Zan de Parry
EDEN’S EDGE
I looked up and saw an amazing girl — brun, fair among the stones.
She used to be a blondie? And wore a lightweight sleeveless dress
and sat upon the night-blooming jasmine.
It smelled just terribly fine, my God, jasmine.
Surprisingly the street I walked on was called Flower.
Her smile flashed, “Want the wet willow?”
but then she sort of melted down. She was, and then wasn’t.
Yesterday, my sister called and advised
that I leave this crumbling plains-town, move away, there’s no more grass,
yet here I sit in my apartment holding the paper, not a baby,
but quite the way a baby holds his lucky share.
BLUE ORGANDY
I have been invited to Richard Scrushy’s Lake Martin mansion.
Nameless waterdogs heed the path like Newton’s cradle.
Minors are everywhere, dressed in black, silicone wedding belts.
I eat ice from fake glass in the exercise room
(everywhere I try to be practical I see my reflection and revert).
The power is out — the generators have been insufficiently plumbed.
The dogs die. We untie the floating docks.
A priority voter dressed like the devil has had four “Liquid Marijuanas.”
“The crickets are out,” says a teenager, opening his robe.
THE ARTISAN
I saw a lot of dollmaking during one of my trips
to the Land of Heart’s Delight, so I wanted to create my own
collection of figurines and religious items,
which eventually became “A Little Child’s Christmas in Heaven,”
a diorama supported, IN PART, by the Salvation Army.
You can’t just sit and watch the world end, you have to engage with it.
You have to be in it, not escape from it.
If you sit and watch then you are part of the end.
If you stand and dream, then you are fighting for life.
You don’t have to be anyone special,
just someone who says, in English, “Tu es follement belle.”
