Dreambuckles, Turnpigs & Interpretations of Style

By S Falcon MacDowell

Relevant poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ouroboros Independent Books
• Release date: Mar 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301280636

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

Magic in Real Time

Nothing is about anything.

High voltage electric sparks arc out and fry

Sensitive circuits that cry across dimensions and time.

Solitary symphonic elements defy isolation like crownèd Caesars,

And riots of shuffled elephants won't be

Sorted by tweezers.

Cold science works that way, opening doors

Into arsenals and workshops of unanticipated magic.

Life does not reward one's daily withering chores

With this brutal mix of the low comic and hipster tragic:

Life is magic.

Midnight Blue

Midnight blue―

The pinwheel Milky Way spins over the mountains

Coarse and jagged, irregular edge of a torn and sable sky,

Sweet pungent smell of creosote from yesterday's rain,

Desert spadefoots croaking in a moist, sandy wash,

Soft whuff of bat wings earlier, now past.

Blazing stars, we're born inside a lingering convulsive explosion.

Space and time run on and on, and on and on,

Competing, fighting, murdering for small bits of gold

(79 protons, 118 neutrons, 19.3 g/cm³)

That were squeezed out of ruptured suns

In a forgotten eon.

Let me hold your hand

And gaze back at this night.

Unwasted Unfair Review

cycle warmly blanket them

to revisit oyster beds and dock's end

into waiting cold sea

as cut up echinoderms flung from

highly nutritious and regenerative

but worms themselves are re

In Gardens of Abandoned Dreams

in gardens of abandoned dreams

drained of misery, tender green

tendrils entwine on white trestle

shades. a new crop of wrens sing

for the ones that have fallen while

soft pedal guitar chords float like

smoke on our unsealed words.

you find no potent portents in your

tea cup dregs. the warm pulse of your skin

calls out to one dressed in scarlet and gold,

and skeletons of slaughtered angels are posed

in museums where time dusts old books

and nobody ever goes.

i'd harvest the stars and lay them before you,

a dazzling array of gemstones on

night's velvet pillow, where young

jackrabbits peek out from under olive-gray

sage as dawn's purple rays fold back morning's

grand green stage curtains.

past parades of angry eyes who

measure your days, where

nietzsche plays pinochle with

macbeth and the other cowboys

spit tobacco over cribbage. blue

aproned girls sing mindlessly

and drive their geese from the

well, and you gaze into a black

abyss beyond a great silver

spider web.

Jedidiah and Makeda (Blues Before Breakfast)

I get the blues before breakfast

An' I carry 'em 'round all day

When my pretty baby's gone away

I got more work I gotta do

Then you'd know or guess

It's a bumpy road to travel to success

If I could only kiss her mouth I'd

Stay deliriously drunk all the time

For her lips are sweeter than sweet ruby wine

Strangers with cold shoulders slammin'

'Round, they wanna take me for a ride

An' I'm always swimmin' 'gainst the tide

I'd summon her to my chambers

Heart swelling with gladness, I'd rejoice

In this scrap of eternity that's my choice

This land's guilty crimes'll never

Be purged away but with blood

Seems I'm alone in preparin' for a flood

Now whether does she stray?

Whether rest her flock at noon?

Lookin' for my baby behind every dune

A man needs his helper to share celebration

An' sometimes grieve, but always cleave

Jedidiah had his Makeda and Adam had his Eve

Jewels dangle 'round her eyes and cheeks

Chains of gold encircle her regal neck

With silver studs her wrists I'd bedeck

An' one day a bundle of myrrh I'll be to her

Keep her secrets safe, close-pressed

Sleeping the night in peace between her breasts

I get the blues before breakfast

An' I carry 'em 'round all day

When my pretty baby's gone away

American Twister

i keep fighting my cold war

unmentionable battles uncounted

have gone before. the world's

spinning around in a hand crank

ice cream freezer. remember the los alamos

and jet black safety goggles, and that

sweet, sweet hard corps isotope dust?

gnawing like a beaver on

hard core tradition, gonna

tear this ol' cabin to the ground.

what we need is more audacity:

the audacity to dream of everything

we've been told to scorn.

these continua are pulled apart like

taffy, like string cheese. . .

and everything's snapping,

and everyone's sneezing.

indeterminism follows its own

soulful calculus; anger corrodes

the imagery of established fact,

etches in sparks a new weathered patina

from which an unimagined, abandoned path

of lewis and clark debarks.

must be disconcerting to the mormons

in their cartesian mormon towns

to look around america, that

ouroboros swallowing itself in bits of

bunching up chaos and alarm

and . . . liking it.

can only seem like a threat, and

it is . . . the wheels roll and roll and

lock and stop and freeze . . . then

roll and roll and lock and stop

and freeze . . . making bigger spirals