Poetry by Asher Orner

Museum
-
the mud-lands are ripe
churning splatter
the theater of war
holds minefield
a rough weapon --
mirror-neuron visceral
itch
held at arms'-length
sparkling barrier

carnage over distance.
all art reveals the human form.

to make
is to let slip the self,
the gory self,
brutal-crude beyond words'
capacity to know --
a brushstroke here, rip and build
paint like clay, color;
to unnerve.


this theater of war is, too,
a holy temple built for
spiritual bombardment.
there is no unmooring soul
from skin, or all inside;
a cellular soul in a minefield
every painted line
a shard of shrapnel.


there is no beauty without fear.
disquieted, we stare
at painted altars, battlegrounds,
burning offerings.

To Perceive

-

Seeing time, time, time

As a sheer swath of night

There some half-formed shape

Shadowed shape half-alive

A true unknown

There’s rhythm and there’s rhyme

Unseen but for slivers, shivers,

What might we find?

There’s humor in superstition

A glisten in the mind,

What’s not known

Can’t be known, just owned

By suspicion

Best see what we want

Through broken windows

With a clouded eye

September

-

the ripening autumn brews its chill,

hanging low on its boughs, a dirty fruit.

I am rotting and rotting,

wrought from the muck, curled up

shielding against the light

at the far edge of summer.


About the author:

Asher Orner is a musician and poet from Baltimore, MD. He is a first-time contributor to TLY, and we hope he will send more work our way.