The disaster in me

Gasp

gusty winds aloft

Tremble

strings of faulty nerves

Flooded

emotional levee buckles

damned

storm

surges

Quaking knees

collapse

Heat waves

carried by ripping currents

that pull me deeper

nearer

the purple flame

Fire

accelerated

I am a natural disaster.

Image by Leonardo da Vinci, 1517-1518, Natural Disaster [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Light cycle

The scalding star
                      bursting in beams
gives way, in due time
                      Tho not without a heated conflict
our only satellite set on high
                     sending signals where no one
can hide from the wrath and the aftermath

Both positions be known
                      observed and heeded
the dynamic cycle, black and white
                      from day to night
the changing of Our guards

who compose the length of our sentence                    
wardens we watch back.




Image by Henri Théophile Hildibrand [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The dragonflies of August

And yet
how quickly we forget
that which are not ours
suspended outside of us
that snare our sound
held steady by a spell
we dutifully await
notice, complimenting
the color red.

Remembering something splendid
August by name, summer sprawlers
when warriorflies meet damselflies
nymphs and naiads
jolt in the sun propelling
in omnidirectional ambivalence
the hunted pauses in quiescence.

A blue clasher notes
royalty indigo with glints
of visual vibrations
that absorb you whole
by natural odonate order
of kindred carnivore.

In prismatic charisma
of holographic hovering
a resurrection of still
Sublime observers
primal movers of seasons
they have valid reasons
survival breeds
tellurian tenerals
that travel through time
unnoticed
by worm hole
defining translucence
to trapped terrestrials
helping us
recollect
our defected
their perfected
Augustine animus.



Image by By Jon Sullivan [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Collecting words from the bone pile

The Three Oddest Words

By Wislawa Szymborska

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh,

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996

__________________________________________________________________________________

 Italo Calvino on Quickness-

"Words, words that make me think. Because I am not devoted to aimless wandering, I'd rather say that I prefer to entrust myself to the straight line, in the hope that the line will continue into infinity, making me unreachable. I prefer to calculate at length the trajectory of my flight, expecting that I will be able to launch myself like an arrow and disappear over the horizon. Or else, if too many obstacles bar my way, to calculate the series of rectilinear segments that will lead me out of the labyrinth as quickly as possible."

From Six Memos for the Next Six Memos for the next Millennium

 

Imagine words being 

disembodied

from their inky chambers

in confinement

of a stroke on whim

Words set free from

the constriction

of definition

trapped 

by convictions

Language as folk lore

posing as apparitions

opaque and outside

ourselves

a resemblance

While we wrestle with gravity

Here

Words are grappling with reality

Now

Set against 

the woven fabric canvas

of our chance encounters

in perpetuity

strokes on a whim

I get the impression

of vibrant color on a white day

either way

A container to store ecstasy

dripping down

and running

to meaning 

we para phrase

artfully appraise

Concentrate as you read

these words you may need

inside your head

with your minds i

while standing beside

ourselves

in

nirvana

projecting 

maniacal mana

Leaning on clouds

we rely

on coming to a compromise

in order to see 

shapes as symbols, like these

metaphors

thirsty for more

than thin air

An impression

a sense 

of being

with words

we try to share

interchangeable

synonyms

thereby

invoking and provoking

a sense of continuity

An encyclopedic

orthopedic

selfsame essence

Words are the

people pith

that make-up

our masterful myth.

Image by Gerard de Lairesse, 1690 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The early bird on the horizon line

A line
           is thrown out...there
A line is
           connection of the dots
           summarized by stretching spheres
lined up
like ducks
cluck clucking
in a row
Row,
row your boat by
                            parallel plotter
                                                   navigating the stream
                                                 
Tow the line
                    holding by a lifeline
                                                    hiking the EKG
Wait
        in line
wait for it
               carried down the line
               a vibration
               a sensation
                                 The Ripple-
                                    -r-i-p-p-l-e-
                                         effect
a lure lingers on the line
                                  barbed edges await
                                                                 an inevitable lineal fate
a direction
                 to take
                 to make
out side the lines
                            a circle of infinity
keeps out
               traps in, depending on where you begin
a snap is shot,
                     tracing the trajectory
                                                     tightening the arrow
in array
A line
          a single point of origin
                                              genetically tangled
entwined in limpid lineage
by dates and fates
                             times arrow
                                               on a string
A line we follow to the T
A line we cannot see
A line we fall for
hook
line
and
sinker
The line is cast
we are the worm.



