Poems by Will Mayo

3 Denials

by

Will Mayo

When once upon a whirling, turning dream

And a tearstained mattress,

I heard a voice saying,

“3 times upon the flight of the crow

You shall deny your own self its solace:

First you will deny yourself nature,

Only then you will reject the unnatural.

And finally you shall denounce the gifts

The gods handed you

When your own world

Was new in the eyes of another and then another.”

And so it came to pass –

I rejected myself body as well as soul

When nature willed that I come upon Her

And let loose the wastes I held so dear.

Too, when the lady of make believe

Handed me a drink to make me well

I went without and found comfort

In a well laid line of verse

And a story cast of ghosts and shadows.

Only to find myself lost in an ill reason

And cast aside that as well.

Finally, I awoke from this dream within a dream

And walked into the world that nature shaped

And the gods called their own,

Looking within every shadow

Including the one deep within my soul.

And I cast this line of verse

So that you may know me well

Or better than I did

In my dream of many dreams.

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Home Is Where...?

by

Will Mayo

Once I thought I had a home.

A place of green grasses

and a bed of roses.

A roof of slate and timber

and intergrown twine.

A doorstep from which I might meet

a stranger and a friend.

Oh, and a basement of loamy earth

from which I might rest and grow.

But then one day my eye turned round,

I drifted with the wind

round the curves and edges of the earth

and came back to that from which I'd come.

There, I found the grass turned yellow,

the roses a fountain of dead hairs,

and the roof caved in upon the doorstep gone down.

The basement I searched for,

the earth to found my grave.

I grappled with hands and nails,

scraped the slate with mind gone narrow.

And in my highest distress,

with my pain in the pit of my stomach,

I found one red rose left alone.

In the midst of petals,

in the drift of madness,

was one heart beating still.

Whose sounds I could not help but hear.

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Ciphers

by

Will Mayo

A moment unknown.

A handwriting with no name.

Minutes, hours, days pass by

with no accounting for the clock.

There’s a language in the brain,

unread, unspoken, unheard.

Runes in passing.

Sights are yet to be seen

behind the dim, gray walls.

Others are heard already.

Shadows pass among the lights.

I waken. Then sleep once more.

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Fleshpots of The World, Unite!

By

Will Mayo

And declare all things mimicry and debacle.

When the poor girl of a fishwife,

Bettina by name,

should knock on your door,

give her two herrings

and send her on her way.

As for the boy of the sunrise,

give him two nickels

and expect nothing in return.

For when the world’s your oyster

and everything’s on the half shell,

then turn to the prostitutes, the hangers-on,

and the shenanigans of life.

A full loaf shall be yours by sundown.

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James

By

Will Mayo

He cleaned the toilets,
plastered the walls
i had broken into
during a fistfight.
carried himself well,
though low.
his brown walnut face
filled with a resignation
of things that can’t be fixed.
never did he ask
for a thank you.
always gave a silent goodbye.
memories faded.
until now,
a lone tear runs down my face.
and then no more.

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In Prayer

by

Will Mayo

“It is as easy to sin

as it is to breathe.”

Folds of flesh undone

like tatami mats in a row.

Bodies curling together

as their winds exhale.

The body soon forgets,

but, oh, the spirit recalls.

Tightens the mat.

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