feathers

white mountains
heated by sun and sky
blowing a panicked warmth

so she fell down and picked up the ocean
in swift herring motions

where stars have gathered
into nets of silver and gold
a cambric shirt
sewn with parsley seams
and needles of written words
like wires stinging the cold air

the moon more solid than the sun
bound to earth
and less solid
teeth
and tongue slashed by anger and pain
she holds so soft

the sudden violence of writing
a dreamlike blip on an FBI screen

metallic in its groanings
rolling into some desert eternity
where the waves remain
momentarily fragmented
by metronomes

we’re all feathers in the hands of a fettered god

joseph owen

reposting this from last year

baby monkey falls asleep while drinking milk
or
my first political love poem

i’m an anarchist who works for the government
believes in God
votes in elections
and doesn’t agree with Emma Goldman’s views on marriage
though i would love to dance with her

i’m a gnostic who loves sex food and trees

i’m a mormon who didn’t vote for Mitt Romney

i’m a confessional poet who hasn’t ever written a confessional poem

i’m a poet who thinks all poems are confessional love poems about politics

who doesn’t write political poems

who writes only political poems

who thinks the word love is a big black hole on a page

sucking in everything around it but should

in one way or another

end up in every poem

who complains about poems without enough images in them but is now
writing a poem without one memorable image in it connecting moon to neck to bones

who never wanted to become some kind of monk
but somehow ended up as one anyway

who never drank a drop of alcohol knowingly
not even coffee

but who everyone thought was on drugs
and when powdered sugar was found in his locker
unmarked and everyone thought it was something else
no one acted surprised
or even was surprised

who wants to write
but has a day job
surrounded by books
he doesn’t have time to read

is there a priest around?

a confessional booth i can hide in now?

forty lines
of as much of my soul
as i think i’ve ever exposed
to anyone
in order to finally write
a confessional poem
without annotations