National Poetry Month: Ralph La Charity

"VICTORY
"
(Ralph La Charity)




Mine eyes flake with unexploded impact

Mine eyes infiltrate jellied tanktowns
power walking well-heeled graft
along sweat-banded loopy beachheads

Mine eyes belly up to the guile larder
guild guilt & fool around

Mine eyes climb hand over hand
collateral pig’s foot caked
camel spit in the pentagon pool

Mine eyes elope with pack rats
reckless shuttlecocks are mine eyes

Mine eyes field strip jackets whisker-coned
ambulatory undeloused starvation buffer
bubs of trench flag bridges downed

Mine eyes have seen shroudy captives file
down choked dune-tides that bind

Mine eyes align beloved warps click-beetled
below bellowing hypno-stipulative pushovers
registrating duality-crest bledfellows

Mine eyes are incandescent lusty fleas
procreant witnesses swallowed by the sword

Mine eyes crosshair whole quilts of plague ghetto
ethers inhaled stuttering grease clams
global intake cringe-roots, boot-lamped

Mine eyes muster the tar pits’ babble
& the smoke of twilight’s fast breathing

Mine eyes hourglass nay-knowing cloverleafs
new-mown chopped quicksaw sanddust mounds
of crater-sculpt horizon ramps, offed

Mine eyes cook dawn’s early light
they savor lies seasoned & enshrined

Mine eyes lock headlong baggy & bodiless
consensus-swept support nodes
giddy on dire World Cop Love

Mine eyes whorl whorish ado & anon

RALPH LA CHARITY "travels & performs as a poet on his own cognizance, always." Since 1970 his destinations have included Seattle's Bumbershoot gathering and Texas’ Austin International Poetry Festival, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Denver. For two years he was the house poet at JAZZ PLUS Nightclub in Honolulu. He moved to Cincinnati in the early '90s, where he continues to edit and publish W'ORCs/ALOUD ALLOWED, a "poetry samizdat" he originated in then-West Germany in 1986. His collections include four-by-fars; on Som bo; and CINEMANUENSING, all from Aloud Allowed Impress of Cincinnati, and Seatticus Knight (Black Heron Press, Seattle/San Francisco, 1985). His work is heard on the audio anthologies Poets Along the River, from Mesilla Press (San Antonio, 1991), and Road Word Live (Burning Press, Cleveland, 1994). His most recent collection is beneath each Us & All (Nightballet Press) from which "Victory" is taken. The poem also appears online at semantikon.com. A performance from "beneath each Us & All" is available on YouTube.