Poetry: Selections from M.P. Powers

Sunrise Over Montmartre Cemetery

I am wearing the murdered clothing

of last night, my hands are cold, my feet

    sore and I'm standing over

the mossy tomb of monsieur

    somebody

nobody knows. apparently, he was

a field general in some lofty battle.

apparently, he had affairs, countless

insidious nights on the boulevard rochechouart,

a peculiar way of tapping his cane

to make the pigeons scatter.

monsieur somebody

    means nothing

to me, but as I stand over his grave

in the murdered clothes of last night,

   the rivulet of sunlight pouring into

   my shirt

reminds me I am.

the cynic from sinope

diogenes

who plato called socrates

gone mad knew nothing of muscle

cars neckties e-cigarettes

facebook 3D printing

 

he lived in a tub

in the streets of athens sans mortgage

wife vanity shame

scoffing at fools and wars roaming

the city with a lamp

in search of the honest man

he knew he’d never find

 

if I had to be anyone else

it should be diogenes, said alexander

the great

 

cynic minimalist rogue

comedian

 

my favorite story about diogenes

was when he went to a rich man’s home

and after noticing all the elaborate

furnishings the egyptian cotton

camel’s hair carpets the immaculate

gleaming floors

 

spit in that man’s face

because he had to spit

and his face

was the dirtiest place

in the house

The Gingerbread Lady

 

Seventy years old, thick mane of golden

dreadlocks, cataclysmic gray eyes.

 

Most days she can be seen

toddling along

the Landwerkanal in knee-high

green suede boots

and her pinkish Christmas jacket with bells.

Even in summer,

she dresses like an elf.

 

But the people here have gotten used to her.

They regard her much

as they do that strange hunk

of Avant garde art moored in Görlitzer Park -

 

a charming ornament

decorating

the local scenery.

Waiting Room

 

All morning, I have been sitting in this cold-

blooded purgatory, the people around me

wheezing, hacking, ogling out of big

sadfish eyes. I try not to get caught by the

eyes. I try instead to focus on my book,

but the novel I am reading, despite being

a so-called literary masterpiece, is sapless,

antiquated, insufferably long-winded. I put

it aside and look up at the Van Gogh reproduction

on the wall: stale blue irises trapped in a cheap

plastic frame. Even those can’t survive this room.

They are like us patients, withering amid

the stench of hydrogen sulphide and cleaning

agents, guttering florescent light

and the only music this place can know: the droning

of a patient monitor backed by the harsh

percussive beat of an offkey defibrillator.

Garden Gnome      

 

Ankles and wrists bound, kidney thrashed

by molten rock and porcupine quills, nerves shattered into broken glass, I hang upside-down

in a garden of Carrara marble

and long-stemmed gray lilacs,

the sun pouring fire through the trees, the windswept voice

of some French-speaking Polynesian

like a pigeon’s feather caressing me.

 

I spin myself round, the sky whirling

with clouds in the shape of dragons and golden-rose,

the moon a polished shell ascending

in an aria

of tremulous

early morning blue.

 

It’s the dawn of Spring, the dawn of Chant music

and second chances,

of agony engendering

acacias and the fall of Carina.

 

It’s the dawn of gargoyles

and Priapusin the garden,

upright now and unbounded

and serving as my protector.

 

I will stay here in hell and paint its pictures.

M.P. Powers is the author of Fortuna Berlin and Hallucinogenic Dragonfly Intermezzo. Recent publications include the Columbia Review, Wrongdoing Magazine, Glitchwords, Mayday Magazine, and others. His artwork can be found on Instagram.