Click on image to enlarge.
|
Fallen Sparrows
by Thomas Wingate
Category: Mainstream
Description: Poetry. Powerful vocabulary, rhyme, rhythm; quotable. Much history. Thomas Russell Wingate, historian by profession, capitalist by conviction and temperament, has lived in Salt Lake City since he left California in 1975. He is very married and rejoices in his posterity.
eBook Publisher: Live Oak House,
eBookwise Release Date: January 2006
 
1 Reader Ratings:
|
|
|
|
|
| Great |
Good |
OK |
Poor |
Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [121 KB]
Words: 21967
Reading time: 62-87 min.
"This is an important day for literature. Thomas Russell Wingate's first book of poetry is going to press. In years and centuries to come it will be required reading for all students of literature in the English language. It's like nothing you've ever read. Sip it slowly. If you gulp, it will make you sick."--Books through the Garden Window
Croatan-- No one knows what happened To those at Roanoke. They vanished in thin air Like blue tobacco smoke. Raleigh didn't find much; There wasn't much to see-- Only Croatan Carved upon a tree. -- Haloes swim in chorus to noise no mind can bear. Shrieking deafness, onyx rainbows, zigzags everywhere. Worms are eating birds and lakes are paved with steel. Bridges sing in spirals and this is very real. Croatan. -- Leprechauns are barristers and moonbeams turn to jam. Elephants are Girl Scouts but they don't know who I am. Cigarettes are hexagons and fires are dripping green. It's raining silver dollars and I'd rather not be seen. Croatan. -- Clocks are writing epitaphs in peanut butter ink. Kangaroos are antifreeze and very good to drink. Snakes are wearing miniskirts and walking through the sky. This goes on around me and I never make reply. Croatan. -- Diamonds swarm near garbage cans that roll through hula hoops. Light bulbs run for President and pumpkins are their troops. Beauty queens dig ditches and no one knows my name. All of this is normal and it's always just the same. Croatan. -- The Pope is pitching pennies while beavers shine their shoes. The sun is playing checkers and sniffing feathered glues. Airplanes ride the subway and brush their teeth with pie. I'm sure that this is happening and sure I don't know why. Croatan. -- Horses shave their tentacles and lampshades fornicate. Scarecrows knit sunglasses and I don't prevaricate. My bathtub's full of gingerbread that just gave birth to twins. Bowlers play with boomerangs and I'm behind their pins. Croatan. -- Some people think I'm crazy and maybe not so bright Because I'm special-gifted and I have the second sight. I see the things they won't see and not because they're blind. I'm fond of cryptic messages and use no other kind. Croatan. -- I know what must have happened To those at Roanoke. They felt the things I feel And knew they aren't a joke. They put the world behind them And gave their reason why: Croatan is what they wrote And what we know them by. -- [1970]
|
)
