Casey Holman - One Poem

Roseville

Paper moths draw to your flame,
Beating their freckled wings
With amateur and earnest ardor
Until dazed and discombobulated, they fall away,
Questioning words spoken by their hearts,
The impulses that enticed them to your uncommon illusion

Spirits like wine, dark and well-humored,
Fabricate a man who spins guile in golden thread
To snare the senses
Of those vulnerable postulates, susceptible to the innate, rootless beauty
Shining from your shuttered eyes,
Forever warmed by the piece of sun concealed in your soul

Hidden with the rest of you,
Your permissive dichotomy of complex splendor and simplicity
Inspiring avarice with its passion for life and lust,
Leaving in its wake destructive, prehistoric cravings long left dormant
A part of your coaxing, beckoning nature
Still standing segregated, closed to those that might scale your
impregnable walls.

Vibrant trickster,
The world stands ready to adore your wide-living ways,
Your effortless wit and woo calling out to it like a bell in the night
Surely you will never hunger for love,
For it is a commodity given easily in trade,
Merely for your too-immediate smile, ringing with its authenticity

The rarest, most impossible facet of you,
Your irreproachable verity,
The palpability of your incipient spirit
Reaches out to gather unsuspecting onlookers, as strong and evocative
as open palms
Speaking to the secret longings
Of every friend to loneliness grown weary of eternal cynicism

Unintentionally priceless,
Invaluable just the same,
The pull of bounteous treasure too great for a layman’s means of resistance
Your pronounced charm steps into your life, its influence key;
In that, you find common footing
With those who idly dream of sheltering you inside their most furtive,
ciphered selves



Casey Holman is a new kid on the literary block whose work has
previously been published in The Accolade and Verdad magazines.