Jay Carson: Baroque

I remember the hollow cross above my mother’s bed
And the day it opened to me accidentally.
Me, playing, although perhaps always snooping.

The back slid off like a caster gone wild,
and death’s fixings stared back at me,
candles, oils, all neat on tiny shelves.

They, fronted by a golden dying Jesus,
were to get one of us through,
across the river to the other side.

II
Baroque, some say, comes
from the Spanish word for egg.
OED says a rough or Scotch pearl,

a struggling to get out, like 17th century
prose, sometimes set free awkwardly and often
pushing too much whimsical ornamentation.

III
There’s murder in love.
Through neglect, fist, finger, tool,
and maybe what you are thinking now.

My rages, deception, desert inside,
the doctor says a poet should know, let out,
like a released egg’s sizzle in a hot pan.

Copyright 2018 Jay Carson

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