Page 34 - the Noise July 2017

Shambles
by Vladimir Erimou
The living sea and the fossil sea, Fossils dancing in stone;
Waves, dancing upon sand and crashing on lichen - encrusted stone And shambling crinoids frozen
in ancient waves of the mind.
My hand in yours;
Warmth against the world.
The cold winter winds
The cries of gulls against the skies. Love is a shambling thing;
One I don’t understand.
Love is a shambling thing,
Like crinoids and corals frozen in time Buried in ancient waves and lost sands, Thrust aloft into the skies,
Drinking clouds and pine roots;
The fossils in my head aren’t nearly as kind.
They shamble out of the darkness into the light,
Screaming like hungry gulls clamoring for scraps
Eldritch fears lurking in the darkness
Between layers of stone laid down in lost seas;
Beyond walls of stone holding living seas Under roots, under Lichen,
These thoughts shamble into fears.
I worry about not being enough.
I worry that my feelings are not enough; That my broken thoughts are too fractured.
Love is a shambling thing.
I have given much to those unworthy ones, Leaving me little to give back.
I worry you won’t want what’s left
Within these bones grown
upon the Lost Ocean.
So: we shamble along the beach
Hand in hand, with hopes and dreams. Feeling shambling feelings of love With things we don’t quite understand: Eldritch feelings from
an endless, encircling sea:
Love is a shambling thing
from the edges of that abyss, Twisted spirals like whelk egg cases Spiraling like double helixes
Wild and untamed like spray
from the roaring sea
Frozen in venerable stone.
And I feel it once again.
Veltliner Moon
by Vladimir Erimou
I feel the poem coiled tightly around my heart like the world serpent. Sobriety is an anaconda; the words do not want
to come out for me under this Veltiner moon;
which rises, reflecting
in my wine that sits in glass;
the color of sunshine in summer.
It warms my bones in winter’s chill upon my cloud-shrouded mountain which rises above the desert
like a ship upon a placid sea.
I drink of it deeply, and am reminded of you, my darling dear;
the touch of your hand in mine, hinting at warmth and comfort
and the hope of days to come;
the return of the lost ocean
and the coming of the ninth wave:
And the memory of the sweetness of your lips upon mine
reminds me of sun shining
upon rain-soaked sandstone
after summer monsoons;
like this wine from your Urheimat; delicately sweet and dangerously subtle.
But for now, I gaze alone
at the rising Veltiner moon,
and marvel that you are the pirate
you claimed to be; somehow
you’ve stolen my heart from
bound chest, under lock and key
and Sea-foam upon Precambrian stone.
You are the Ocean-That-Returns.
illustrations by Kris Pothier
34 • JULY 2017 | the NOISE arts & news | www.thenoise.
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