Three Poems Jay Lee Ellis
	Two Hands Fall
		Fall should come hard fair about the death of light No chill here in the air as the leaves drop from exhaustion full bloated fruits of delineated passion place names rotting with enemy corpses barely outlined bitter hung cut off and cured by an opposition They drop from the weight of unevaporated time water weighed down to the sidewalk warm with rotting religion and nationalism born again mewling that summer hot identity shameless under the fueling sun how from nowhere falls the gun Here the air is stale too still warm for death Give us a cold winter honest and dry with wind (it must be cold there now with new deaths under snowfall here is the full shame not without the slather of insecurity Blown away the lies covered with snow to shame our summer smiles we will look in a while too cold for color we cannot bear to fall our fires of color ought to light our brilliance when we fall the same) This fall falls from within dies of its own full accord fruits too much to be digested too sweet with life not to stink in death shameless in opposition the one hand in the pocket does not feel the other's blood We will not look as they fit together the sticky coins kept away for winter
	Three Robins
		I.In the Field I Remember the notes from the nest flash of intelligence the red breasted interest headstrong redhead deliberate sense of humor who would direct but acts sews her predecessors reads a bit and song "Woohoo!" (the mixture tangling sarcasm for regret) for honesty brutality hawkish skitterish so the song to fight the wish eyes the metal of found blue buttons faded round the pupils a feathered rust (the black holes small before rusting wide to the horizon event of you you hide) The one whose talons cannot tolerate touch? Who would be too busy for me my annoying squawk? But the bird hopped sweet paused sang her new identity in the new nest of proud found spots Irish white flushed with the heat (Or was that a dream?) of bathwater and shyness II.Second Glance your big fancy fighting swoop over a little Louisiana pond migrates to Dallas range moving up (like Lee and as reckless) Richmond from the South Who was once (before metempsychosis) to fly stubborn enough through a plate glass door come out with the deep lines only revealing some tender beauty? bird of bird logic wound tight like a birds foot that breaks snakes and the foot of clumsy jays Who refuses advice on pool but on occasion likes to be told "Finish up your drink and lets go" Who sang with May in the off season read french lit all on your own wintered in waltham Texas exile but one degree of separation yet away from me perched attentive to the bridge graffiti by the washington mormon monstrosity migration shifted west to hop the streets rose and fell like the curves on your body? Sensitive knee and a line on your thigh where your life in some sky did not leak out in your through the looking glass flight Fingers for your height remarkably small But strong enough to shove me against a wall Capable with eggs but cannot admit how the Irish Hunter winged up the young talent of a town too stubborn to sing phonetics saved and banded for surprise flights "The oldest permanent Louisiana settlement?" I remember your red breasted gaze of some kind of wonder but I wanted to look sure Ask some questions listen then if you had not flown away mad (hop roving for cheaper bliss) asked you for a second kiss. III.After one cries from wanton cruelty but more for once more knowing again the brief spring and illusions of love flown What is one bird to another? We glance for food and flight song The season passes never lasts too long before winter nights and the sun goes down.
	The Garden
main page issue index copyright notice submitting subscribing about the Journal   email us at tim_wood@datawranglers.com   If you're viewing Negations via another frame-based site, you can reach us directly at http://www.datawranglers.com		"What need for Heaven, then ..." ­­Theodore Roethke "... mais il faut cultiver notre jardin." ­­Voltaire Believe belief and believe again, roses we no longer feel in our hearts rooted deep in thereptilian brain. Lost, the form of roses stone wind in misunderstanding the silicone chip implanted in the tired scales of our eyes. The Form underlying beauty of roses is lost under the weight of our new dead matter, lost for good reasons our belief in the old divisions matter form formlessness. Meaning alls no longer from the sky, no longer though from the smell of salt and roses on the back of a lover's neck. Meaning is supplanted now by the promise of diversion, cerebral trickery above the root reality of the beauty of roses. The smell of roses the many colors of roses, comes not from thin clusters of signal emotions triggered bullets from our desperate senses. We fall, from a failure of belief that fills every waking hour. (and in our dreams we dream still of water of the sound of waves, of the smell of old roses marinated in time and carrying within their darkening petals the dying of light and the dying of day.) Night comes so soon for some we watch with care the Judicious pruning of the heart's desires, trust only the careful skeptical reaction to the low judge's interruptions of the woman whose husband shot her son of the man who would be something else anything else of the fall of old injurious reason to the new depths. As if anything were new under this burning sun, as if anything we make were not doomed to dust as if one small voice amounts to more than a foolish vote spent better on a lottery ticket. (so call now for your cancers to be healed, your teeth to be filled your life mapped out in the heavens or in heaven. You, we promise, will not be insignificant will not be unheard in your politics your prayers your dream desires in most of all those old beliefs) and wants. Yet believe against all we know suspect, and know there is all danger of creation beyond that which having been created would guide the tendrils of our future. The very word that leads us, blind as we may never have been so blinded to quiet calm to the softness of old roses to death and to dying and there to life everlasting in our daily lives we are driven by belief but tempted by lies. I pray that we may yes, pray for the bravery to live to see hear smell taste passing time run our fingers over the old rose's death and our own living to that end. Will we embrace the dangerous future, love it for its folly while guide it to that blood color time smell of petals so battered and bruised by these pollutions and scavengers? I pray that we may hold in our hearts the dying belief, this belief dying only in the second to second world dead that remembrance of death and decay our old recognition of the return of night's skeptical cold to the warm growth of one new day. One rose dies so another may live. Would we believe but tend the fragility of that garden of our belief, raise red roses to the blood reality of new creation?