyteller

It narrates the edge

The news is on

The universe came from nothing

There is no way to accept the death of children

A bird in the ivory tree of the soul sings

I might exchange my mind for the graffiti of hope –

Hitchhike under a sky of infrared stars

Hurray for bread and the maker of religiosity

The past strapped to the present

The inescapable gorgeous line yet to be written

Drifts in the sea of a poetic moment

The ecstasy of repetition stretches a silver wire

Across the crystal chasm

I’ve waited too long in the hipster rain

This way or not a prophet shouts

In the wake of a wave of lathered horses

In conjunction with the final ATM

Senselessness has been accomplished

The ontological pancake of dreams suspended

Love is now

The spontaneity of heartache discloses

________________________

Richard Martin will be reading at SubText books in St. Paul on Oct. 26 at 6:30 pm. He will be joined by Leigh Herrick, George J. Farrah, Elisabeth Workman, and Ann Tweedy. 

Richard Martin is the author of five books of poetry, including White Man Appears on Southern California Beach(Bottom Fish Press, 1991) and Under the Sky of No Complaint (Lavender Ink/Fell Swoop, 2013). His work has appeared in Fell Swoop, ACM, Exquisite Corpse, Gargoyle, Artichoke Haircut, Shattered Wig (post) and unarmed. He is also the author of boink!, an antimemoir, published by Lavender Ink (New Orleans, 2005) and four chapbooks. A past recipient of a NEA Poetry Fellowship, he founded and coordinated the Big Horror Poetry Reading Series in Binghamton, New York, from 1982-1996. He lives in Boston.