Feather weather

It flew out of my pocket-

                      the white under feathers

                                      floating everywhere

                      in tufts of downy orbs

               aloft and aloof

          making May

all dande-

lion.

The baby birds have begun to bloom,

                      the cats smell them out

                      and bring them home to me

                limp and plucked.

they seem proud,

if I May

speak for felines

looking to chat
                             about lambs and lions.  

Image credit By State Library of New South Wales collection (taken 1945) [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Another recall

Re-collect

a day we had no need

for recall-

Forget that these conveniences can

kill us and attempt execution

indiscriminately making

man’s digital gift

a.k.a., Making lazy

better than ever before.

Back in the old days,

We got what we deserved.

No more or less.

I forget how that worked-

And now we just keep making more justice

and mistakes and give away reason charitably

re-member these feel good moments?

We knew this time, anyways,

Make America Great (Again)

Will kill the dreams

we forget when we wake.

We forgot how to sail. How to re-

Member…

I am too tired to recall

All the ropes and knots.

Image credit based on Detroit, Catalogue J (1901). "418" on negative. Detroit Publishing Co. no. 013177. Gift; State Historical Society of Colorado; 1949City Hall, Milwaukee, Wis.

Characters

One time

We liked stories, truth be told.

Stories about us, about our stories...

And there were so many stories still to be told

in every narrow nook and at the basin of every crevice

Lie motive inside metallic locks, under Persian rugs, in-

between sheetrock walls-

And above all

shapeshifting cumulous clouds-

faces.

There were too many to notice such

sweeping similarities so we let them be

Different, like wings.

One time these stories

entertained us with fancy, charmed us

in emulating everyday escapades.

We recognized someone’s doomed desires

before the ending, catching on, 

like memory and water,

taking its sweet time

reflecting.

One time

We told stories to each other

of the way it was, of the way it will be-

Presenting only the preferred possibilities,

such as happy endings for the good guy or our hero's.

One time we wrote stories

because we could make it up, 

narrating truths seamlessly

into lovely little lives, dressed ghosts under bleached pulp with black eye liner-

awaiting a familiar revival in mirrored eyes.

The stories one time

saved us from the villains, by showing us

what they look like 

as potential suspects-

This way,

we don't step in glass

or cast more curses upon 

one fairys' long, winding tail.

Painting By George Inness (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Still

Still life was a blur

<the streets were still at 3 AM>

whist was little wind

caught calm

in a difference between light

and the eye-

still and coming steady,

yet unsettled between a particle or a point.

Line like a wave, bent along the way

solutions becalm the whitened caps,

allay this urgent need to re-

tranquilize together

and sync without dupes,

to parse with perfection

connections hang on,

to now, never was,

still.

Toward or away,

It fades

once death has taken shape

of a relative theory explaining

why you are 

still

here 

noticing the calm collected

as a safe place.


Painting by Vincent van Gogh, Still life with Quinces (1887-1888) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Two Players

The game is keep away.

If we don’t keep some

For ourselves

We have nothing to lose.

A woman without secrets

Is a blind owl in a neck-brace.

A man without lies

Is a toothless tiger without a straw.

Shall we play

Hide and seek with truth

Which gives itself away

By its shadow?

We could jump rope

Or hop on scotch with one leg

Trying not to fall

First.

You threw the stone
pitched too high
we cannot hear ourselves
without breaking
something.



Image credit By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The difference between a Dream Catcher and a Net

Sabotage is a safety net holding trust,

roughly forgetting the holes.

If thrown a rope,

                          followed by the knotty words

wound upin twisted and twined you'd find,

                                                   Trust Me &

                                                   Brace yourself

against loss of wind.

                                 This body will keep

the soul inside,

Believe where needed, as patches 

so sweetly in red clay

sabotage calls itself Support

and says you may

                            lean comfortably-

this way, 

                            hear the bricks stack up

Briefly before

the windows were all caulked in.

Nobody could tell

if the lights were left on

or if there is anything to eat.

If only we could get through

starvation seems imminent.



Image credit By Nicholls Horace, taken 1914 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

    

(little lumens)

Brilliant (by that)

Bright (as in)

Light, like illumination

Or observation of Other

part and particulars

Also, astronomical atomic accumulations

where we may wonder 

what does the whole say?