Image by William Blake [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, from Jerusalem-Plate 78.
                                 

Half the battle

I know
we know more
than we know we know

I know
knowledge is power
when acknowledging our weaknesses

I know
to not know
is knowing more than nothing

Nobody knows
the potential possible
when getting to know someone

Nobody knows
all there is
to know about anything

Ever

Nobody knows
what you know
I know
you
never
know

I don't know
anybody
like
I know
you.



Image of painting by By John Henry Henshall, Thoughts, 1883[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

i contact

i want to be alone with you,
she said
her lips were puckered
but she made no sound.

It has been
so long
since you're looked me in the eyes
and meant it.

You've changed
is it Time

What has come
between us,

she said touching the icy mirror.




Image of portrait (color plate) By George Eastman House from Rochester, NY, United States [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

What may be

We learn what
maybe means early
an intro to possibility
when taught to ask if we may
and not if we can.

We meet our will
timidly at first
with a
might

Maybe hovers between
Yes and No
not asking for direction
but offering two views
if you can conceive
per chance
each opportunity
is another
may be

Mightn't maybe
lean a little
towards
sometimes
now and again
in between was and is
are and am
evermore and anon
what may be

No, not now.
Maybe
Later the chance passed
Some time
asking is the action
moving from may and will
be
willing to move
inside the ing
of Being
just maybe.

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” William Shakespeare

Image By Theodor von Holst (http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/op77.rap.html) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sweltering in suburbia

He is winding his cobra hose
into a giant pot
it knows the way
and conforms to its coiled state

He checks his wrist
as the Cross's sprinklers cough and sputter
erupting in four corner rainbows
just for the latch key cat to see

Beads of sweat match the dew
as he knits his brow

She buses the kitchen
tidies and tucks, neatens and preens
applies her costume makeup
before choking herself with cultured pearls

She grabs the knife noting the missing
empty vase, with a handheld guillotine
poppy heads will roll, the daisies do nothing
and the hydrangea trembled in sweet defeat

Her paper mache skin tears on a thorn
nearby, she sucks up her own sap

Somewhere a horn blares
two trumpets picks up the pace,
accordions shuffle along
a guiatrrón leads the falsetto

Her heels dig into the Bermuda sod
as the peeks through the fence, tipping her toes.
An entire expanse of brown earth contrasts
the blue-white linen in milk chocolate hands.

The thick brick woman on the other side
pins and shuffles along a line, barefoot
a little dog prances and pops at her feet
carne roasting wafts in the wimpy wind

As she moves along, some are dry already
pressed and flat, stiff without starch
same as paper doll clothes with foldover tabs
her yellow tooth sweat stains circle her silk pits

Night and day
they do not say
or share a word

Next door
the paint has given up on its tone
the grass doesn't bear fruit, or wishes
laundry is pressing itself in midair

The Senorita hums and smiles blindly
Blanca sighs and tries being kindly
An alien in her own skin
not knowing how to begin
a new accord.

Escaping from the scalding sun,
Blanca goes back inside to hide
The Senorita stays 'til done
her side wafts with pride.

“El que más temprano se moja, más tiempo tiene para secarse.”

He who gets wet earliest has the most time to dry.

Image of painting by William Aiken Walker (1839-1921) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A poem weaves to night

There was a little poem
who lived in the Land of Language.
He went about his daily deeds and duties,
somewhat similar to yours and mine
as makers of our days and ways,
in pursuit of a perfect pleasure craft.

The little poem moved along,
one step at a time,
like you and I,
but on legs of eight,
which Occidentally caught the light,
sometimes,
like lines
(except not an octet).

He worked alone and in the dark,
the little poems eyes adjusted and accustomed
this way, preferring this process,
hiding himself during the day when others are out and about
and get in his way, breaking the connections-
concentration of the grand design in his mind.

