By: Wilson Taylor

Citizen

There is a city in the trees
and a genius in the flowers, stamens
whispering to bees. A squirrel’s call,
the undulating flight of a finch, the divot
in the grass; I am a blunt instrument
here to record
the trickle of ink
beneath this light.

I let my hand follow fate
through memory, sounds and scents
embedded inside me overlapping on the moment
until it becomes something else entirely,
a shadow of reality.

In this valley the grass waves slowly.
In this canyon the chorus of the ancients
echoes and swallows me. I am nobody

until a petal comes down to my waiting lips and I see
the world in color again 

###

Neon Poem, Captured Muse

Today the snow melted.
Two days ago it fell
in between, we twisted like smoke
through the flakes, nothingness and nothingness, air
in my lungs and out again, life
a collection of voices and dreams,
substance through my fingertips, circles
weaving through the heavens
to the earth.

Today you died.
Yesterday I wandered
by the city lights in their cubes, a name
in neon scratched, a love note to infamy
in an endless parade of moods and feelings
for sale until nobody wants them
and they are extinguished like a glow
in the darkness.

Three days on I am alone.
Three days ago your reflection was
an afterglow in melting snow, orange memory of
bright pink being pulsing underneath everything—
will I
still have this—after the buzz dissipates
and the heat suffocates me, I see
how I was hunting what I could not bear to eat,
I was hunting
all I had.

###
 
improvement

resting on the beauty of the dusk
as time will pass to night.

somebody is momentarily still
in the tic-tac-toe of the intersection, crossings
and holes and hopes all fading away
like memories from someone else’s brain,
neurons firing and extinguishing
this life.

somebody is momentarily still and fearless
and others wonder if they have forgotten
the fundamental truth of our existence, this craziness
a cancer to be avoided.

a cell amidst
the field made of immortal forms.

somebody is momentarily still, deathless
and in danger from the mob that pulls
in all directions
“Look out!”
grab them from
the crosswalk
pull them to safety.