Glenn Bagshaw

Cloud-popping, blue-raved summer sky
with light stuck out like a tongue:
you're the gorgon's gaze
to a warm, dry earth
...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Shakespeare)
You're hot in spots and then you fade away....
...

Cresting flowers are plumed as waves.
Lives, our lives are smashed ashore.
Slips rip tide, waves pour pounded mortal roar.
The single life now drowns.
...

You think it's magic that light will climb the skies,
that mind's inner math measures volumed world,
and branch bobs bird as bird with branch replies;
that no heart mends at midnight- whirl when hurled
...

When we finish our dance
our bulk fills the ground,
and the fear that we own
is the thought of no- sound,
...

On this His winter's day the Christ bells ring
that celebrate this season of despair.
Returns the dear, wronged echoes that now sing
in chorus, almost human, like a prayer.
...

This modern step of time may turn my phrase-
but now attend- see language as bequeathed.
What sweep of lines from Homer's waltzing days
shall partner me? Stride quick the speech received
...

--------------------
Drifting, shifting,
silting snowflakes,
moths upon the window sill
...

If you turn from the midnight window, they
peek in. Look, all you see is the shakened
branch, grasping at wind. Yet the past will say
why stars tremble. You, when awakened,
...

Evening falls,
dawn shall break.
I'm to pieces
if you wake!
...

On Turning Twenty-One
(the sound, the fury)

With today, twenty-one years
...

...

Those given names when chosen seem to click
with promise when the child arrives. Then worn,
the name's a mirror not a blindfold pick!
Know they're like babies: needed, almost born
...

In doubles Romeo and Juliet
can back-spin bounce each Capulet.
For forty- love's one trouncing score
and love's all those Montagues abhor.
...

He spoke to her two days before he died
in the haunted room, now forever dark,
and told her of a dream that had replied
to the grief of their son's death by stark
...

I had a little chrome-faced clock.
I had a whirling dervish toy.
I had my dad. He delved deep rock.
'Some day you'll be like me, my boy.'
...

I’m in my great-grandmother's old photo album
from ninety years ago, and I seem much the same.
Sure, I'm gloss-finished, black and white, and yes, some frayed.
Yet not so bad for my age. Looking much like her,
...

Shriek away, clear away sound!
Loud! Loud! Disappear the clear
searing cry that deafens the ear!
So overburdened to feel?
...

There once was a fellow named Rye
woh did drinking with Jimmy Not-Dry.
Never once before gay, Jimmy was short on his pay,
and when dry he then swallowed down Rye!
...

So the steering wheel showed a ship
in my dad's coupe from years ago.
Cars in boys' mind-brakes just won't slip
so the steering wheel showed a ship.
...