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Four by David J. Paul:  June 5th, 2013 Reader

5/28/2013

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Picture
The first season of London Open Mic Poetry Night comes to a close  on June 5th, 2013. David J. Paul will be the featured poet.

David has two chapbooks:  Locomotive and Tender (Jamie Hamilton’s Pikadilly Press, 1977) and Spilling the Beans (Clarke Leverette’s Killaly Press, 1979). His one full-length book, Trapped Moonlight, was published in 2005 by Sheila Martindale and South Western Ontario Poetry.

On the fifth of June, David hopes to read more than a baker’s dozen’s worth of poems about dogs, birds, news events, writers and  desire—a little Eros and Thanatos at Mykonos.

1.     MORNINGS       

I walk the spider 
down my shirt

and loop the snake 
around my waist 

and tie the butterflies 
across my feet

to take the dog 
for her morning walk.

© David J. Paul


2.     SOMEONE WENT BEFORE

This long path 
across the snow 
a little wider 
than two boots 
side by side 
was given me 
as short-cut 
and connection 
by some unknown 
whose first boots 
plunged deep 
into wells of snow 
and whose legs 
pulled out step 
by step each foot 
but in that 
going slow 
he’s sped up mine 
and now the path’s 
hard-packed 
by all of us who 
have approved 
his slightly off 
the compass 
straight and true 
this crooked gift 
that soon will shrink 
and disappear 
in the sun’s heat 
and the rain’s flow. 

© David J. Paul


3.     INSOMNIA

Lying in his bed 
beside his wife 
he’s wide awake 
blinking at the dark 
just an animal 
breathing in and out 
sucking on the air 
a consciousness 
who knows his light 
will disappear 
but the dark is great 
and his place is small 
his body a house 
where he’s the tenant 
and the landlord 
how he understands 
all he owns is breath 
what can he do 
but get on with it 
and hope to suffer 
wisdom on the way.

© David J. Paul


4. FIVE BIRDS AND A FENCE

five grey and brown house
sparrows weaving in and out 
of a chain-link fence and
filling up the tilted squares

with their common lively bodies
clues of this and now
in a crossword strung across 
the backside of a schoolyard

calling me with answers on
the slant not across and
down but this side that
side how many letters and

what’s a synonym for that
word and what’s it start
with oh induction and then
deduction what you know and

what you can subtract tic
tac toe we fly and 
play for you who’s captured
by the curse to know

© David J. Paul
Trapped Moonlight (South Western Ontario Poetry, 2005)
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