Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Revelations


Some days
                  I see everything
just
                  as it should be
Grateful that the sun blazes
                 safely so far away
Lucky that the moon is so close by
                 and I still cannot feel
my own heart beat
                 or sense the spin,
a feeling of reeling along
at more than fourteen miles
                                   per minute
still.

How far
                I've come and gone
making a present of the past
pulled into others gravity
and laced in fine ribbons
                of harmony.


Most days
it seems blinking and breath
                                  proceed without
preference-
                                  all the same
never was needed nor noticed
how it all blends together
                                 by degrees
always perfection
                                 in reflection
just
Today
I said
It has never been Up to blue,
It was
Always red.





Painting By Otto Freundlich [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Mars 20/20


In collaboration with private and public agencies
-contingencies aside-
a head of schedule was announced
slating the date
for merely five years a way-not (be) four
(hundred million miles)
We are ready, and some of us will be
by twenty-twenty
what will we see
that we have not conceived
on earth
since the birth of humanity?



Photo credit By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, Mars by Mars Observer.

Go figure


3 years
52 classes
787 poems
11 unfinished stories
2 books being written
a half a million words
51 friends
1 family
36 no's
5 yeses
umpteen guesses
2 cats, 2 libraries
900 pigeon
3,000 circles
0 dollars earned
30 IQ points gained
some total
always carry the one
before
the sentence ends.



Image By Yoichi R. (Yoichi Robert) Okamoto, 1915-, Photographer (NARA record: 2987665) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.THE PHYSICS AND MATH LIBRARY OF THE RUDER BOSKOVIC INSTITUTE.

Back-up luck


Writers are superstitious-so are baseball players and tight rope walkers-
I'm not sure about astronauts or politicians...
Dreams are more important to writers than waiters-who are waiting to live their dream.
In reality most dreams are forgotten upon waking.
In the wake of a bad dream, I had a premonition all my poems
were gone, like eggs-hatchlings left in one coop
and really-this has happened to me twice before yet this dream disturbed me more.
I said something about it aloud-if you are superstitious you know this is not allowed.
Forced to act, I reacted in duplicate, making copies, I saved, re-visited and barely recognized
them as all mine.
When I had the thousand stacked up by grandiose
subject and sorted by type-
humanity looms tall over the rest,
space, time, love, humor, in proper tributary, in reaction and reflection-
the poets of yesteryears would have stacked up much differently.
Most poets, historically consumed by cult are exhumed for love and above all
to reclimb the Fall over towering babble
and the wild will of the west, toppled progress and drowning in duties.
This humanity trods heavily, the paper rises, trees topple
and as if in a dream the poems scream of dying desire,
the death of discovery, the final resource, of course a corpse of work, ashes to dust, toil and rubble without troubling to wake for the passing of people that speak in poetry, or the writers that were right all along these same lines.




Image By Henning Söderhjelm [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Photograph of the Finnish writer Lenning Söderhjelm (1888–1967).

curiosity can


curiosity can go either way
wonder travels in all directions
faster than a photon
ideas originate outside ourselves
glimmers are reflections
through privacy glass
we would never want
knowing more is growing
anyway-
We, curious creatures
risk all to know some
more.


Photo By National Library of Ireland on The Commons (The Curious Alsatian) [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Opposing forces


Stopping is an ongoing resistance
as is suppression in constant suspension
which needs us more than keeping the flow
with a little observance gains new speed
relative to the distance from the object of desire.
I admire this tenacity
I'll come around the other side
and you will know I've let go.

Image (rendering) By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, magnetic field of Earth. 

All you can eat


All the pieces have been rationed out
and crumbs sustain me.

I remain seated after all are done,
awaiting my excuse.

The lights have long dimmed
and all voices echo over themselves.

A faint trace of repast and laundry
hangs atop the resting air.

The candle flame belly dances lasciviously
low and full.

In jest, the world smelt a silver platter,
lining up and leaving a generous tip.

I count cents,
I keep my change
ingesting the feastful rest.

Painting by Monogrammist Hb. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Left field of vision


It is in the lower left quadrant
between six and nine
there is nothing to see...

There are some occurrences
that demand no specific attention
ceramic crackles
just as our fault lines do
blur, widen and fall.

