Two poems by Gordon Hilgers

Inside and Outside

To be solidified and approximate a life
as fixed as stone. To withstand the entire night,
the nocturnal black rose,
revolving endlessly with no need for light,
and then to dwindle. To discard the baby-blue
umbrella as pointless and to move-out
from under sky.

Perhaps death exists as an end in itself, exemplary
of a squall too formidable for the breath
we must inhale,

only to impel our collapsing lungs until we grasp
ourselves awake on the landing
in the papery dusk, the tangle-headed gray
tussled,

a crone's bed-head, as we overlook the atrium
surrounded by questions, outside only
screaming emptiness as we meet-up with strangers
and shower-off this sweat

called life. 


Killer

To hold a poem inside like a rattlesnake,
thumb clamped against its throat as venom
drools fang to beaker, and to clasp multiple feelings
like locked lovers; this is to call-down threats
of lightning

with a house key crooking kite string, you being
the fool in the rain.  Interlocutor of the starry night's
near-blinding irritant, luminously fearsome, attractive
as rattler tambourines, you must bleed-out
your hurt, fever dreams mystifying a fibrillating
banal heart

until you burst-free like illumination struck by sunlight,
vacant lot become cathedral, nervousness transformed
into the orgasmic, brief liberty that confuses
dull reason

and which defeats prison walls of obscurant cloud banks,
the noxiousness a cure, witcheries bleak and satiate,
reptilian body snaked around wrist and pen. 


Gordon Hilgers has published poetry in three anthologies, has been nominated for the Sundress Press's 2014 "Best of the Web" contest, is currently a featured poet in Edgar Allen Poet Journal, and has also had poetry printed in Boston Literary Journal, Red Fez, Red River Review, Deathlist 5 and several other magazines and journals.  He lives in Dallas, Texas.