Lance La Rocque : Four poems

Thirst

Once a rising chatter

Clouds the skies---

All the birds are dead

Wires sag over the ground

Legs wander through the deserted town

Toes try to feel a way into being

Weaving thru—

Abandoned cars

The search for lost parts

It’s the forest of wrecks

In magazines

Rusted out questions

And ash

The universe gasps

Head plunges up through the bed

Hands want to scramble for paper and pen

A dry stick scratches the sand

repetition

My mother’s bedtime hug

Sundown, her energy worn

The warmth of the radiator

I hug

In winter

Cartoons at 5.pm

And Saturday morning

The voices long gone

Strange lonely joy

Unknown before

The glow-in-the-dark ring

These are the lost things

These are

The lost

Things

Burnt meat on the spit

Initiates the lonely hunt

glitch

Like poison or a virus

Whispered in a sleeping ear

In feverish detail I can’t recall

The origin of the story

Am I awake

If we’d met.  Are you told

Was I touched. I feel. Hands held

In the alley, by the Italian café

Or mixing minds. A plant

Returning again to your scent

Circling a drain for a trace

Of your hair.

An alley. A café.

A path. A place

A trace of your hair

Spirals down the drain

Meat

The child’s world is filling

Of gods

Bristling giants

Scatter toys

Across the floor

Farmers of the soul

Seeds to sow

Who want

What they want

--don’t know

Malleable meat

Not too soft

The brisk slap

Or wild

Heat

Across the pink face

Pink cheeks

A diagram

Should resist

Meat and bone

They say

They want.

And what they want

When the film rolls

They don’t know

The dark

Loops

Lance La Rocque lives in Wolfville, NS. With Lisa, Emily, and Max.

He has published in Hava LeHaba, Industrial Sabotage, and The Northern Testicle Review, and has a book of poetry, Vermin, by Book hug.

These poems are from glitch, a chapbook of new poems forthcoming from above/ground press.