Erik Hansen's Blog, page 14

Snow

The snow falls and piles up

Shiny white dunes

Crawl their way

Across the narrow streets

To thaw and refreeze

Crust that cuts exposed skin

With the ease

Of an ulu

And when the sun finally shines

Upon the pale wastelands

It blinds us with its careless

Objectivity.

2/16/2015

December

Willow branches encased

In delicate ice

Become numberless prisms

For the slow rising sun,

The coldest hour of the day

Becomes the brightest

And the Master’s designs

Are revealed …

with painstaking patience

To those who would wake

To watch the advancing thaw

And wonder.

December 2014

Rains

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The rains come

And never really clean

The parking lots and streets

And driveways

Just carry things away

To unseen places

Far away, insensate pools

Oil residue

Creates a kaleidoscopic slick

Upon the water’s surface

As even more spills forth

Churning indefatigably from the culvert’s maw.

© Erik Hansen 2014

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The Burning

Your sonnet burned itself

Into our minds

A brand held lightly

Yet firmly pressed

Screaming its smoky life

Released into the world

To bring ruin upon us all

Cities lie in ashes

In the whispered echoes

Of your love.

 

© Erik Hansen 2014

Patriot Acts

Pages drift down feather slow to the empty street from the open window high above.
Flakes of snow falling in a pristine, winter night.

Fluttering for a singular, immutable moment, they touch down whisper light upon the concrete and asphalt.
Ink bleeding through as the warm paper melts the dusting of snow beneath.

“Would you say your words could be construed as seditious Mr. Jones?”
The harsh voice posing the question causes him to start, waking him rudely from his distant reverie.

The light is large and bright, pointed directly in his face. Dark forms just beyond the lights’ reach inform him his questioner is not alone.
“Could you repeat the question? He asks in a hoarse whisper.
” I asked, could the words that you have written be construed as seditious?”
He stares at his clasped hands in his lap.
He struggles to think of something clever to say.
After a long moment, he simply says, “No.”
Silence.

“Wrong answer Mr. Jones.”

The water saturated towel wrapped about his face and head is mostly used to haul him and his chair backwards, four other hands grip his arms and shoulders tightly.
He strains futilely against the bindings that secure his legs to the chair as more water is poured into his towel masked face.
Drowning on dry land.
If they let him live will they let him speak?
He hopes so.
He knows his answer will be different then.

Snow lands lightly to melt upon the man’s overcoat as he bends down to pick up each damp page from the street with surgical gloved fingers.
The window above is closed now, the lights have all been turned off in the now empty apartment.
He places each individual page into its own individual plastic bag labelled “STATES EVIDENCE”, slowly, deliberately.
No one watches as the silver sedan rolls to a stop beside him.
The trunk pops open with a muted click and he places the plastic bags in a plastic bin within the trunks’ recess, locking the plastic bin, the plastic cover securely in place.
He quietly closes the trunk, pads softly to the passenger side door, opens it and quickly gets in.
The sedan slowly rolls down the empty, snow spotted street, leaving partial tire tracks in the white patches that will melt away to dark puddles before the taillights disappear around a distant corner.

A warm breeze sweeps across the street as dawn arrives, lifting the solitary page from between the slats of a nearby abandoned pallet. It flutters in the wind, the writing upon its face unmarred and clearly legible.
It comes to rest upon an ever widening dry patch on the sunlit sidewalk where everyone can see.

© Erik Hansen

August 2014

Oceans

                                                                     

The distance

And mists mute the tone

Of the buoy’s bell

Far offshore

Ocean’s metronome

Further off a horn sounds

Ghost calls made for spirits

The living slumber below

Warm bunks and low lights

The soft splashing

Of cold waves

Against the gunwales

The soft rolling

Of something

Unsecured on the deck above.

© Erik Hansen 2014

Memory

                                                                 

Dream memories

Of a slap across the face

A hollowness In the belly                            

Aching, twisting fingers

Digging

Pulling

Your heart is a dark moon

Pulling me up

Through acidic waves

To reach

And fall short each time.

 

April 2014

Watercolors

Watercolors.

Darkness

Cracking the carcass open

To peer inside

Mind wide

With anticipation

The colors come and go

Returning home like darkness

Smooth, keen

And sharp

As the blade itself

We are born

To bide our time

And, like darkness,

Bleed our way home.

Interred

Interred beneath the cool

Damp loam

The past lays curled

the rope around its neck

an invitation

or a warding

against the spirits lurking

just beyond the reach

of the dim bog light

at the edge of the gloaming

ghosts with dark twitching fingers

tongueless mouths

and cemetery smiles

all to beckon me

Fear of Death

unknown

twin ravens tirelessly scout the dusty surface

advancing miles of an unnamed road

twisting far into the silent distance

beyond the rotting trees

a lonely grove of gallows

full of reticent ghosts.