An Apartment For Open Secrets
Poetry. Images & Rooms for Thought
Sparky Dashforth
- Location
- Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A
- Birthday
- April 08
- Bio
- I am a published poet
willing to create an OS blog for the sheer joy
of sharing and connecting
with other poets.
Please feel free to contact me regarding poetry in general, poems and poets.
I am also a hobbyist photographer.
All the images (unless otherwise stated) are my own and may not be
copied or distributed without permission.
MY RECENT POSTS
- Shadow Boxing with My Son
August 20, 2012 11:58PM - Rulers
August 17, 2012 09:43AM - Irish Dripping
August 16, 2012 09:17AM - Lost
August 15, 2012 10:41AM - Elephant Man
August 14, 2012 08:23AM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Very nice indeed.”
August 24, 2012 01:52PM - “amen”
August 24, 2012 01:49PM - “Cute read!”
August 24, 2012 01:45PM - “Zing!”
August 22, 2012 08:02AM - “Now that was fun!”
August 22, 2012 07:53AM
Sparky Dashforth's Links
AUGUST 20, 2012 11:58PM
Shadow Boxing with My Son
When did you last see me?
God knows --- wait, it was on a Tuesday
I changed your diaper.....I can still smell your shit.
And then?
Well there were times you know. Flashes,
you at four, being introduced to me again.
At six, finger-painting.
I don't remember that.
It was the evening I came… Read full post »
AUGUST 17, 2012 9:43AM
Rulers
After our first taste of measuring,
we knew learning was not for us.
Following the first thwack
from our classroom's ruler,
some deduced that distance was
limited primarily
to unpredictable bursts of anger,
arbitrary chastisement factors.
The rule, all twelve of… Read full post »
AUGUST 16, 2012 9:17AM
Irish Dripping
After several vegetarian meals I stopped dreaming.
A part of me searched city dumpsters,
another aspect sat on a high roof
and could only be seen by gusty wraiths.
I walked and talked, but my animal self
had lost the power to swim in the rain.
I longed to… Read full post »
AUGUST 15, 2012 10:41AM
Lost
I lost you in the food store;
I walked down several aisles
looking for you.
I could not remember
what you were wearing.
I could not recall your face.
I had to trace a line
in the palm of my hand.
I had to stop still
and… Read full post »
AUGUST 14, 2012 8:23AM
Elephant Man
Every few weeks I would move
from one city room to another.
I had only a tartan suitcase.
I would depart, travel one stop
on the London Underground,
to find a corner shop.
Corner shops
were where elephants went
to find their mouse holes.
The city… Read full post »
AUGUST 11, 2012 8:45AM
City Bones
The rat-people were always frightened,
always caught as they were, in the middle,
between the broad shoulders, the cheap suits, the
chewing jaws.
They are planted in the city,
in tunnels, in the cavities of masonry.
They are secreted in the foundations
of bridges and under spor… Read full post »
AUGUST 10, 2012 10:24AM
The Marble Topped Table
The kitchen table aloft,
a commanding plateau
in shadow-shades of goose.
A sea swept fable
overlooked by a high stool
and a six year old Zeus.
Eggshells ingrain creamy caps.
A crystalline surf slaps swirly shores
Blue veins score billowing stone
deep to a watery bone.… Read full post »
AUGUST 8, 2012 2:21PM
On Blennerhssett Island with Walt Whitman
He sat on this patch of turf,
and if not this exact place
a piece of a place nearby.
Naturally I try to feel his companionship.
Did he write a line of poetry
on this small island
or was he simply being Walt Whitman,
honored guest,
… Read full post »
AUGUST 7, 2012 10:31AM
Dangerously Uninvolved
Annie Oakley and Mary Magdalene
find themselves clothed and naked.
Annie wears a long skirt, her arms
demurely covered.
Mary has her secrets.
I clean my rifle.
Mary likes to see the long sleek barrel,
the blued metal tube so dangerously uninvolved,
the brass receiver glin… Read full post »
AUGUST 6, 2012 11:46AM
Comparisons in the Dark
Jodie Foster is frying peppers and eggs.
It is late and her legs ache
as she scrambles the yokes
sautés the jalapenos.
Today a jerk
again compared her
to the movie star.
A life she never wanted
keeps invading her reality,
even though she was born earlier
people consider her the frau… Read full post »
AUGUST 4, 2012 11:11AM
Sunken Dreams
I don't question
my presence in a Jacuzzi
with a friend of my late mother's
or why my ex-wife's sister
is now a soapy fingered hand-maiden.
Outside of the hot tub
I keep adjusting my mask.
