Henry Stanton is a painter and a writer of poetry and fiction with a studio in Old Ellicott City, Maryland.  His paintings, poems and fiction have appeared widely in print and online journals– most recently in Closed Eye Open, Door in The Floor, High Shelf Press, Poets Espresso Review and Tiny Seed Journal.  His most recent published books include Moonbird, published by Cathexis Northwest Press and The Reluctant Spirit published by Holy & Intoxicated Press.  The Way Thru, a book of poems, and The River of What Was, a book of short stories, are scheduled to be published in 2022.  A selection of paintings, poetry and fiction can be found at  www.brightportfal.com. 

underside

your blue-black skin shines and you never age
be through the dream through the dream
you sigh into my ear as you settle down over me
i will blanket you so you lose your mind 
you who thought you had become the one you are
instead you are under me now pressed
you whisper away your will
go to sleep now
moan

the slow steady rhythm of your undoing
its rise its fall bellows
as you spread out and dilute yourself beneath me
breathe finally so you are spent.

We dissolve the will we dissolve it straddling agony and pleasure,
here in the pale womb of the moon 
two primary colors collide,
combine into some new gloaming,
this room is suffused with its limited palette.
,
There 
the darkness in the room’s corner shines out with it;
radiant something someone that is large
bulging 

chant we lie together we live together chant
forget about the rest of your loved ones who swell
forget their menacing 
expansion

I promise you

they do not need you anymore.

HOW TO STEAL FROM RICH PEOPLE

Intoxicate yourself with purpose
and leave drunken from
their huge and brilliant puny house at night. 
Leave it behind.
Abandon
all sparkling fluids the musical insane laughter shimmering gowns 
that clinging.
Back there, 
behind in the spinning room 
what remains of who you were.
Follow the path to the retreating beach.
Look the moon in its brilliant eye! 
It buries itself in the ocean depths and remembers.
Remember who you are: 
What remains what memory the swirling foam 
Drowning.
Give it all away.
Sink to that love rise to that terror
and repeat again 
a fleeting life in dreams.

FEVER TREE

The intrinsic longing in a dog's blacklipped grimace
and in her ecstatic rolling.
These luminous animal expressions flutter down 
in a sky that is raining jaguars.
And the limpid tones of this edgeforest voice.
To be quivering dark shadow that thrums
among the luster of bright leaves.

The meadow listens when it feels the thunder coming.
Storm.
Urge.  
Across the black bow of the river roaming,
it is the night of treesway.
Out there a god chants and twirls around
and the moth clatters in a distant lantern.

I keep searching for you. 
I keep finding you again,
budding at night in the same wideopen field.

There is not a single particle of you that repulses me never.
I am always attracted always.
How do I keep losing you?
How do I find you?

A shadow burns out across all those fields.