undergroundbooks.org - PS: Your Poem a Week w/ Philippe Shils

31. Beat the drum

6/27/2020

31. Beat the drum

dreams aren't prophetic.
they’re about your last dinner.

in my dream I had a gun
but no one got shot.

it was a paperweight securing
Important Papers from the ceiling fan.

idiot country is where
I sometimes think we live.

a cup of coffee
followed by a nap.

no traitors but
treachery all around.

my daughter is the first
and only of her kind.

let’s abandon cynicism.

I'll explain my love for
you by not explaining at all.

#weeklypoemandpic

30. Slightly rhyming

6/24/2020

30. Slightly rhyming

A.
A better
father

would eat
with his
hands

the way
his
daughter
does.

B.
From the ferris wheel
gondola stopped
at its apogee
I squinted carefully
over the edge.

Something
I couldn’t
remember what
had already
dropped over
the ledge.

My son asked:
Dad are
you scared?
I wasn’t doing
well up there.
Not by a
long stretch.

C.
The dappled light on the car’s roof
a siren.

The square of light on the front door a proclamation.

We all have people we want to outlive
and the opposite too.

It’s not as though things end again and again but they do.

#weeklypoemandpic

29. Adopted

6/20/2020

29. Adopted

The world will belong
to the adopted.
Everything there
a product of revelation.

Not the false
piety of the admonished
or the inert arrogance
of the firstborn but the
fish instructed in swimming
or the bird taught late to fly.
Suckled in the forest
and in the town.

Their domicile a house
of fur and feathers.
A porch for orphans and widows.
The adopted rule the world
from the third floor
of that home sitting
in a crow's nest not
concerned with finding land.

Because there everything is the sea.
Land is a dream people have.
People with one mother
no knowledge of the waves
and what it is to be
above the salt
and just beneath the sky.

#weeklypoemandpic

28. so they appear (a song)

6/18/2020

https://www.facebook.com/philippe.shils/videos/10221941142187590/

27. Pandemic Restaurant Review 20/20

6/12/2020

27. Pandemic Restaurant Review 20/20

Amb-
iation amb-
inol amb-
eotic amb-
ition pre-
serves itself
within Win-
ston’s walls.
It is loud but
the food
dies dies does
the talk-
inness talk-
scence talk-
ing. Rest-
ily rest-
long rest-
aurants are
from long a-
go go here
when you can
go a-gain. The
chicken kieff
is a com-
uter com-
ply com-
fort com-
plete sur-
rendur sur-
face -prise.
The pan- pan-
pan sauce
gave pause.
When was
des-sert -erv-
ing some thing
some time its
own re-
redline re-
turn re-
ward?
#weeklypoemandpic

26. Entomology

6/7/2020

26. Entomology

The ruler of bugs
thinks we are slow
moving ants
creeping along
the shelf over
the backsplash.
He said so:
The insects
are glorious.
Unhurried.
He noted the
open mandibles
as evidence
of contentment.
He said:
Look at their
swollen abdomens
and dragging stingers.
Crumbs are everywhere.

The fly paper is up--
my son mistakes its
stickiness for poison.
Touch it I tell him
then pull your
hand away.

#weeklypoemandpic

25. Sirens

6/3/2020

Sirens grow louder.
Rumors of sirens.
People talk about
what may come.
They look up.
They look across.
They hear sirens.
They think
maybe ambulance
maybe police
maybe firetruck.
There are chants
and names
and we sit
and we stand
and we listen
and summer comes
and sirens come
and sounds
like sirens
but not for you
and not for me
maybe for you
maybe for me
and a sound
like a siren
that sings
of silence
and insects calling
and my son is calling
for no sirens
and for sleep.
We don’t want
to talk we want
to sleep and the
moon sieved
through the leaves
is quieter than
the sirens.
Momma cut the
branches away
from the neighbor tree
so the moon could
come through
or was it so
the sun
could strike
the garden
or to hear
the sirens better
and wonder

#weeklypoemandpic

24. Bossy

5/4/2020

24.

Bossy

Bossy as a limp.
He's a cover hog.
I'm cold over here
but he seems warm.
He's made me believe
I like it in Alaska.
He blows on things
to cool them.
He blows on things
to heat them.
The purse
of his lips
is always the same.
Sirens and pox
coming over the bridge
but his breeze carries
infection far away.
He wrote me a poison
haiku. 19 syllables
of cyanide. About
v-less geese. The
importance of the flock.
The need for a leader.
He led me south.
I marched to
his soothing rhythm.

#weeklypoemandpic

23.WarHorse

4/26/2020

23.
WarHorse

It took 1000 men
to kill the last destrier.
They died under its hooves.
The horse had flanks like walls
and sincere murderous teeth.
It had been unsaddled
when the army was triumphant.
It was rendered obsolete by victory
and considered malignant.

The deaths might have been incidental--
water off a spiraling dog--but its
wide muddy eyes gave events
the look of calm intention: a coincidence
of wind and leaves.

And a continent away
its rider: rheumy eyed
and with a slack mustache.
He'd sat proud and tall
aboard his mount--
fashioned for
riding and fighting.
Good only for war.

He wants to say momentous things:
He's seen men falling from the sky
as though they'd cut the branches
from beneath themselves, the long
thorns impaling them as
they struck the dirt.
There had been a stone angel:
a concrete shepherdess
who arranged ambushes.

He's witnessed what lurks just
beside the normal electricity of
living and knows that's the secret
for cursing one another.
He's palpated the shape just outside
people's skins where seizures
and cancers and suicides seep in.

He tries to write but his hand is
too damp and tremulous to hold a pen.

The people thank him for his service
and bow as though to someone wise.
He longs only for his horse.

#weeklypoemandpic

22. Love letter 14. Asylum seeker.

4/25/2020

22. Love letter 14. Asylum seeker.

We watched the great man
and bowed together. All
holding hands in a chain.
You were as noticeable to
me as a mottled egg.

Escape you whispered.
No one else heard.
Escape hissed in the flags
and the rolling tires.
No one else understood.

I gathered up my things.
Made them into balls.
I'd never packed to
go anywhere. I made
luggage from a box
that was a table
now maybe a boat.

There were piles of
shoes at the river. You said
you’ll walk until
you begin to sink
because you can't swim
then you’ll drift and cling.

I went awkwardly past
the checkpoint. Stood on
a beach. My box
of rolled things will
float I hoped.
I lingered on

your tardy curtsy.
Your dry eyes
amidst moist faces.
Your sidelong
glance implied.
We did something
other than pray
to be unbuoyed
by ideology.

#weeklypoemandpic

PS: Your Poem a Week w/

Philippe Shils - he lives in central Illinois. He has chapbooks available from Underground Books, Right Hand Pointing Press, and a collaborative one with his band The Red Wheelbarrows available at gigs and on Facebook by request. He plays old time banjo and has two kids who are patient with their father.
Check out his New Band, Books and Social Media!!

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