Two poems by Philip Byron Oakes

Peripherally Ho

Eye scream strident pastels all sorties of stories. 

Wits knitting homily mittens for cold hands guilty

of holding on too long. Cartoon hag feathers to

blame for the furioso flutter to earth. Words not

of this language of gestures made plain in the

window. A face for all treasons suspended by a 

belief the air is lighter than the day it brings.

Combing the cloud fleece for clues, traversing the

weak spots in an argument to quench the zeal

to float. Between the five year plans to make a 

night of it. Words when eaten claws and all the

people gathered. Deputy splendors adjoining

the castle for coffee and tea. 

********************

Carving your Name

A splintered sense of piney utopias needling 

skin thinned, naughty as needed to rear 

foundlings lost to the rapport of sticky fingers 

pointing the way. To the cone harvest giving 

the wooded willies room to run. A vetted 

appreciation of landmarks lost to retrospection, 

then stumbled over in the gathering of thoughts 

for revelation, as to the whereabouts but for the 

trees. The black and white of a hobgoblin’s truce 

with the myriad. A forestal nod to surroundings, 

by which leverage is wielded stunting hopes for 

escape, mutating ambitions to climb more into 

than out of places thought reserved for last. 

Parameters kept indoors. Fending off the nothing 

that happens every now and then. By concessions 

made to the now you have it, a blink prior to any 

invitation, to immerse in privileges the crannies 

afford a wilderness. Prone any which way the 

blood runs cold at the fullness of the spectrum. 

Granting a dowry for the eyesore in the window, 

posed as a threat to the balance of comforts, 

taken off guard by the rhetoric of the auction.

The shadows an estate on which to let time wind 

its way in an expose of indifference, to the 

collaborative traumas stoking the formation of 

woodwork burning to emerge intact. Bewitched 

by astral mumblings at the rear of the 

formation of ice. 

Author bio: 

Philip Byron Oakes is a poet living in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in Blackbox Manifold, gobbet, Moria, among other journals. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, Cactus Land (77 Rogue Letters) 2009, and Sard (Otoliths) 2010.  Website: http://philipbyronoakes.blogspot.com/