Relentless still,
the little poem weaved his words all night,
starting over, adding on, redesigning
his cozy mental matrix
made for suicide moths drawn to
the light.
Blinded with sight,
blocking out the newest sign
a reinvented lyric, a trap in translation.

Lost in Confusion,
stalled and flailing-
signals are sent, along these lines,
the little poem reads the notes,
gathers and wraps more than needed
the little poem stashes his words
for other webs to weave
spinning their marrow
for a tomorrow
he never saw.


Image By: Luc Viatour [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Taking in the Aether & the Higgs Ocean view

You see
             the problem is:
I need someone to help me figure out-
or to talk to,
theoretically,
hypothetically
(poetically)
I muse
in a place
I cannot quite describe
I will not come near
being able to show you
the particles
flying and suspended
suffocating the air with the dots
of the question mark,
Specks
they're sometimes called

I see them flying in the air
suffocating and thick against each other
compelled, repelled, forced and willing
mixing cosmic stew, stars colliding
thick with dark matter
Sometimes
I could choke
on the chunks of thick loneliness
attractive pollution, vaporous resolution
the pressure we place
on a black hole, I feel
                                    my heart exploding
in symmetry                with infinity

You see
these words
this world
-what's the matter?
the anti-matter and all that allusion
the illusion said of what should
particularly
not see

I feel them touching me
like gravity-a weak force
but you're not floating away
                                             from me yet
                                                                 just expanding your magnitude
So how do I show
that I know
                  the connection-in reflection-
the theories of strings beyond beings
staff that carry the notes
                                      that fall on deaf ears
like blind stars
like us
who would rather
Not see
the day come of the dying sun
with no one
to talk to
but someone not looking
and
saw it too.


Image By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Image taken by ROSAT shows confined hot gas captured via X-ray providing evidence that the gravity exerted in groups and clusters of galaxies is attributed to dark matter. 

Simple Syrup: In-gradients

Most simply, Love tells

Us we are not the center

of the Universe.


Heart and Soul nebulae
Image By NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA (WISE) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A poem w/out words

?

...

!

Shhhh

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

/\

Amen

♫

↓

↓

kerplunk

☼ + ♦

Ω

♥ ∞°

click.

  "No amount of wordy explanations will ever lead us into the nature of our own selves. The more you explain, the further it runs away from you. It is like trying to get hold of your own shadow."-D.T. Suzuki

Image By CopyrightFreePhotos CopyrightFreePhotos.HQ101.com (Own work by uploader [1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Things we take for granite

Walking by a pile of ordinary granite
my daughter noticed a glimmer.
Delighted with the sparkly sight,
she asked me why it shone so,
It's just DG, I said plainly,
So, you don't know,
she replied rhetorically.

I too remember when
the world was more than real
you could feel the newly forming
foundations building up
under you, from deep inside
your hot energetic core
spreading slowly like land
determined and undeterred
not oblivious and permeable
nor in the hurry of water
its mad dash with a splash
molten rock chooses to ooze instead
I remember a time
when steam jets barely cooled our fires
and together we tamed the wild world,
before us digging up and burying forevermore
weary from moving around in endless Revolutions
We finally settled.

Like throwing pepper around the perimeter
so pedestrian people wont notice
tremors of short fused attentions
unable to make the connection, cross the bridge
to take the leap, to draw a rough line,
to reconnect
the connection of
the extra and ordinary.

From leading edges, subdued and stable
the matrix locks its labyrinth
in the basement
of continental islands.
Granite is there.
Unanimously equigranular,
metamorphically unique,
on this marble rolling
in concrete space.

Catching the light just right
the quartz and phenocrysts insist
on throwing off latent sparks;
like kindled memories of plutonic days
mingled in potassium feldspar rays
streaked pink with passion
the blushing boulders
pushed by Sisyphus
eternally carry us forward
as though not moving a pebble,
or grain, or granule, granum, granite
swallowing our diamonds along the way
decomposing
and eroding
molding
the upper crust
down to
their carbon core.

One should never ignore
the things we take for granite.