Like an electric fish,
I can watch a skin flick … Read full post »
AUGUST 3, 2012 9:55AM
Through A Bathroom Mirror
I sense it in the phantom light
of my right eye.
That eye that does not see
because its optic nerve is crushed.
She is warm from her sleep.
Her ursine breath is purple
with the pith of last summer's fruits.
Behind a caulked star, cave… Read full post »
AUGUST 2, 2012 10:40AM
In The Lake
They are remembered in print.
A child suicide,
two thin ice fatalities,
four murdered women.
At dusk an old fisherman
fishes them out in dreams.
What a strange catch.
The flesh still on their bones.
Beauty and death in their open eyes.
Like shining fish… Read full post »
AUGUST 1, 2012 9:50AM
Effigy
We are an ad hoc posse of gawkers
that mill round a wind-cloned affinity,
a semblance
that has stolen your smile.
The guide's patter is faux.
His umbrella-hat and spiel a shtick.
I am kinderstruck
recalling our last blast of happiness.
The crowd sees onl… Read full post »
JULY 31, 2012 11:30AM
Andalusian Song
It was cooler on the veranda.
Below us a guitar translated the dark.
Orchids unrolled their purple tongues
to arbor the moonlight.
We had quarreled earlier
I wanted to tie you to bedposts
and savour you with a speechless mouth,
to hear only you
and not my rough words.
I lowered my head in your l… Read full post »
JULY 30, 2012 10:08AM
Mice
Soft claws have burrowed into my life.
In the dark, paws scrabble.
"I not afraid" says my childish upper lip.
Ears twitch.
The rest of my body
does not like the view inside my head,
does not like the sounds
of pink fingers beneath thoughts,
the… Read full post »
JULY 28, 2012 12:56PM
July
There is no milk to be had
from this humid churn.
The air is obese.
Forecasts predict
bright graves for the living,
followed by
scorched resurrections.
A limping obstinacy
inflates canyons of heat.
The sun throws a leash of blood
around our necks.
A hollow bone… Read full post »
JULY 27, 2012 12:36PM
The Secret Bear
No one knows about the
secret bear.
Nobody hears him talk to
it
as he travels.
He calls it
Michael.
He is thinking of acquiring
a little girl doll.
Secretly he imagines caring
for her
but he is not sure how
Michael
will feel about
that.
JULY 25, 2012 3:48PM
To Be Free
We pitch as the Greyhound reels
over creaking axles.
Thin and fat bounce in unison.
Necks strain, eager to reach
a more cinched place.
Northern Kentucky puts on weight in summer.
A mélange thickens.
Gears burn through muscle.
From a radio a Shaker
… Read full post »
JULY 24, 2012 1:38PM
Hands
I should hate to lose them in a freak accident.
They have brought me much covert pleasure.
Like shell-less crabs;
they have leased their homes, rested as itinerant
workers,
travelling between finger grasps.
They have been my living.
Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by hands.
He… Read full post »
JULY 20, 2012 11:02AM
She Loved Horses
An awe of their cavernous heart beats
had turned her features equine,
as if listening to their wind hollowed chests,
she had heard the shape of her own life,
the blowing of tubular organs
elongating her face
into snorts of emulation.
I liked her toothy sniggles,
her snaggled enameled smil… Read full post »
JULY 19, 2012 11:50AM
Dollar Store
We pick through the tack and tinsel;
no rush
the in-store music is slow and twangy.
We may have to squeeze
past other prospectors
precipitating showers of
imported oven scourers.
A toilet brush, a candy bar,
a plastic encrusted necklace -
all are equals here.
The
… Read full post »
JULY 18, 2012 10:02AM
Then She Died
She was taken by bears, that was the consensus,
dragged off in her sleeping bag; tracks confirmed.
Later the child was eaten, but not before she died of old
age.
She lodged with the grizzlies, growing sturdy, unusually
hairsute
for a human girl, but pretty in a… Read full post »
JULY 17, 2012 12:52PM
Button Mushrooms
On cloud-pressed evenings
you hear them being delivered
when the choral grass
is a soft swelling.
A creaking growth
of mire molds its score;
a crèche of mycelia
confined in dark blooms.
Together chitinous hyphae hum
while limb-buds
umbrella into whispers,
shaping… Read full post »
JULY 16, 2012 1:58PM
Astronomy
Standing at night by a kitchen door
(as most astronomers do),
I feel the remoteness.
A sooty cat rubs my ankles,
a palpable purring,
a base camp
on an impossibly high mountain.
Yellow eyes are star-flecks
in a cosmic center.
Sometimes in the immensity,
I
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