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  • PS: Your Poem A Week w/ Philippe Shils

PS: Your Poem a Week w/ Philippe Shils

​A poem and a picture weekly for a year.  #weeklypoemandpic

PS: SOCIAL MEDIA/BOOKS/BAND

23.WarHorse

4/26/2020

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Picture
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
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22. Love letter 14. Asylum seeker.

4/25/2020

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Picture
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
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21. observing for seizures during the storm

4/16/2020

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Picture
21.
observing for seizures during the storm
the medicine has to be given during a hurricane so the mothers fathers and their babies gather on the island: a bitter tourism. planes laden with tensely watched children and parents poised to catch them arrive in the gravid air to a merciless economy of hope. the lights will fade as the electricity fails but the dose must be administered when the wind has risen, the trees are bending and as the eye approaches but hasn't passed over. there isn't much that can be done say the doctors so go here. stay off the beaches they say. even after the storm men will try to sell you things. especially after the storm.
#weeklypoemandpic
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20. Ooph

4/12/2020

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Picture

A poem and a pic a week (with some catching up to do). 
20. Ooph

I'm not writing about
embryonic cannibalism.
I'm writing about eggs because
my children are eating them.
Egg toxicity: The taking on
of too much albumen.
The overeating of omelets.
I was an egg. You were an orgasm.
Twelve jokes in two rows.
Each egg released a laughing yolk
that broke with a guffaw. The sizzle
of the crowd. The clatter of a fork.
Eating something that
could have been something more.
No regrets. Just growing larger.
Stronger. Chewing. Breathing.
An egg a crab an iguana a turtle.
Piles of eggs cocooned in dunes far
from the waves. Eggs are antithetical
to undulation. Impervious to water but
amenable to air. Investments. Things
that become husks if abandoned in
trees. Things that bad boys are tempted
to throw. Cartons and accounts.
Fifty eggs in one basket. Her finite
amount of eggs. The cold regard
a shark has for an egg.
The egg as traffic cone.
A puddle of broken eggs
on the pavement.
The unchewable shell.
It's uncookability.
The dialectic of the
contained and the container.
I shall indulge in the
bourgeois largesse of eggs.
The surprise of an egg in an
unexpected place: a sidewalk,
a carseat, a dog bowl. The places
you should see eggs: a furrow,
the anatomical snuff box.
An imperfect egg?
My mother taught me to always open
the box to inspect the eggs as though
I were about to shoplift.
A nest full of closed mouths.
The opposite of an egg
is also an egg.
#weeklypoemandpic

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    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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