Christopher William Purdom
Philadelphia poet, heretic, and graphic artist
January 1, 2010: dreamtime horizon is now available!
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Sixteen Poems for the Web

One poem per chapter from Six Years Inside My Brain


Eventide

In the half light I can only remember
Whether yesterday follows tomorrow
Or if Amarillo blooms around the corner.

Upon awakening I am already four
When the future lies forgotten as at dusk
And shadows lie in puddles neath the trees.

Near dark my mother cannot unpark her car
For our memory of machines dies empty
In the half light I can only remember.


A Little Too Much Reality (Day)

In every direction it's the same damn thing so
We close our eyes half way to avoid confusion it
Limits the scope and keeps out the sun just
As our hats hold back the sky but
Nothing can hold back the wind even
The cattle get carried away now
There's only the road and the trucks and
The dust and the sky and the sun.


Rise and Fall

Am I some mad galloping
Horse of the Apocalypse
ridden urgently and hard
in pleasure or abject fear
crying out at your beauty?
Whose mind are we in, whose heart
and why do we keep running?


Do Not Let Our Domesticated Little Friend the Ice Cube Fool You

Water Frozen in the wild
Does not sleep in trays
But slips into the silent streets of night
To sweep the unsuspecting
From their unsure feet


Tributary

co-creation turned and tuned
queer and quantum slow surround
vibrant vibrate praying hum
bowl and player played as one
quantum co-creation bowl
queer tuned hum turned vibrant slow
virounded one surpraying


And all that’s implied

heart in a bottle
afloat on the tide
currently ether
and billows in stride
of fisherman's net
for Christ cast aside
in love we entrust
in trust we abide
bottle once open
we never need hide


Reduced to Drumming on a Paper Box

You couldn't be smaller if
you tried nor could your spirit
be less expansive waving
through me tidal vast deranged
full frontal lobe nudity
not needed but implied eyed
cried scream the Easter mantra.


Dramatis Personae

The color of headlights on
foggy April mornings straight
as a feather and tall as
the wind balanced unswaying
on three inch heels short
tousled blond dancing her face
like some demented halo


Lunch on the Serengeti

Rittenhouse Square has outlived
a million fractured minds green
peace of visible structure
civilized vegetation
reaching aloof past the past's
playful violence leaves resolve
for the madness of the hunt


Sequel

Intense intents in tense in
forwarded poem reading
Wantonly like Hollywood
the wordscape sign imagined
each earlier continued
line of flesh and cloth and your
praise of instinctive action.


Meditation (Lake)

If I were to run
away it would be
to Miami Beach
San Francisco or
Toronto where some
body of water
defines the border
of reality
all those molecules
replacing the past


Found

Suddenly with welcome force
pacing my open question
door raw need cannot constrain
each step another meaning
bantered as though words will end
again again again and
close impossibility.


yet another chair story

my safe mind meld second life
rent vixen avatar who
you are taste buds rearranged
silverware on the table
rub compulsed knife refuses
chaos imposed order I'll
have the brain chemistry please


listen

In the timbre, the timber, nay the whole
dark forest of your voice, I hear the first
small footsteps of more wishings to be said.


front to back

laying on of shoulder blade
recept commissioned body
corporate impulse personal
inflects but pliant distract
spine impressed by hefting bless
pronounce annunciation
alternate comingleness


Path

the wind like Texas
is constant colors
too subtle to name
but biting damp turned
vertical no flat
survives the rock made
cliff made pelican
by bay and ocean
iconic bridge fades
to Sausalito


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