TO READ A LARGE SELECTION OF DR. AXELROD'S WORK, GO TO:
TO ORDER BOOKS BY DAVID B. AXELROD go to http://www.writersunlimited.org/LIPS.htm
A Sampler of Poems by David B. Axelrod
watching
you, your
restless
breaths,
your
high-boned face,
your
nakedness
defined
in blue-gray
light
of quarter moon.
You
sighed and turned
and
still I stared,
the
thick curled knot
of
jet-black hair
tied
up to bare
a
soft, strong neck,
supple
shoulders,
the
outline
of
small breasts.
Until
you turned
again
toward me,
eyes
flickering
in
half-surprise.
I
spent till sunrise
watching
you,
protector
of your
dreams
and sighs.
THE VANDAL
on
the darkest night, his beebee gun
beneath
a surplus army jacket.
This
is where he went to school.
He's
older now and knows the rules
and
how to break them. Raising
the
polished butt beside his chin
he
fires, pointing at the room
where
he was kept--one quick
report
of well-pumped air—
and
runs for it. The pellet
punctures
3/8ths inch glass,
a
burst of silver petals through
the
other side, one violent glass
flower
for the teacher.
THE SLAUGHTER
Rain's
gentle revolver riddles our sleep.
Wet
tongue of lightening,
dark
growl of thunder,
bullets
through our dreams.
A
hand to find a crease of flesh,
unconscious
fingers probing,
a
skinning that starts with a slit.
And
no one minds the trembling limbs
as
the hide is peeled. Some are born
for
love, others for the slaughter.
Penitent
rain. Cleansing rain.
Sorry
rain. Satiating rain.
All
these things we do that lovers do:
begging
you, licking you,
bathed
in tears, chilling fears.
Wake
with a rapping at the window,
an
arm in a clinch around you.
Tonight
there'll be no recriminations.
Only
the soft spatter of water
as
the flesh is trimmed from the bone.
ONCE IN A WHILE A PROTEST POEM
Over and over again the papers print
the dried out tit of an African woman
holding her starving child. Over
and over, cropping it each time to one
prominent, withered tit, the feeble
infant face. Over and over to toughen
us, teach us to ignore the foam turned
dusty powder on the infant’s lips,
the mother’s sunken face (is cropped)
and filthy dress. The tit remains;
the tit held out for everyone to see,
reminding us only that we are not so hungry
ogling the tit, admiring it and in our
living rooms, making it a symbol of starving
millions; our sympathy as real as silicone.
HEROICS
(For a 16-year-old amputee.)
After
he'd stolen fire
the
Gods chained him
to
a rock, tore him apart.
And
Roddy, after he'd
made
his leap toward light,
touched
the high voltage transformer,
his
hands, his mother explained
"Were
like this." She made two
welded
fists, "Two chunks
of
charcoal, and his arms . . . "
They
had to cut them off.
A
month they kept him chained
in
sleep until, still on a respirator,
he
awoke. "Why can't they
put
them back?" he asked.
The
day nurse pecked
at
the charred skin
where
his coat and shirt
burned
off inside the fence
where
no one dared to help him.
"At
this point," his mother says,
"it
hasn't gotten any easier."
And
the Gods—it's never
mentioned
whether once
they
bound him to the rock,
once
the bird beak began,
they
simply left
or
stayed to watch him.
FOR GAIL, WHO CALLED HERSELF "CHARLIE"
You
say you are an exotic
dancer,
brag how good you are,
rubbing
yourself against
the
wooden rails that separate
your
bright spot of stage
from
the small Formica
tabletops
where guys
mostly
in their twenties
chug
beers and cheer you on.
"I
tease them, let them
tuck
5's and 10's in my
G-string.
If I go bottom-
less,
I get them good
and
hot. That's when
I
really get a lot.
I
drive them wild;"
your
shoulders stiffening
as
you talk, your jaw
thrust
forward like an
angry
child. "Come down
and
watch me." Your eyes
dance
in a sideward glance;
the
open buttons of your
baggy
shirt an invitation.
And
now there is no chance
to
see you on the circuit,
your
hips pumping frustration
into
every bastard
in
the bar. Your long
brown
hair, that whipped
you
as you whirled,
is
stilled. Your try-
to-catch-me
eyes are
closed;
your half-smile,
a
tight-lipped, eternal
grimace.
OD-ed at 21.
How
far away from everyone
you've
danced, as if death
alone
could be exotic.