ZEV TORRES

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Slow Dance

Slow dance to the offbeat
Of a storm tossed night tide
An unholy clamor
Shredding the mist
Dissonant volleys
Conflated by echoes
Ragged eruptions and
Harrowing gusts

On the crest of a wave
Churning burnished moonlight
Surging with abandon
Through an amber haze
Rising then crashing
On a tremoring shoreline
Silencing the cadence
Of scattered dreams.

This Time Around

This time around
Try it with one hand
With no hands
Hanging upside down while
Facing forward or back
Wearing a helmet or not
However you feel most comfortable
Speeding down a hill
Over roots and ruts
Enveloped by the scent of late summer twilight
Spurred on by the wind rushing through the leaves
Pounding in your ears
Passing pastel flames lapping at grayscale dilemmas
Scorching the skeletal landscape
Blotting the cavernous sky
With cyclamen bursts and streaks of burnt orange –

Unaware of the glass figures
Keeping watch
Without expression.

Rage

How does it happen?
Where does it come from?
All that rage spilling out.
Not at first in a harmless trickle
But in a convulsive uncontrolled explosion
Feeding on your fury.
You tremble.
Your lips constrict
Turn white.
It is as if you are wearing a mask
A disfigured cast of your own face.
How can you spit it out
Without any concern
Where it lands or who gets hurt?
Does it start with a
Thought or a feeling
Something you have
Seen or heard?
Or have you been stung by the tendrils
Of a venomous memory?
Infecting you
Numbing you
Compelling you
To rail against attackers
No one else can see
With whatever ruthless barbs
Burst out of your chest
Rendering you helpless to realize
That you are ravaging
Your own child.