The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
The Apophyllitic Crinkle Quenched

Each firmly planted footfall crackles the powder
to a mirror finish fusing sleet mica sheets to pearls
shucked by each stabbing knife choice upon which
the marble altar slab tilts into fractures propagating
two hands held out concavely cuddling the possibilities
while the gallow moment gavels yet another cleavage
leaving behind a blanket of sparkling reflections crushed
to a disinterestedly druzy opalescence shimmering with
tears counting each lost love with a play of fire quenched
the eulogy lilting like an aurora silently illuminating 
the constellations into beloved ancestors re-embraced
the soul gapes with aweful wonder amid the pantheon dream
corpus lost to angelic dissipation, a sacred commingling
shaking the sorrowfully slumbering into a mystic trancescape
joy just for a little while until there is no more psalm to say
awakening at the center of a lake iced over with clarity
no breath to molest the balance miraculously perseverating
swaddled between the guardians and the barnyard held at bay
a single point shining upon three gifts openly inherited
pandora's menorah, a gilded lily, and the silver oud of fabergé.

For our days dim to lampblack as our oilier years burn by
our chosen womb still distended with eaten eye apples 
our otherworldly reflection framed in long argentine strokes
while our last coil of myrrh memories completes its spiral 
two shoulders held against the wheel of time splintering
under the glacial advance of a last lived winter
past the gale and flail of younger clinging rebellions
lost and accepted as judgment grown over the abandoned
outpost where the hermit steals into the night unnoticed
to sing of the denuded to the frilled moon fairies 
and whatever wildlife has made it this far into the
temporal wilderness that surrounds the solitary campfire
whose warmth grants another breath to stay or linger
so eyes so pitted with craters may draw yet another page
with crayon stumps that have lost their courage and color 
scrawling edgy lines of dreamed charcoal to conjure 
lost visages so sorrow may lie still and quenched 
against the dappled night sky's glittering turn 
yearn yields its narrowness to the brilliance of balance 
and gaze forgets its boundaried play to heaven learn.
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