Philip Byron Oakes

Elective

A halitosis of the dead but willing, fumigating hideouts in a morbid vernacular of pensive sighs. The smell of autumn in the spring come to life in death as illustrated by the children growing old. A clown’s alibi at a funeral dragging on into tomorrow. The wispiness of reluctance skewing the anemometer, foreign to the sixth sense of fair play. Something of the obvious dressed in iridescence. Something of the oblivious dressed for school.


That Certain

The fate of failures to lift the hooves necessary in constructing a gallop. A prancing canter, a carrot for a dog as he chases the pony show of hands. A puddle of rare bones picked clean on the good china of collective perception. As the federation of nobodies go about their business, much as if the circus was in the unreachable part of town, but still sending the smoke signals of the calliope to children. A swagger to the podium, to explain the necessity of the weathered in the virgin islands; much to the chagrine of fumble fingered midwives, consecrating the disposability of a generation, to a lie of malevolent adrenaline squeezing the pulp from the fruit of foundered loins.

Philip Byron Oakes’ work has appeared in numerous journals, including Otoliths, Switchback, Cricket Online Review, Sawbuck, Moria and Taiga. He is the author of Cactus Land (77 Rogue Letters), a volume of poetry.
http://philipbyronoakes.blogspot.com/

 
 
 
 
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