Joshua Corwin

At Dark Water Dawn

I.

The Real loathes golden creed

            logic of a roaring lion;

laborers never hold a candle

            other than Diligence,

which orbits danger’s past

            as though Choice

wasn’t just a name, called Fate,

but littered litanies of splatter paint;

sincere storms with divine derision,

seldom shot a lucky arrow

with absurd brilliance

quivering into the stratosphere!

O how you drown when

            day devours freedom—

deranged, unaware

that loving you close

isn’t nefarious air to flocks of fettered geese

or sea to school of piranha. 

O, how the harbor shines

down the page of Isa deluded.

I ask my lawyer why

these questions denuded clothed stars,

caked by a thousand ills,

with shepherd naysayer soothing

            contemptuous man

wither recollection we row pollution.

I am closer to you than you could ever be.

Although inside the sea,

you don’t need imagination

to leap from your honored cliffs of contentment

            callous countries and continents of hope-

conjured growth past the precipice of change you farm 

down the slaveway.

II.

I am peace,

picturesque asylum deep in atomic melancholy Fade.

Fade grassy-white plane of existence.

Fade Kierkegaard goldsmiths, 

            handsome familiar soldiers

            who kill their injury with proverbs.

Fade with the fairest flower whose melody is monster,

            bleeding eternity unscathed with viceroy visage.

Fade as you mirror Solar Sinai.

Gems stir homeliness with loneliness, 

            pure alcohol, alchemy.

I hunger for silence and war in the air.

My heart’s contentment is Earth,

            a blind jewel misfortune,

summer spirit songs of grief.

Grieving far beyond nebulas most common

with all the citric-acid nimbus clouds.

Grieving tera-birth glow over rich, bankrupt dreams

without question.

Solemn, I return to solstice solipsism.

But I can neither sweep nor shrug under the rug

wildfire pain looming luminous dust piles distant.

I peer through my own windowpane and witness

a sandstorm of vultures, consumers, self-proclaimed gods,

who count shadows with gangrene ideas

and soldier your throat of beautiful devas,

primordial heavengravel, unheroic servitude.

I can neither stray nor stay inside leprous reason,

and let million-fueled minds of grey-chimneyed 

            churlsgrace charge

on tilled soil fresh

until each soul remains forever indoors.

III.

After the fall,

I lay naked

in cosmic quicksand ocean of star—

after star after star-

light precludes light.

Darkness forever eludes me.

Heaven’s most desired cloud

is an evergreen innocent bliss,

an entire universe of

greedy coma-seekers,

moist, beloved without question.

Your sigh is my long psalm

call Aum, emit ray of light – 

fall o low I buy me away Waive rights 

Wipe sweet sweat from brow, I bow my body home

to sticky chains, rusty memory

Commit lightning grief, strike match against gravity

saintly grime, stone vultures again and

gain freedom as you leap

            from precipice

into heavy sepulcher

            Aum

I sacrifice my silence. 

Nervous penicillin breeze 

leaves me restless, paralyzed 

by counterfeit ambrosial alacrity.

O Poverty! skip outlandish pebbles 

            across jacaranda sky of your pernicious 

                                                                        desire

O Poverty! return warmth to earthworms embered asleep 

            in cozy cottage, seek rosy dreamland noise 

            gasping for your name— 

O Poverty! grasp God-gilded driftwood 

            at the apex of compassion

O Poverty! God mourns the echoes of ethereal angels

            avalanched across delirious sky wailing 

            your name.

IV.

Naïveté, a beatific smile, calcium caelum mortis engrave 

image grace, synchronicity fatwa, the paradisiacal isle

of pearly people’s Jannah, will-o’-wisp hosannavino!

O Poverty! how your celestial oak saps tomorrow

            with your chalice malice

            brimming over with your disheveled strands

carpeting the Earth,

the people most contemptible and contented

the ones I love, the ones I hate,

the souls I must make equal

as the Great Equalizer lets go

            of the cryptic crown,

this refuse and rabble,

moonlight fastened to my chest,

the saddest street

            rumbles deep within

            my own windowpane of existence.

O celestial oak, how exhausted 

                                    this wandering wave

up the turn pike moans with crash and thrash,

descent after descent,

tirelessly trying to save the sea

in a chalice made of hands,

trying not to lose sleep

over seeds growing in this prairie swamp

at dark-water dawn.