GUEST BLOG...POETRY! "Deep Enough" by Dennis Patrick Slattery

DEEP ENOUGH

These words-their aspect was obscure--I read/ inscribed above a gateway, and I said:“Master, their meaning is difficult for me.”   Inferno III. 

Is my reading deep enough?

Can I attend to the pilgrim’s

sinister descent where stench

assaults the eyes and the shades

crisp in scabbed skin

rend the ears into scratched awakenings?

What form might Virgil,

virgin of the underworld assume

his dark shape and clothed

poetic pose wrapping arms

around his naïve charge

pushes him along

through loiter-free zones

echoing moans of remorse.

The naked truth groans in a chorus

of demented laments.

No birds fly through sticky air.

Mistakes in life cling with miniature

fury to everlasting nows

pock marks in eternity.

A river to their left courses

hot bubbles of blood;

shades breach to the surface

chunks of meat in a stew that

knows its own end:

Consistent

Insistent

Resistant



©2017 Deep Enough Dennis Patrick Slattery
©2017 http://www.dennispslattery.com/
 All Rights Reserved

VISIT DENNIS AT http://www.dennispslattery.com/ 

GUEST BLOG...POETRY! "Sutures" by Dennis Patrick Slattery

SUTURES
 Here is the skin of days in the one hand of god. -Jori Graham

when in the catacombs

do you find the shards

where cracks reign

beating along on bare feet

through the ancient patterns?

those you know:

where people open

where myth changes shape

when she finds everything closed.

even the ground shows cracks

made by swelling waves.

out into the open

just consider the gap between us.

ground swells of loneliness

that resist mending

forgive—one painful stitch at a time.

keep the finger out. use it as

your needle leaving a trail of cat gut

 a thin long transparent line of hurts.



©2017 Sutures Dennis Patrick Slattery

http://www.dennispslattery.com/
copyright 2017 All Rights Reserved