Continuations LXIV:
vanished in ashes falling
embers letters umbra burnt
offerings to what god
forsaken for satisfaction
s guarantee of nothing
lost gained re/collected
collegium sharing cloth binding
truth for what good
(for nothing opens
like place like minds)
(rising in place)
to gain with vanishing
phantoms fading fast
into darkened choirs where
shadowed no bards sing
wafts of warrened dark descend
minds mend(aud)acious
embrace the winding sheets of sound
offer a goodbye brace for
the long wound wind
skeets palpable shadows
singular ingredients of traffic
patterned after
choir towns without faith
in is it or for tunes unheard
how futures lie / forsaken
short changed investitures
meant lost leaders return grand nadas
dark hollows followers mis t rapped
to the beat of mechanic drums
unison asunder plunks down
vestments led by adamant
followist rap sheets drawn from
heat beat to canonic
rum fest sakes
alive the future hides
in time flown flows per
chants barren choirs repeat
reports retorts lost chords
last shards of reasoning blown
cannonization all that dirge directs
against the counterpoints counted
perimeters shelter shards as if
reason propelled (point blank)
tort law as canon
this preponderance of serrated glass
leaves line of choir
to offer dirges next to gain
said bits of color coalesce to hold
a haloed body stretched
as hymns of martyrdom haul
fear and loathing into the sepulchered
darkness reaching far
beyond reason’s rationale
what mist breathing upon hymns
the water plump in texture
stretched prime beyond
earshot reason rationed
out to be held
in color and beheld
beat holt and polder drum
dream drags each rationed moment
back beyond belief / or
to it all unwilling lee
ward border crossed
loss of faith less melody
in chambers even the willing
lean in on borderlines
belief not systematic
leaves momentum and the backstroke
delimiting young history
retracts sanctity for once
retracks sainthood into the furthest choir
s shorted out dark looms
a transparence spectraled faith
deletes / no honest broke rage returns
returns re turning points debased
beyond the always doomed to repeat
traction ages turns honest after
faith based in doom
retreats toward trans
position of the point click
yonder furthest yoke
revoked initial sweetness
a taste now loathed low
oaths following the late uprising
of whose gorge who s lost faith
too base(d) in drugged warren
war on wherein the tunnel
never ends emptied of light
geo urges not rugged mere
ly ruthless base and empty
oath erased to low form
of war one without
reason faith en
com passing sans compassion
com placations to what retrofit
gods (those carved in dark
stone (bonehead con
spirit seize the night
side / split shares in the new
whorled ordure wastelanding
fit for the odds bone toned
seizures flight waste newly
spirited hatched also
as landing shares in retro
ark plantations
en plein air
quickened / brushed not tied
up tidied up laws loosed
endings a convention all
war rent gone un pardoned
paragon of parade restive (or at
spirit hatchet edit ed out
soon venting at dons
on spires the minions
rush untidily to tall
lies as if ardor equaled
a license to tend sole
ly to the self
imagined as self (as if
affect offered interior décor
(h)ating baiting bare
thought unleashed as metatomic
physics a burn across borders
new prison housed language lost
finned motion rises to bait
the leash beyond physical
prism multiplies loss times housing
senseless interior presuming self
protection equals
an insensate pantomime
foolscap preliminal airy fall
in(to)scription erased so
silent running beneath con
temptation to give in to
give up the weight
a stash of a moral might bear
limn an eight into
the frozen pond roses
tempt givens incur a stash
of oral recitation
flight caps off
all silence once bequeathed
faltered insolence to be questing
still in is o(e)lation an
ordure given a vacuum
full of less on lease the insistent passive
airless (careless) closing that window
lies only seemed to construct
guest workers pass through
care and less losing structure
stretch goals offered in a vacuum
allow lies to be the sole
quest backed elongation
for one is here then into air
tossed and forgotten already
battered into sub/missive
misled (missiled) empirical
(as proven by the latest (latex(t)ed
givens governs from on how)
the singular word descend (depends
missed opportunities by way of silos
lately guile emerges via text used
as verb that leaves each daylight
limber scented low
on the horizon quietly portending
morning frost
Douglas Barbour, poet, critic, and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Alberta, has published many books of criticism and poetry, including Fragmenting Body etc. (NeWestPress/SALT 2000), Lyric/Anti-lyric: essays on contemporary poetry(NeWest Press 2001), Breath Takes (Wolsak & Wynn 2002), A Flame on the Spanish Stairs (greenboathouse books 2003), Continuations and Continuations 2, with Sheila E. Murphy (University of Alberta Press 2006/2012). He has read his poetry and lectured in many places around the world, & also performed with Stephen Scobie in the sound poetry duo, Re: Sounding. He was inaugurated into the City of Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame in 2003. He writes a review blog on SF&F & contemporary poetry: http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Sheila E. Murphy is the author of several books of poetry, most recently American Ghazals, from Otoliths Press (2012) and Continuations 2 (with Douglas Barbour) from the University of Alberta Press (2012). Murphy's current pursuits include writing, drawing, and teaching, in addition to her consulting organization Executive Advisement™, of which she is co-founder. Her home is in Phoenix, Arizona.
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