Who’s to say-

Brilliance may be,

by relay, a reflection, the radiation

of you in the light,

letting colors concentrate

on more than themselves.

Bountiful or beautiful

from where i

stand

under-

awed and auroral.

Painting By Anna Boberg, Northern lights from North Norway in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Gathering

flock of rounded songbirds fluttering against the lilac sky

become pixels that dance across the plane,

form-u-late, and swirl past

my subdued evening eyes

pulled up

and perusing across the orderly canopies,

whereby I try re-rasterizing cliques, filtering

And see those three floating dots, wee wrens

on the low sagging line-

they are people watching

while the one on the fence

sates himself to one side

where the beetles are bigger

And slower

in the sideways amber light that lays low

And even across the suburban grasses.

I am charmed by the snake that is swallowing its tail

in the blackberry bushes by the blushing day moon.

These two hands begin again. 



Image By D. Dibenski (images.fws.gov ([1])) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ear worms (Annelida aural)

A rare blue stillness awaits me at three
electric sleep and low idle
hums

This scissored presence moves
closed and blunt
under roof, between walls,
muffled in cotton

picking
up soft words, I sort them,
line up and accumulate these
in stacked strips

with varying lengths-All
leaning against the left
alone

to translate for the birds
already practicing
their mock speeches and weighing the scales

like me, less
to say, we both prepare to navigate

afloat on the surface
cast in the floodlight of suns rays
songs again
tend to dissipate.

Illustration for Dante's Purgatorio 09
by Gustave Doré

First image By Shibata Zeshin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The wind was long

If I wrote 'Now' one thousand times-
Now, Now, Now-
am I not lying? Redundantly (pro)posing nothing new
on the page-

Now, Gertrude may say
the same,
Now
there is no such thing like the thing itself,
repetition of point...
like Moore's Law-only holds so many holes
before disappearing
all together.

In soundness, over and over
is a slingshot past Here-

reason being no longer
enunciates itself
as individual
thingness and parsimony

it seems to me we should have
been focused on the duplicates

observing patterns of double talk
scholars without abjection to empty words,
placeholders or so called meta-
or merely masters by degrees

From this angle
Now was never
the center
errant signals disconnect
the radii from the thing.




Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Félix Vallotton (1907) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

balancing books

The Undo is the indecide, I choose 
never to go there.

I make, instead,

no excuses.

Shortcuts were his favorite for efficiency 

                                           and displaying his mastery.

I liked the long drawn hand kind 

                                           subject to blur and bruise.

(only delete

favorite button, hot or not
spaceback neverwas 

I may erase even you
neverwhere) -white out-

This is the Upside.

Black blends in.

The downside-

no middle ground

                              or bridge

connecting view between the two

of i to I.

Look (t)here, 

describe what you (would like to) see

outside of inside, it comes 

mismatched but attached-

I pick up the left-overs 

this phenomenon called an ex-

ample of symbiosis.

We refill empty with each other

to persist we insist 

on forget.

As the zero is to one,

nothing (t)here without

love
in redshift.

Painting by Jacob Jordaens [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Habitat

At first,

I was discriminatory about it;

ripping out only the ground

cover and displaced Kentucky Bluegrass,

careful not to yank the horsetails.

Yet the rake only brushed these down-

these (knot supposed to grow there)

“weeds”.

Well, it may have been irrational, 

but I

grabbed the hoe

and took heaving jabs 

at just the top layers.

This explains the piles of dirt

just outside the front door.

Besides
all the beetles and spiders,

webs and trash, a penny here, some tinsel there,

a brake light piece, first impressions 

and never agains, all elements were there

for a dirty job.

Then,

I went in the very back
at the base of the green wall.

The bamboo reeds sway brezzily,
tall tips tangled within the canopy of

avocado trees-whose roots really reside
next door,

these dying spears bow down
over the pergola top,

stiff brown leaves like old fingers play

the poled roof as the xylophone,

and to those-
I take the “loppers”.

The green waste bin overflows before nine am.

Saturday,

an April in Spring.

The house still in sleep, the birds pass

playing with airwaves, lilting songs and

dramatic swooping screams, 

while I sweat, arch back

my back in the strong early sun
bearing down over my shoulder.

This dirty yellow hair
clings matted to my clenched jaw.

