Poems by Louis Phillips

AGGIORNAMENTO

 

Swell. Now it's all right
For the sun,
Slipping sideways,
Revising day into night,
To speak Italian
To my foreign ears.

I bear the burden
Of the day,
But then who does not?
Time to revise my life,
Its nicks & dance
&  subtle sway

Of loss. My wishes
Are rubbed
This way & that
Like small shells
Clicking in the hands
Of children not my own.

           

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TRANSPARENCIES

Sometimes a poem is so transparent
Readers see right thru it
Far past the linear ridge of the northern slope
Of Ovda Regio, past fear, past hope,
Into spiral arms, gas, & dying stars,
All the way to where galaxies start,
Only to realize much later
How opaque the human heart.

 

---

 

THE PAGE ANT

How dare he
Crawl across my opened Othello,

Creating,
Blindly, indifferently,

A zig-zag pageant
Of his own.

Now he's gone, feelingly,
Into a world

More foreign to me
Than Cyprus.

That earless jot 
Has no use 

For plotting or plodding,
Has left no stain

Upon various Acts
& scenes.

I stare at my book
& its tragic loadings,

Until I am beguiled
By "false gaze."