VisionsofOrion
Book of Hours
For an infinite second
there are two of her;
a bathing suited twin
hovers over shifting ripples
like a saucy double exposure.
Bullets of light shoot holes
through skin—piercing her
doppelgänger in lunch hours blaze.
The watery canvas dissolves;
waves distort her gaping
mouth – threaten to devour
my parched eyeballs.
©️Orion Foote, 2023
Rediscovered Episode
I moon over skin gradients.
Digits probe – bluff their way,
like it’s my debut night foray
on a fretless bass without dots.
Audio gibbers – it tracks the action
in a blow by blow commentary,
like a satellite voyeur on heat.
The universe falls apart – just
for a while – until it returns
to pick up where we left off;
rattling the bejesus out of us
when dawn gate crashes the room.
©️Orion Foote
On One’s Arrival
No doubt you seem bug eyed
as you wash ashore
towards starched sentinels
of five borough hives.
Your hopeful flesh cuts
thick air in quick strides
over silent ones below,
who dream through another lens
in the full light of dark
and who cannot see us.
Trundling forward with hope
carved from brownstone rock;
your eyes swallowed whole
like the hours in time’s cortège.
©️Orion Foote, 2023.
Remixing the Outtakes
It was like turning the house
upside down – rifling through
the lost & found in search
of optic enhancements, only to find
them lounging on my forehead;
propping up the frontal lobes
singing I told you so through a mic.
I had forgotten how to roll
with shadows; like a shot southpaw
with retinal failure – his sinister hand
stabbing at diversion & quicksilver.
These days it’s somehow enough;
like learning how to dream – plodding
over snowdrifts through day’s
blinkered light. Fine tuned antenna
eavesdropping on high alert.
Warm digits champing at the bit.
©️Orion Foote
Timely Entrance
Bleating telephone bells
shook my eyelids – threw back
the covers & screamed in morning’s
over exposed high key racket,
like a sharp rap on the front door
after a late night blunt in reverse.
The awkward stench of fading organs
took issue with the sickly sweet
of her perfume – it threatened
to break the ice. His head tilted
back on crisp bloated pillows,
a gaping mouth set in times
perpetual yawn. It was like
he didn’t know where to look.
©️Orion Foote
Chinese Brandy
(for Mary)
A company of cicadas
make their entry on cue,
chatting with the slow surge
of wind music – pushing in
small waves over the surface
of oak leaves whispering
like Cantonese chimes.
It’s as good a place as any
to wash up—the last light
she’ll ever see shoots through
a backroom window with a soft
landing on pressed white linen.
Just before dusk, Doctor Todd
places the tiny celestial hand
back by her side—he stares
grimly through a clear portal
at a disappearing sun below
evening’s bloodshot horizon .
©️Orion Foote
On Turning Pages
It’s a search for mislaid memories;
minutiae lost & found hiding amongst
porous pages born of earthly tree rings.
Charred insignia hunkered down
in tight groupIngs of odd rank & file.
The eye a step ahead of every letter;
oblivious to the crawl of slow hands
turning cartwheels – locked in time.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Ellis Island Prayer
She dreams of the curious
gaze from another’s eyes.
The slow nasal drawl
of a foreign tongue – hard
pressed to pronounce a name
that sprouts from bloodied
tree roots of a distant soil.
Each minute screams eternity
in her solitary hours, a stasis
between the teeming portal
to a new world sanctuary
& a glass plate view from a
brownstone tenement window.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Street Corner Scribes
My psycho geographic beat
hooks me up with street angels.
Icons of the literati’s inner sanctum,
such as Shakespeare Walk
or Bronte Street dot the city’s heartbeat.
They wave at me in hi-viz chalk white
characters—pointing this way & that
like cryptic runes on traffic point duty.
At mornings low tide, I wait for
ghost writers & their silent annotations.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
Incoming
I return to this
place on the cusp
of a pitch perfect
segue into summer,
swiping at echo loops
with a net in this
morning’s velvet light;
poised & ready
to swoop on sudoku beats
at the snap of a twig.
©️Orion Foote
Visions of Orion Poetry 