Image by Halvard Hatlen (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Of Men Making Magic

Killing witches did nothing
for Satan's side
Jail is not the auditorium
where Gods cheerleaders
throw their pom-poms around;
spitwads bounce off the moral walls
poking holes in the purgatorium.

Across the tracks the church is full
by now book club fans discuss theoreticals,
hypotheticals, troubadours spin shiny cups and
card tricks, knowing every card stacked
in your deck
making deals,
the full house faces are flushed
out of the heat, in sweet retreat.

In World War We All (mostly) agree
its purpose is based on property
and perceived utility all the while
Heaven becomes swarmed with infantry,
infiltrated and besieged by Heroes
overthrown by horrors and darkness.
Military men like barter chips
that crumble through the slit
the hourglass of invention
that contains all your broken
bones
ashes
Was
When
 On that grave
forever day
a clump, a stall,
not a grain did fall
God noticed
and did nothing;
graciously watching as We
built molehills into mountains
that crumble back into the Sea.
God was content
with this practice in futility
feckless and spinning silently.

"The Forties
and in the desert cold men invented the star." -Franz Wright


Image of painting by Gerrit Dou [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Newton's Bucket

a Doppler in the

bucket is worth more than a

Sea of Predictions

Anchors cut by angels

“O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.” -Pindar Pythian lii

I believe in little angels
                            although,
not those in Dante's Divine version
                            yet we all understand his grand design
poetry left letters lynched, hanging in his story.

I believe in angels
                           that are not molded from mortality
but leave tangible gifts
                           treasures we didn't know we wanted
like uncoveted luck.

I believe in bantam angels
                           that drop hints
and lift eyelids
                           shift the butterfly in flight
while waltzing with the wind.

I believe in angels
                           not as conspirators, or muses
I am not one of those poets, that would be insane
                           those who claim to hear voices
I believe in angels
                           that leave language to loons
whose call I understand, just as planned
                           like destiny's low decibel note
I believe in angels
                           that make time
to rescue, rally, recover, ruin, redeem, reiterate
                          remind us of what we must have known
already.

I believe the angels are our audience
                          listening to our poetry
reciting their favorite parts
                          while waiting for tides to turn.

Faith: “…a silent waiting on the truth, pure sitting and breathing in the presence of the question mark.”-Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury 

Image of painting by William Closson (1883-1978) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Plotting the Plantation

Held and read like palms,

written in red like psalms,

personalized in position

of coded clusters

Veins of maria

detail in maps, contrails of sap

stuck nectaring in the sun

whose broken plates and scalded edges

curl and unfurl-still

stoic in strength

preserves like

potpourri pieces

Sweet sips of dew

drunken and imbibed by steaming few

white or black; young and new

a bouquet made of today

under another ray that bows

and prays

kneeling and knowing

its character (in) profile

A silhouette caught in line

at the heavy end, pushed out

protruded

where the maker meets me

plucked and parched

licking lips

in salvation

...just a camellia waiting to be

a spot of tea.

Image By Melanurya (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Location Tea Plantation in Southern India.

Versmilitude

I have 3,463 reasons
to hate me
as seen through the spectacled
looking glass
learning pupils of others eyes
believing in
All truth be told

From inside the fishbowl
a ripple effect goes nowhere
waves of distortion
roll by in wakes
blown out of proportion

To see is to know
What you Do shows
I suppose
better than what you Are...
barely there
thin as a rail
hardly frail
by contrast
and that pale glow
(if you would like to know)
ghostly ashen skin
is not so thin.

Deemed some dame or debutante
with nothing to flaunt
talent, imbalance,
withstanding-
Despite the empathetic understanding
I squeezed into the mold
(as I was told)
now my metallic blood runs steely cold.

I tremble
at your thoughts of me
and the terrible what nots you see
that I cannot spot
any resemblances.

A two-way mirror
absorbs one reflection
shattering a reality
piercing in severe observation
a practice in futility
noticing the nothings
lacking depth perception
merely a dimension of what
you thought you saw
was me
was you too.



Image Guillaume Bodinier [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. (Confession c. 1826).