Lost Patrol
By Paul Cameron Brown
Blue walls were grottoes,
subterranean panels
for covert messages, the
occasional mot juste
squirrelled up thru paint & memory.
Something like guitar strings dangling
only you employed
tear sheets from Rolling Stone
(counter-culture fly paper
to catch the runny masses).
The blue walls existed as
firing ranges, gunpowder
plots for ideas scribbled
on pencil waves
like the movement
of snakes (or commandoes
on their bellies) thru
desert sand.
Blue walls. Blue grottoes.
Blue moods to temper finger oases
(tap-tap of skeletal tree on your window pane)
crawling thick with pregnant fruition
with the bayonet lull of words.
Snippets of that legacy (hobnailed like a
lost patrol)
forlorn as yellowing pages
or dusky petals unfolding.