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The Moon

and Her

Ocean

AUSTIN DAVIS

The Moon and Her Ocean
©MMXVII Austin Davis
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-1-927593-58-5
Published by Fowlpox Press





To Softly Kiss My Fears

Smeared oranges and reds
plucked like the petals of a rose
from the sweet nectar of the sky

trickle like forgotten tears
down the transparent mask
they replaced our smiles with.

Running dry through the
passage of our thoughts, this
unclouded haze cuddles

the river of thick wine that
coils around my dry temple
to softly kiss my fears.

Flowers

The stems of her flowers,
sliced like veins in the courtyard.
The cool tears that ran
like blood burn to vapor,
dissolving in the shadows
that now casts her smile
across the mid morning twilight.

Stained Memories of the Fog

At the top of Fortune’s wheel,
I slowly sip at pleasure through the
tight- lipped grin of the morning rose.
Unseen behind the ripe hill of September,
she and I both lower our dimming gaze to
eye the flushed leaf as it glides.

A thick hawser swims limply in
the murky depth of the
Ferryman’s leaden grey,
an evaporated blood
still lingering between our glance.
Floating like a globe of sawdust
in the stale air, it whispers without a plea.

Traveling through the musty chimney
its soft breath makes every candle burn cold,
leaving behind merely a parched stain
and a family of tangled smoke

persuaded as one to take a new form.



Dreaming Is Like Painting

As the earthenware jug
that is held by my neck
hits that fluffy white,
it breaks, spilling all the
beans collected that day.

I drift into a stupor and the
beans are mashed into a paste.
Soft and thick, the paint brush
of my mind dips it’s finger,

getting ready to splatter
paint my dreams with the
vivid colors that wait at the
top of the beanstalk.

Her Cave

Lying flat along
the earthen darkness,
a spider trapped
in a sea of branches
her tears drip black
from behind
the window panes of ice.

A cave lined by bone chilling
and raggedy shawls
that stick to me
like the ghost of religion, I
remember how
the thread unraveled
like a man’s narrative
held in clammy hands too tight.

The light I had once seen
reflecting along my tomb grows fuzzy,
spinning and twirling
it settles with ease
to spoon in love’s gloomy shade
with the rough and uneven
stars who had once tumbled one by one to
softly rest in the ravine
where I could never fall.

Flimsy Emphasis

The land we saunter along will be
grounded without reference to time
between the roar of his fire
and the silence of her clouds.

Whenever we stare upon their illusion
the flame will slither closer to bandage
his bony fingers around her soft neck
like the nesting ground for the black dove.

The flowers will continue to stoop,
drooping farther each day.
Letters will begin to melt, collapsing
from the end of words and
morphing the flimsy emphasis we
hold so dear.



The Moon and Her Ocean

The soft gloom
that shadows her speckled grey
drops to tread
along his rippling blue.

A lightened pace that prances,
her smooth hand
rests with felt
to nuzzle along his neck.

Steeped in silence
the thin strings she holds
arise to dance

and I feel the small of his back
washing with a gelid cold
to tickle my feet
in the clear winter night.

Windows

We stand by our windows,
hands in our robes and tea in our hands
staring at the dismal droplets of rain
sliding like pawns on a chessboard down
the long, flat glass.

We are free from the crippling
sting of the waters splash
but close enough to notice how each drop
hangs on the soggy branches
until the wind snaps the tether.

Over the haze tinted hill I see
the greenish grey of the statue in the park.
A lone soldier who always seems to only receive just
the right amount of water during a storm
to fill his cracked hat to the brim.

Airplane

While watching the sunrise
from the height of an airplane
held between God’s fingertips
everything is still.

The people in the cabin
drift along in their sleep,
and the low fog dims the lights below.

Three ribbons of orange
and a brilliance of red,
like a lone flag player
sitting atop his kingdom of fire.
An apricot drifting alone through
the milky horizon.



Surface Level

As the white glow of the sun
pulsates the soft blue,
it oscillates through the turquoise
and I see them lying flat
on their revolving buoyancy.

An interchanging television passing
from each gyrating plastic, the
dulling pop music from their phones
reflects their milky eyed tongue in
cheek grins in the
pale and chalky water below them.

My air tank strapped to my back with
a reddened snorkel wrapped around
my face, I lie on the bottom of the
pool and see the bubbles rise and
settle on the surface.

Why can't one untangle itself
from the warmth of comfort
and pop in their faces?

The White Eyes

The white light of the campsite
in the purple haze of midnight.
Dappled behind the whistling leaves
that softy burrow between
the notches that separate two hearts,

its beacon is severed and I see the
slivers of two brightened eyes
peering at me from behind a locked gaze.

We sat and talked about the stars,
what lay before us and what was yet to come.
Three boys with nothing left to talk about except
for the beauty of the meteor shower when
paired with the spoken word.

Victoria’s Secret in the Mall

Between the feather that dances
in the loud music’s screech
and the commotion intertwining with our hustle,
they cower atop the cardboard clouds.

Melting ice cream in hand,
I stop to stare at her long legs,
tanned like a stick of cinnamon
that rotates slowly in the bubbles of champagne.
Her eyebrows are a delicate lure,
curling above the leafy iris like the heart shaped

necklace dangling limply along her bronze skin.

As I notice her neighbor,
head cocked backwards in a state of everlasting laughter,
her hair twirling in an eternal frenzy,
I wonder how that dark green is still able to burn

through the large stockpile of makeup she wears.

A man in a backwards cap walks robustly
past me across the mall’s white glow and I
marvel at how he is compelled
to glance to the right of her dipping lip
that pouts through the beauty of her cheekbones
and then peek down below her hips at the curve
that I notice is laced with spandex as she bows to greet her fans.

Hushed Sleep in the Forest’s Shade

Her eyes were rosebuds at twilight
awaiting their march to the moon.
She told me that I was the one

who smelled of a hushed sleep
but it was he who felt like
the impact of pillows upon her neck.

The forest branches of her smile,
trodden with strides from the
soft brush of my blanket of daisies.

Draped over her shoulders
the rotting carcass of a deer is concealed.
Shot between the eyes and left to die

as she twitched alone in the flurries
of white and brown,
the funeral was much too short.

Time Inverted

Browning leaves,
nailed to the purple clouds with
the hammer that plucked those
twitching blurs of black from
the hanging tree.

Left to feed on the melting
carcass of my stopwatch,
midnight has blinked like
emerald spines ever since
the day my shading shifted.

Slavery, 2016

He hangs from his cubicle
by the telephone cord
wrapped around his neck.
A noose, mass produced in
the factory of fire.

The once blue sky has
been dotted with black paint.
The beady eyes of crows stare
through his shackles. He
crawls on all fours, following
the trail of green.

His wrinkled suit is a cage, a
shell that houses a man who
has lost all his limbs.
Yet, somehow he only makes
$12 an hour.