Sample Poems by Louis E. Bourgeois
Walking
The sky a deepest gray, but moves slowly, slowly. I keep
tempting myself with these lonely streets, to wander and die.
The lights are on in the temple. God is absent, but ash
still lingers thick in the air. Emerald smoke streams
out of manholes and drifts forever like dissolving spirits
into the bronchial limbs of dark oaks and maples.
I stand against the temple. All my life I've worn black
for Him, and He does not respond. Thoughts linger for too long,
thoughts of childhood in Louisiana. Grey bones in abundance
in the dry ditches. Armadillo and nutria bones.
For too long I have lived in a world that doesn't know my name.
The sky is mauve now, and I pass the shops. Plastic heads displayed,
and even more lifeless, the people, looking into windows of empty dreams.
I walk faster, and the wind against my back reminds me of home—
some thirty years ago, still whimpering in the womb. They plan
executions better than they prepare for all who enter and stay
lonely forever. A light is being snuffed out in my mouth.
The sky is black now and has quit moving. Keep thinking
of the hills, I whisper, and the mesmerizing geese that always
flew too high above the blind, and the perpetually grey father
smoking cigars and drinking whisky, muttering back then too much into my
ears than was good for me. Remember the fields, I whisper,
and the blue and white herons that flew up before you and disappeared.
White Night
The sky is consumed with stars and moon.
A white cardinal explodes from a bush,
and his brown wife follows.
Crows fly in pairs over the cemetery,
into a group of willows, and fall asleep without sound.
Near midnight, a bareback boy draws
circles in dust under the heavy moonlight.
His mother calls for him through an open
window, but he does not move.
At the edge of town, a dead angel
lies face up in a ditch.
Blue flies pour from its ivory mouth.
Landscape
All things on the horizon
begin to fade. Balanced
fields lie in the distance
and lakes diminish
in too much sun exposing
the hills for what they are.
Red Cane
There is a whisper in the silence.
Grosbeck and purple-backed doves rise
at the same time into a green dawn.
No one looks over you. Only the click
of wind passing through the shore.
Nothing starts beneath the mud–
throw your body into the ossuary,
let no flower ruin this day.
Miracle
The day I walked on water was the day I died.
A mother called for her son from an open window.
A line of dark birds disappeared on the horizon.
A pair of snakes slithered onto the grassy shore.
A piece of tin tumbled in the strong wind.
Then thunder, and something collapsed from behind me
When the emerald sky fell apart,
And the water covered me and I was gone.
Apocalypse
The children are weary
from playing
all day long on the shore
among the large birds.
If ever this horizon gives way,
the geese will leave us forever.