Christopher William Purdom
Philadelphia poet, heretic, and graphic artist
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Twelve Poems for the Web

Excerpts from Four Years Inside My Brain


Radnor Station Where the Trees Grow Raucous

Quibbling over colors, patterns
and names of designers; banging
on neighboring rooftops; shouting
"shush" at the tops of their voices


A Little Too Much Reality (Day)

In every direction it's the same damn thing so
We close our eyes half way to avoid confusion it
Limits the scope and keeps out the sun just
As our hats hold back the sky but
Nothing can hold back the wind even
The cattle get carried away now
There's only the road and the trucks and
The dust and the sky and the sun.


Hidden

Life lies in little gestures
Minor manipulations
Slight adjustments of meaning
Pushing dreams behind your ear
Desire under your collar
And visions back up your sleeve.
Subtlety binds forever.


Two Things Susan Pierce Said Comma Reflections On

I am thankful for the knowing
And the being known
For communities of love without
Fear and people without closets for the being of my self
And the self of my being most recently discovered and still
Discovering for friends who see me, poet,
Artist, voyeur, and dancing queen, programmer, activist, writer, and
Story-teller, every man, woman and child within me, within The Body, the Word
Made flesh, the Christ, the Logos, the all knowing incarnate
I am thankful for suspicion, for revelation, in small
Actions and sudden impulses made whole
Again
As God Intended.


Park Bench Temptation

To lie in state each flake
A monument to mourning's morning
Frozen into night and each next day
To follow shrouded white on white
All variation learned
In sharing of free radicals


One side is ever

turned from the camera
but life is lived in
three hundred sixty
degrees and a week
confined with strangers
exposes captive
imaginations
once unlimited
to finger painting
the sunrise with fruit.


Linguistic Dilemma

"Intoxicatingness" is
unfortunately not an
official word even though
it would look good used in a
sentence like a craftily
crafted self-referential
response to "your craftiness."


Attracting God With An Internet Personal

What hour is appropriate
For water to become wine
For Christ to be revealed
For liberation poured out
on those already drunk but
still needing to control time?
Cana is here and always.


Lunch on the Serengeti

Rittenhouse Square has outlived
a million fractured minds green
peace of visible structure
civilized vegetation
reaching aloof past the past's
playful violence leaves resolve
for the madness of the hunt


Counter Obsession

There is a certainty in socks,
feet enclosed, hidden, attached.
Drifting off, my own left bare,
I contemplate you sleeping
snugly, warmly, in all this
endless Summer, little else
or nothing material.


Queen Street West

Revolution thrives
along the streetcar
tracks purposed people
doing themselves and
being each other
fighting shop to shop back to naked back
for insanity
with art depraved hope
dances in my soul


Found

Suddenly with welcome force
pacing my open question
door raw need cannot constrain
each step another meaning
bantered as though words will end
again again again and
close impossibility.


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Home    Philadelphia Public Art @ philart.net
226 Press    Twelve Poems for the Web    Poetry Book Reviews
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