The Swan's Coconut Cream Eyes

By S Falcon MacDowell

Relevant poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ouroboros Independent Books
• Release date: Mar 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301305391

S Falcon MacDowell

Born in Alabama, S Falcon MacDowell grew up in Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri, and presently resides in southern Arizona. He has driven trucks and worked shrimp boats, and taught English, history and creative writing at high school and college levels. Interests include hiking and astronomy.

Book preview

Elvis Without Tears

(Can't you hear that whistle blowin'?)

The Greeks knew well that

Some postures are forbidden

Call them decomposes

The Greeks knew well

And some poses that the

Greeks shied away from

Cut drastically

Close to the bone

Get in under the skin close to

Genetic secrets we hide from ourselves

But we hear the sirens wail when we

Get close to the source

Oh yes we hear oh yes

The Romans knew only conquest

Never mind what's lost

Change always wipes out part of the

Best things we accomplished

Just keep moving forward in a

Slow insistent pressing motion

Relinquish artistic expression to pale

Wimps creeping in shadows

Out of mind and

Outta sight

And Elvis in the war years

Was a time-travelling miscast freak

Sometimes adored

Sometimes loathed

Neither Roman nor Greek

He's still painted on tawdry plates for your

Dining room shrine-display, he smiles down

Kindly in tired Mississippi

Roadside souvenir shops

Whose slow-talking owners

Pride themselves for collecting

Profits whether their god's

Dead or alive

Elvis smiles on beneficently

No matter what horrors or shocks

Wrack the country that took the place

Of the one he went to war for –

Still, his innocent Elvis face shines

Down through all the clutter with

That wry half-smile

Cos Elvis never cried

To Kingdom Come

Don't get a hernia

Straining to

Think outside

The Box

Stuff

The Box

With C4 and blow it

To Kingdom Come

Exploding Plastic Universe

Staring unflinching at the sun, HG Wells never

Embraced the notion of a threshold of

Limitless enchantment. Man goes on, because

Man must go on, conquest beyond conquest. And when

He has conquered all the deeps of space and

All the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.

And now, in this exploding plastic universe,

Though your brain bids progress while your heart

Pleads: Stop! and paths fork and bend toward

Bitterness or revenge, I beg you take a step back,

And another step back if you must, and look

To far horizons, and feel the hot blood that flows

In your veins. It's saltwater it derives from,

A body of stardust and ancient seas. And hear

The voices of tomorrows and of more tomorrows

Undreamed. Untie yourself from corroding anchors

Twenty fathoms in the deep, gone down in a war

Whose arguments smudge and fade in old tomes. You are

Only beginning! So take off those shades, and stand

Next to me and we'll look together into the brightness

Of a new rising sun.

A Little Jealousy

A river daughter quit the water

And strode out on the banks

Clad only in her birthday suit, she

Scandalized the cranks

I quickly wrapped my arms around her

And filled her up with wine

She yammered unbroken about Johnny Depp

So I abandoned her in a matinee line

Then sometime when the stars were wheeling

Next week like fireflies to fill my head

I thought to win back my river daughter

With cheese and fresh-baked bread

Then returning to the theater I learned

My love could not be found

I later read in a used newspaper

The cops had found her drowned

Just Like Tom Cruise's Rorschach Rag

Bullethead finback sharkmen on the march

Spittin' up blood in the market square.

Tim the leech leans on his cane, teaches

Children of unsuspecting pain in a public

Park. Approaching darkness, prickly lion's

Torn verbatim out of night's broken organs

In a methaneous, Jovian atmosphere. Sausage

Chains and splattered condiments make too

Much sense; spike thru merging corpses that

Melt, spray twin ports and cohorts rising on

Skydream escalator. Bluegreen warm seas,

Beach cave and black sand where my love and

I lay down to sleep, to dream, to read of

The black scaled angel, cherished by more

Brightly wingèd women of joyous countenances.

Midnight blue galactic hue spills milky cream

Upon newborn mountainheads. Bleach and ink,

Kitchen sink voices invert inside stray beds.

Sneeze machines inscribe vicious dreams

Ensconced in diamond-clustered niches. Black

Pit eyes gaze, glaze, ablaze, dazed,