Free falling with a gasping, gurgling crash,
reborn each second in mighty languor,
a stretched out sheet of water, both confident and brash,
invisibly scraping the rocks in frothy anger,
You echo the wounded giant’s sound,
as selfie-taking crowds size you up in wonder,
desperate to cage you in, a howling hound,
taking your blithe murmurs for Zeus’ long-lost thunder.
Floating in the shadow of your glory,
lost in joy, my messy ego turned to clear, viscous jelly,
a leased skeleton with a finite story,
I tremble in darkness as dawn dances in my aching belly.
Source: David Mandler’s Blog
© David Mandler
July 27th, 2018, Niagara Falls, Canada
(Revised on August 1, 2018 in Brooklyn, New York)
David Mandler earned his Bachelor’s degree in English and French from Brooklyn College (1996) and subsequently completed the M.A./Ph.D. program in English and American Literature at New York University (2005). He has since authored a number of scholarly articles as well as a critically acclaimed book entitled Arminius Vambéry and the British Empire: Between East and West (2016), which also appeared in Hungarian translation in 2014. His other published writings include articles in “The Budapest Times,” book reviews in “Hungarian Cultural Studies” and a short story called “The Loft” available on amazon.com. For a decade, Dr. Mandler taught English literature and writing courses at Touro College. He taught at The Baccalaureate School for Global Education for three years before joining Stuyvesant High School in 2010 where he teaches English literature.
***Click on Follow on http://www.amazon.com/author/davidmandler for new release updates. You may also follow me on twitter @MandlerDr. I’d love to hear from you! Please let me know what you think of this poem (how you read it) and if you’d be interested in reading more of my poetry. A collection of poems (many of them totally different from this rather formal, stylized one) is in the works.