Outside Edward Hopper’s New York Office

 It is a neutralizing void,
 outside the window that spooks me.

 It lies there, 
 inside the emptiness 
 of cracked sidewalks –

 Where shadows scream,
 like an animal, 
 born with its umbilical chord
 tied around its neck.

 It is on these streets 
 where one feels alienated, 
 into a vortex of bones.

 This city is not alive,
 but a glass dungeon of the mind.

 I hear it in the sound
 of amnesic people, 
 where consciousness has been severed –

 I see it on faces, 
 grieving this unknowable loss,
 a spiritual castration –

 Tonight there will be a florescent glow
 hovering above buildings –

 As subjugated masses, align themselves
 and bend over for the faceless machine. 




Aeolian Harp

 
 Fingers of the wind play the harp
 left alone on the mountainside.

 The music is a slow waltz of shadows
 which encircles me.

 Language arrives, a whisper 
 from a lover –

 Inviting me deeper into her sensual play –

 It begins to rain,
 echelons of an outer world crumble down.

 I see this shadowy seamstress 
 for who she is, as she glides past. 

 The illusions she creates, no longer destroy.

 Realizing this, she quickly veils her face, 
 disappearing into the backwoods. 

 The strings of the harp continue to tremble, 
 whenever a stranger approaches. 




Blueprints for a New Imagination


 In a flash, it came
 with thunderclaps and rain,
 the birth of a new imagination.

 A night of darkness
 becomes engulfed by vision.

 In the silence of light
 we’re given eyes of clarity.

 Everything appears as it is,
 upside down, and backwards.

 A necessary angle returns,
 to light the fire, which burns away 
 the constraints of dead reality.

 A hell of repression extinguished,
 the silence shattered
 by the sound of humanity
 kicking through its coffin door.

Craig Shay has poetry appearing in the spring issue of The Bitter Oleander. Samples of his poetry can be found HERE.