When he wakes, he says,
it was from my earth moving-

then looks around at the vast 

open spaces, an overhaul, my latest work-

a blending of dirt brown and sky blue,

I offer him a toothless smile, and some
black coffee wearily.

Admiring the pruning skills of an elephant,

he offers-“Couldn’t write?”

“I think I will go back to sweeping

the driveway,” I say.

Painting by János Thorma (1920) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Framed

♦

There was red on her neck-

He tried to strangle her-

There were blue prints on her right forearm-

He grabbed her too hard-

She had been painting mountains

And sky

They dropped a bomb, I mean “we”-

Tactfully, with precision, they said.

How is that done?

Never mind-

♦

She could see crazy coming back for her

Granite, he was her rock.

Assumption over blends shades of grey-

Let the colors come out

In every crack of Spring

Primavera,

The last step taken

Toward a conclusion

Hot or miss

The point;

 ♦

Of impact, of view, of no return, of intersection, of convergence or divergence, of terminal velocity, of it All, (in time)

It was all Artwork. 

Painting by Francesco Hayez [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Edit(her)

Today
I pray
all the words fray
ravel away...

Whole words
                    carry too much

-much less, defenseless against
strung out sentences, slabs
posed in parallelographic paragraphs,
cover pages and such strata and likewise its
generous detritus

stacks up,
burying A brain within its grooves-
meaning between
pro-fessional and con-fessional
moves too fast to hold,
the rope burns
and I feel smolder.

Sleep did not bother
to muffle the pillow words,
vowels easily pass
through cotton screens.

Threads that vibrate not enough separation.
Too clear to hear, semi-permeable is
the peace underneath, the bubbles inside lips
of white foamed waves.

Those hard consonants could not be avoided.
Sound becomes
a wall between being and story,
bricks and dreams.

Mist always settles.

Black
is the language
when there are more words
than matter.



Painting by Jacob Vrel (fl. 1654–1662) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Palate primer

Like a child that has yet to learn
           that accidents can be
                   on purposes,
                                       I follow
                                       that low
                           blue moonlight
            unafraid of indigo
                                   -as though
         a new color could be
         awaiting me
           any new born night
           just
                 such as this one
                 of many.

Casus belli

It tasted yellow.

Woke up with it . Had to put it together.

Same as artificial light, that blaring first horn,

TAPS and organs now must stand up

to gravity, though the deaftone stomach resists this

verticality nestled in leaden refusal to churn over.

When focus comes on strong, this tangible sting,

bite of blink and swallow, is pointed.

And knowing the acid brewing

is not best for breakfast-as a rule-

according to the orange juice

and strong brown coffee,

I am delusional.

They rest their cases. The resting still,

they are bloodthirsty, at the ready,

palms rubbing, rabid from a distance,

the young smoking.

Look at the mess they made last night.

They are poking around for War.

It will be found. Instigators have a chronic itch.

Admixture to weak sauce with whatever 

is lying around.

And all make green, except mine, faintly

in flesh tones and tossed in peach stones.

   

A tree, like bravery, builds itself up slow

like this gathered heart, low and labored.

Rather not swallow.

The blue early bird, first notices me;

gorging on gravel and gathering sticks

to replace broken bones, he does not blink back.

I think could never forget what the birds taught me,

this was no dream,

the heart still beats itself

without a body,

And I throw up 

this empty stomach. 

Image credit By Sol Horn (4/1939) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

this bliss

Not uncommonly,
They may ask of you,
to look around-

Take in the view,

as it were,

but it is best to leave it out.

In cases when told

This is the way it is done,

one need not rush toward the end.

And if casually asked to share your secrets

be willing to concede

the bigger half will be theirs.

Often they say They have been there

and done just that, you know

not that same annual vacation-exactly.

Repeatedly
They always say-They hear you,

it would have happened

either way-as if unaffected by choices
made either way.

Finally,

They have never seen you look this way-

Has something changed?

This acceptance,

This silence,

This resolution,

This endurance,

You have never seen this

on me, is it new?

I guess,

I call it Bliss.


Painting by John Melhuish Strudwick (1888) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo-graphic memory

Obsessed with photo graphs and charts,
we point our longest sideways glance right
away
and shoot for the best, hitting hope
happens square in the chest,
stars also aim for the numbers.

Numbness by position,
this poison saps our steady grip,
an aching up the arm from the aorta.

