Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
Poetry from Oklahoma
“ . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . one night my vow
Burnt me within, so that I rose and fled,
But wail’d and wept, and hated mine own self,
And even the holy quest, and all but her;
Then after I was join’d with Galahad
Cared not for her nor anything upon earth.” –Percivale, Idylls of the King
All but her
Not for her Continue reading “Percival”
I carry a glass bottle of water from home
When I go out. My well water is better than bottled,
Better than anything of purchase. After leaving
The Great Salt Plains, apocalyptic desert
Of salt and crystal, my bottle was empty. Continue reading “Windmill Water”
The debris of white paint flecks in the golden hair
Of your arms is the garbage of love and light
–garbage whose original meaning was a “handful,”
A “grasp.” So I will grasp your arm, your hand,
Your chest, your body, and decorate myself
With your leavings, with your day’s work, and
Fill the nighttime world with the rubbish of worth.
–Shaun Perkins
The place where I found to rest was thick
With chamomile. I lay my head against its spongy,
Fragile stems and closed my eyes to the ants
Intoxicated by the scent, climbing toward heaven,
Or what an ant can know of it.
Soft, soft. Come now. Leave the door ajar.
Nimue, Nimue . . . you are not swift enough
You linger, come away. Leave it.
Leave the door ajar.
The air so alive with cold
Strangling,
Suffocating,
All I could know
I drank the wine and listened.
You are too young to know but listen
Listen to each word. Then
Come away. Leave the door ajar
Learn to find the secret jolt.
Swimming across frozen water, chunks
Catching in my hair, my feet whales
Stuck again and again, my arms logs
Weighted by soot, dark and swirling
In the whirlpool my body was creating
Strangling
Suffocating
Like powder
The smell of a rich woman ready
For her lover
The chamomile woke me
My limbs were stiff with dawn
I had barely began to walk the soreness out
When I found him.
–Shaun Perkins
After the painting La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Sir Frank Dicksee
But it is not me
–not me in that painting.
John Keats was ever alone and destined
To die young—he was consumed,
Consumed—I tell you—with disease
Not me.
And yet. Continue reading “Lancelot”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 