Bats

by Lisa Marguerite Mora

I could go mad with the onslaught of words, syntax and verbiage 

borders my psyche, lays crouched and cramped, seamed in the lining of my heart

like a million birth creatures.

Bountiful, un-beauteous bats hang in those chambers, sleeping a lifetime of darkness, 

waiting for the yes!

that is light, the light that is, go!

That pineal property waits for crepuscular comfort, a correct combination

of time untombed and space unhooked

from the limit that is earth.

Unbound, unhinged, unloved and somnolent, unlike the tiny green that slumbers 

and sleeps under sleet and perennial parentage.

They have slept the sleep of the dead and waken not to the rising fire of the sun

but to slow, floating silver in a still sea.

Cool, lunar ancient mother, perfidious and changeable 

to those who worship the flaming light.

One must learn her ways.

Not a wayward wanderer but one who waits, waxen and wanes 

with what she would have us know, what she would speak to me who has waited

in the long, bruised shadows of dark and hid from a rude and pompous light.

I do not wrestle with flaming angels.

Vigilant night, you lay down the velvet carpet and knew, here only, in silver twilight 

between the known and the knowing

words will writhe, stretch and suffer

into however meager

a meaning. 

* * * * *

"Bats" was originally published by Peck Rd. Magazine in a slightly different form.

Lisa Marguerite Mora has had work published and forthcoming in Rattle, ONTHEBUS, Rebelle Society, The Urban Howl, Cultural Weekly, Public Poetry Series, Literary Mama, and California Quarterly, among many others. Included is a Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Prize and in 2017 she tied First Place for Dandelion Press Micro Fiction Contest which features the fine art of Lori Preusch. Her first novel is being read by agents and she is at work on a second. Lisa studied with author Carolyn See at UCLA where she received a Bachelors in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis. A story editor and consultant, she also conducts creative writing workshops in the Los Angeles area. You can find her at either BarringtonEditorial.com or LisaMargueriteMora.com. Her blog is http://thewordsmithmagic.tumblr.com/