Works by Robert Klein Engler

All rights are retained by Mr. Engler. 
For futher information,
please contact him at:
alaphabpres@aol.com  

They posture with tattoos and bellies bare.
There's one whose pierced and baby tongue sticks out.
Others seem to read or sleep but mainly stare.
So hey, like what's the problem man, chill out.
What matters here is not a broken heart,
Or fetid tunnels drilled into the dark,
What matters is that they abuse their part
And make for looking's sake their only art.
The slave ships find a new Sargasso Sea
And need not centuries for destiny.
Right now the self denies its dignity.
Just look, here are the slaves of looking free!
That pose will damn the soul, my friend,
To image is an image without end...

We see them at the concert hall in their box seats before the music starts, all animated and gesturing to this blond or that young man, full of themself and their station; but then the melody begins, so they turn away from bright eyes to hold their hands in their lap, drowning inward, shrinking like a raisin, and forced to dwell alone with the hemorrhoids of their deeds.

Outside my window the allied trees
realize light increases - it is time again
to unwind the first green gauze of leaves.

These trees have been steadfast all winter,
and welcome now the slow stretching
to bloom that tingles with the unfolding of buds.
It is like the brush of lips that press a kiss.

Those recent lovers who hold their children,
or the couples I see in the park, who look into
one another's eyes and cannot curb
the upward pull of water - see, they, too, are
unfolding the concerns of the world in their
bodies as the scripture of flesh breaks into wounds.
They are not yet poised for the memorial of poems.

I assume my mother knows a thaw in the other
world as well.  Her house of few rooms,
where she lives with a guardian angel
and grows toward perfection, faces crystal 
trees that likewise bloom into glycerin syrup.
This is her proof she was never forsaken.

And those alone, whose breathless chance it is
to read the prophecy of leaves and the imperceptible
night swelling of flowers, they, too, part their lips.
A history of mistakes and broken hearts repairs.
How useless to be afraid now - speak then, of what
comes and goes and of the dark necessity of buds.
Proffer words like petals to fill our empty bowls.