Two Poems by Christopher Keller

Pen Point

 

All it is, scribble symbols,

pretentious painters of letters

left on a page, praying for people to read

meaningless (but oh so vast and deep!) words.

 

Take a burning tree and flower it up,

elevated to the Crucifixion!

let Icarus drop unnoticed, but paint him

anyway, immortalize him in art.

 

So it is written,

so it’s done.

 

These Pictures

 

Without crying I can picture you

dying. Some guilt and recoil, the shudder

of a spider landing just covertly enough

to lose in your shirtfolds.

 

Loneliness. Your slow decline, the righteous

stubbornness of keeping you alive for some miracle.

Miracles come, but you go. You’ll always go

in these pictures, sometimes a final light smile

 

or a twisted grimace. I don’t know why

the twisted grimace – to love more now, maybe –

your pain is real and does not end until you do,

but it works. The picture gone, I love you more.

 

Christopher Keller