Most people fill in the blank spaces-
I always assume half empty is totally open
(this leaves room for more)...




Image Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas [CC BY-SA 3.0 or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Saying sorry doesn't help


My apologies
for the backwards way
we must lose before we gain
understanding
what we had
was good
and gone
evermore.

I am so sorry
you miss
the good old days
when we didn't know better
was brand spankin' new
coveting those thingamajigs
and do-hickeys
that distract.

In fact my sincerest,
condolences
are merely subatomic.

Again, my apologies
for keeping quiet
all to myself
when words were used
as light for color
reflecting more
off a wave
than a particle
can potentially be
nevermore
than sorry.


Painting via Internet Archive Book Images, 1911 [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

quin


Quintessentially
being, me, sole-fully
keeping five alive.




Painting By Victor Dubreuil (1846 - 1946) (American) Five dollar bill circa 1885 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Muted Miranda


It is clear
we are obscure.

You can relax.
It is right to let it go-
and by the way,
you never had control
autonomously anyway.

Listen,
I know you hear
the same eerie prophecy,
drowned in echoed epiphanies,
or floating on fantasies
of everlasting
We Were Here
dwelling in fear
and drawing it out
by quarters
intones.

Why we comply-
we know not
everything was true.

All will pass
all the same
as though
blue were something
new-yet there is nothing
we can do
but witness.

We have the right
to remain silent
left behind an
afterthought
with guilt
by association
lurking alone
for the safety of Others.



Painting By Pompeo Molmenti (1819-1894), The Arrest of Filippo Calendario, 1874 (FineArtAmerica) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Seeing spot(light)s


The dawn gave us Time
enough for our eyes to adjust
by dilation and securely
put away our Imagination.

Still, we can rely on the day
which washes out
lines in shadow,
and though
we act like we know
how it will go
down
in lumens and lux
by observing magnitudes
we are too tiny to see.

When the sun comes up,
let us pretend
it has never been
done before
this way
we can see
All
the stars
conceivably.



Photo credit: By NASA/JPL (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA00576.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Detail via Wikimedia: A Martian sunrise was captured in this Viking 2 Lander picture taken June 14, 1978, at the spacecraft's Utopia Planitia landing site. The data composing this image were acquired just as the Sun peaked over the horizon on the Lander's 631st sol (Martian solar day). Pictures taken at dawn (or dusk) are quite dark except where the sky is brightened above the Sun's position. The glow in the sky results as light from the Sun is scattered and preferentially absorbed by tiny particles of dust and ice in the atmosphere. When the Viking cameras are calibrated for darker scenes, the "sky glow" tends to saturate their sensitivity and produce the bright regions seen here. The "banding" and color separation effects are also artifacts, rather than real features, and are introduced because the cameras are not able to record continuous gradations of light. The cameras must represent such gradations in steps (bands) of brightness and color, and the process sometimes produces some "false" colors within the bands. The scattering of light closest to the Sun's position tends to enhance blue wavelengths. The narrowing sky glow nearer the horizon above the Sun's position occurs as a result of light extinction. At that elevation, the optical path of sunlight through the atmosphere is at its longest penetration angle, and a substantial portion of the light is simply prevented from reaching the cameras by the dust, ice particles and other material in its way.

Monday, July 4, 2016

The mana of the fauna


Gaia is my locale,
Terra is my terrain
Inside this
aqueous bubble
flora flourishes
thick and suspended amid
the primordial brew.
This is my realm-
while I am at the helm
I am in my house,
an island broken free.
The sky is not too far away,
a ceiling just out of reach.
On the tip of my fingers,
on the tip of my tongue
I taste the expression
Home sweet Home
and am parched
waiting by the door.




Image By en:Gerard van Schagen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. World map c. 1689.

Smoke break


Smoldering smoke stacks from the monsters house
lie dormant and unmoved 
by the coastal swells
salt-water-air-swirls and slaps hand-to-hand
standing stoic and ionic.

Meanwhile July seethes
and pores drink up
like lungs,
exchanging into why
wait-Take in a deep drag
of volcanic Venus vapor,
letting off summer steam
the kettle screams black sky.




Image by Alfred T. Palmer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

As the crow flies

On still days with drooping flags and contented leaves Sounds somehow soaked in between the crevices of broad daylight I sit as still as my ...