Philip Byron Oakes

Looking Down

Polemic dandies emptying gestures of overtones 
pointing the way. Anecdotal circles felt full when
rounding off what could have been as much as if
it weren’t, a story with an end that doesn’t. 
Compound the peripheral with center staging 
journeys to the edge, of being within a distance 
prescribed as room to run no more. Tantamounted
on burly steeds, giving rides their chance to get 
somewhere while nowhere waits in the wings. 
Monumentally at risk of slipping through cracks, 
commemorating the fissures that opened whole 
worlds to a sinking feeling it’s true. A premonition 
in the residue turning time into treasure, at a 
distance stood still for the past to take its bow. 
Marginalizing a thoroughfare to having forgotten 
as a friend, with which to rely upon a future 
cracking backs and forth in the concrete world to 
come. The precipitous promise of a lean into a 
tomorrow one hurdle away from the likelihood 
of falling, into luck as the valley would have it. 

***

x 2

Duplicities one at a time till counted twice 
the weight allowed. Colloquial vittles stuffing
teddy bears on the laps of statues gone south 
for the winter. Due to be borne upon the 
backs baring burdens, for what they are as 
less the more they seem to be. Veritable 
horsemen riding stick ponies into the mind’s 
eye, on a monkey’s business climbing heights 
never to be heard from again. Clustered by 
halves cozied up to the whole, as meant to 
be what can’t be by virtue of two to the fore 
of the parade. Flabber gassing the trenches 
from well above it all. Juxtaposing for 
pictures wrought in single minded pursuit 
of the u-turns, down happy trails leading 
to belief in what comes with greetings 
from the box. 

***

Tapping 

Elliptically forthwith loosening feet 
foundered in step with legs lost to 
the dance. Piquant darlings of the 
aftertaste waxing nostalgic for the 
mouthful, lost to a flavor of silence 
as food for thought. Rambles 
through wrinkles in the time to be 
still for the dust to settle. 
Choreographed to last the falling 
into luck of the drawn upon, to 
make broken strides matter in 
gaits swung to clear the path
as integrally akin to where
it is it ends.

***
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