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| Ryan Quinn Flanagan |
Advancements
All that is not conferred upon spirited
wakefulness,
that river stones may know beds of soft erosions,
those most comely of advancements, sight unseen:
your lovers are just numbers, you count them all the time,
fits and starts that rearrange, the good posture of personal extinctions,
so that the face behind the cigarette is unplanned betrayals,
the roar the garburator makes divining all to simple mulch,
tilted brass cranes over an unrealized skyline,
days of clouded weightiness, sporadic rains to dazzle
the most stunted among us, those flightless birds almost
nailed into place, under the guise of a carpenter’s hammer –
It is I who have dealt this latest blow, to myself more than anyone else,
I, who have mistaken this parade of excitable dances
for dreams.
Jacques de Molay's Curse
Man is at home in the business of himself.
Would you deny such things from the debtor's stake,
defiant in fiery furl?
Ending a king's line and the papal smoke.
Three sons and a grandson is a hefty price,
over fourteen emulous years since final utterance.
And for those who claim there to be no power in the word,
remember your Philips and your cardinal legates!
Think of a weeping deathbed Clement,
and the stroking hunter-king, now hunted.
Within a year and a day, that was the curse of curses.
From a small island in the Seine, judgement upon
judgement so swiftly came.
Hibernating Bear
Snout-lowered, chuffing in walk,
slowed and ambling by berryless bramble.
Plodding through early snow under weight.
Matted and ice-delirious, a grand fear to none.
The heart just a minor drum now,
ground-gawking in obvious meander.
A final gaze upon the numb and stymied land.
Before returning to times of long
sequestered burrow.
that river stones may know beds of soft erosions,
those most comely of advancements, sight unseen:
your lovers are just numbers, you count them all the time,
fits and starts that rearrange, the good posture of personal extinctions,
so that the face behind the cigarette is unplanned betrayals,
the roar the garburator makes divining all to simple mulch,
tilted brass cranes over an unrealized skyline,
days of clouded weightiness, sporadic rains to dazzle
the most stunted among us, those flightless birds almost
nailed into place, under the guise of a carpenter’s hammer –
It is I who have dealt this latest blow, to myself more than anyone else,
I, who have mistaken this parade of excitable dances
for dreams.
Would you deny such things from the debtor's stake,
defiant in fiery furl?
Ending a king's line and the papal smoke.
Three sons and a grandson is a hefty price,
over fourteen emulous years since final utterance.
And for those who claim there to be no power in the word,
remember your Philips and your cardinal legates!
Think of a weeping deathbed Clement,
and the stroking hunter-king, now hunted.
Within a year and a day, that was the curse of curses.
From a small island in the Seine, judgement upon
judgement so swiftly came.
slowed and ambling by berryless bramble.
Plodding through early snow under weight.
Matted and ice-delirious, a grand fear to none.
The heart just a minor drum now,
ground-gawking in obvious meander.
A final gaze upon the numb and stymied land.
Before returning to times of long
sequestered burrow.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author who lives in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work has been published both in print and online in such places as: The New York Quarterly, Red Fez, European Poetry, Evergreen Review, Himalaya Diary, Setu, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, GloMag, and The Oklahoma Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.
