VisionsofOrion
Pre Coffee
An illusory palette
crops the arc of treetops
outside my bedroom
window this morning.
All skywards and yonder
bound in its curved
trajectory, reaching it’s
blunt apex before slowly
dipping low like a dab hand
limbo dancer en route to
the stone latticework below,
where Saturday morning
shoppers dodge the crisp
billows of wheezing chill;
fossicking ad lib for their
own weightless pots of gold.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Fire & Ice at Graziano’s
He tumbles from the deep
gurgle of an idling chariot,
slinks away into the balmy
blue of night with a shimmy;
all shuffle and spin as he
turns on a dime, pops the
air & slides on over—
like it’s show time in Vegas
under the din of light.
Tonight he will drink alone;
torpid dreams of shadow dancing
over a blood speckled canvas.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
The Ventriloquist
I’m calling bullshit
on his autism spectrum
billboard monologue.
It’s a bunch of millennial
claptrap, probably dished
out by some post grad
chardonnay quaffing Instagram
queen from behind her ergonomically
designed Scandinavian desk,
with one eye on the clock and
the other on her notifications.
That neuro diversity hokum gets
hurled around these days
like a fistful of M&M’s
at a 5 year old’s birthday party.
It’s nothing more than a
tutorial on how to wipe the slate;
a license to shit in the street.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Larkin’s Rolleiflex
I know you never intended us
to see those freeze frames;
ghostly 6 x 6 prints singing
in a diffused light, that glows
upon damp streets & sentinel trees.
Fussing over the light meter,
calibrating the phonograph
as she mixed you a large gin,
her angled cheekbones sweeping
the room like gyrating searchlights.
Under cool covers of night,
you took to squinting – far too dim
to see who might have been the less
deceived – from the tall arches
holding court above Pearson Park.
Your eye held steady – coaxing her
into frame, just a whisker away
from deep focus; light seducing
the polished glass, like a halo
beaming from corner shadows.
©️Orion Foote
Gung Ho at The Zeitgeist
I like the photo that you flung
like an aerodynamic frisbee
through the glow of cyber electrons.
It screams of Ultravox and wild
gypsophila in Grantchester Meadows.
Kids careening drunk through street
lit metal roads, howling like rabid dogs
lost in the brain fog of a 2am dead
zone, after shooting our lot over tables
doused in fire water and ash.
We didn’t know it then, but the river
was always sliding away unseen;
whispering Goodnight Vienna.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Trouble in Hope Springs
In my own defence pro se,
let me say it’s not a closed case
of cooking the books.
Mining for brain fodder
on the lunatic fringe
is not for the squeamish or tone deaf.
Today I’m picking Daffodils;
watching them litter
grief stricken pages with glee.
Tomorrow, I’ll conjure screeds
of smoke & shadows to confound
the sharpest of freshmen.
It’s a game of two halves;
an invention of private
origami fiction,
cutting a dash
amongst jealous algorithms
and smug life coach gurus.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
.
I’m beginning to relate to
the liquid pulse of Faure’s tempo:
the persistent hum of words that
threaten to gate crash the show
at any minute with their used
car salesman’s pitch and patter.
I thought of cracking open
the promising Tempranillo from
Logrono and watching that Jim
Jarmusch movie again with the Brie
and pâte from last nights fiasco, until
I remembered I was out of crackers.
But no, I’m saving my cameo
appearance at the supermarket
until things come to a head, as
they always do when you postpone
the whole shebang until tomorrow;
until the wind starts to push and pull.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Classroom Windows
I can’t remember it word for word.
Not from preface to epilogue and all
points in between, but I know
you would have smiled or maybe
cried; torn out the page and
pinned it to your cluttered dresser.
That poem from your last yearbook
with the glossy yellow cover that you
never held in your celestial hands.
How I wish on every star there is,
that I could recall that one about the rain
spattered window by a word smitten
schoolboy of no more than sixteen.
The one about tiny blobs of rain that
wept all the way down the sodden
classroom window; about how one
might join another and hold on for
the bumpy ride, only to part at some
unforeseen juncture to weep alone.
While others would make it all the way
home together in their slow union, but
mostly I remember the line at the end
about the ones that rolled all the way
down alone—crying by themselves.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Postcard to Rachmaninoff
Her arpeggios are up to
the task, precocious in their
carefully weighted precision
as she segues into the
swelling ache of the largo
with it’s ambiguity of meter.
It’s dissonance panning
across her lobes like 70’s
prog rock in hi fidelity
grinning from ear to ear.
She teases the grand finale
like a well schooled vixen
who’s mastered the part.
Sunken chords bellow
under the weight of wild
digits, spewing their seed
inside her molten flesh.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
At Your Wishing Well
All inside this room
recedes into the blue
of minuscule hours.
Scriabin’s arabesques
have called it a night;
slipped away to ponder
rumours of minted
chocolate—notes of
ripe vanilla that speak
in warm silken tones.
Would it be too much to
wish this second linger;
slowly turn to stone.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Visions of Orion Poetry 