HAWKELSON RAINIER - POEMS

Hawkelson Rainier lives and works in the American Midwest.  He dabbles in short fiction and poetry during his spare time.  Recently, he started a blog that examines the creative writing process.  You can find it at hawkelsonrainier.com.

​A Procrastinator’s Epiphany

​The whiskey is mellow,
and the hammock sways
almost imperceptibly
as a Southerly breeze delivers
me into an oblivious sleep.
I wake to the screams
of a million Mayflies
in their death throes, and
the wind is out of the
Northeast now, siphoning
the heat from my bones.
 A red Sun has scribbled
 its mad manifesto
 across the ugly world
in serpentine shadows:
I will hold you in orbit, and
you will mark the revolutions. 
Squander these days, or don’t –
I will not remember your name.
Infinities will be devoured
by greater infinities.  Immortality
is an abomination – the gift is
this moment, right now.

​The Yankee Devil Goes to Church

​I’m in the deep South during the dog days,
and the Sun has not been up long, but the heat
 
 is already like a weight pressing last night's whiskey
 out of my pores.
 
I step into the shadow cast by the cross on top of the steeple,
a swath of darkness cut into the searing light.
 
I’m an outsider here, resented for something Sherman did
more than a hundred years before I was born.
 
Old politics, old money, old hate, and I wonder why
I ever came to this place. 
 
Then I see her - tall and tan, wearing a summer dress
that whispers of the sensuality beneath. 
 
She takes my hand and leads me to the cruel oak pews,
to the brittle pages filled with beautiful words
 
I want to believe, but never could,
and never will.

​Op-eds and Obituaries

​He chased an apparition
around The Circus Maximus
of his mind.  It was a shapeshifter,
a lost love, a Rolls-Royce,
it was whatever he believed
happiness might have been
at the moment.
 
He chased it for decades,
for a lifetime, for all he was worth,
until he finally ran it down
and tackled the damned thing.
 
It turned out to be nothing more
than a threadbare flannel shirt
and faded blue jeans stuffed
with yellowed newspaper,
all op-eds and obituaries.
 
“Well, I don’t think that’s fair at all,” he said,
and then he died.