In this contraction,
we miss the moment around the image,
the time between sight and capture
or full appearance formed
in our human haste

Roughly,
to see and to show how it should look
from our island view,
by entitling
what was then as now.

The pictures portrayed only figures,
we made out images
believing in lines like these
holding black and were definitive
made by an arrangement or
juxtapositioning.

Framed in theoretical suspension
of time to believe in what we see
as all white.



Image credit By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Miss Agnes Martin

And Agnes spoke.

After all she had seen 

                            and failed to portray accurately

“It seems to me, I am a greater destroyer than creator.”

The inspiration more reverent in potential than intellect

She suffered it seems.

The quiet part 

                                 a-part 

from the living with her art.

Agnes assembled some reason,

with color and line, like us, listening for the tone.

A message was delivered via postage stamp imagery, 

she found this in the box with the red flag

                                           too tiny to see.

So she was required to extrapolate 

and re-scale 

to make larger

than the letter

addressed to Resident.

Perfection, as though always made the same-

This one template mistranslated 

                                                 in the corners.

The migration from idea to ideal,

lost in most blending, space, silence, room, makes too much

semblance, geometrically so much more than medium.

All that

depends upon a nail, a red wheelbarrow and leaf capacity and

a multiplicity of task or cause.

Yes, Agnes knew her arithmetic.

And Agnes tried to forget rules, axioms, theorems

and the half charged radii she never saw as encompassing.

Less can be greater than

too much inspiration.

Agnes said the envelope was empty

but she received the message.

I know, I sent it. 

VP

This is how we Do,

This is how we Don’t

                in this

                house

             -of Poetry-

An atria lets in light

& emits extra 

pillowed noise.

It is the vanishing point

we should be focusing on,

imprecise lengths and indivisibility,

where dreams

during the day dull too acute states.

First, it was

the writers fork,

sourceless drops on the forehead,

all the hand stains, bruises,

and finally settled in the wrist vein, 

sharply-

no longer embedded 

in the life line.

Do this-concentrate-

Indirectly, gather all the colors if you can,

hone in on these speculative gradients,

Do not notice this indifference, it may be

that you see succinctly

how beautifully

                         -all points vanish...

Image credit Tenshō Shūbun [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

community pool (Haiku)

The hungry hippo

does not roar but weights a round
edges to blend in.

Photo credit By Don Juan, Comte de Montizón (1822 - 1887) Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

This grace

There is no such Disgrace.
I do not live inside or choose to
put my dwelling things
away there.

There is Here to one else,
while I cannot touch it with a tip
of glance-on accident
these matters made solid.

Their way does not cross
my own,
or break through my gait.
Thier way becomes unknown
with wind and soft feet.

There is gasping, a vacuous horror
at the senseless flexing to hold nothing,
constricting itself, There,
the worst that would be too atrophied
to rest here.

I do not dwell in Misery.
I do not consider
my self
part of
Disgrace.


Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, (1870) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Forwarding

So, he almost died.

Almost.

He is still in the hospital

almost dead.

His life will change

if he lives

through it.

He is in a world of hurt.

Give it time.

It is all he has.

(neither of us know him)
Yet we knew why
he almost died.

There is knocking next door.

Without an answer,
it must be the wrong address. 

Image By Tore Sætre (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Where silence lies

If you read me close enough

you may still smell traces

of a word meant

to echo in only you.

If you heard the way

it becomes spoken with my own lips,

a taste may not be enough

to say you have tried.

If you ever wondered

where the essence has gone, it is cold;

I only ask you to exhale me enough so

I may hear you near inside thick air.

If the silence were not

as sublime

as the word,

would we have this between us?

Art entitled, 'Woman at the Piano' (1889), oil on wood panel, 26.0 x 13.1 cm) by Tom Roberts (1856–1931).

The painting is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Eliotic

Seeking the objective correlative-
or the equivalency of, thereby
making it happen or
so to speak
visualize one-self there
or affecting the out-come
Ergo-
living the dream and dreaming of a life,
so it would seem
as if things worked out
as we wanted
as planned
as in
perhaps or possibility could be made
as another reality
as if
though not by lazy destiny but by dint
of hard work and I-strain(ing)
See how it should be, exactly
how it is
and felt right, had been in-sight
and was another version of you
seen this time as you travel through
deja vu,
not stopping for photos.

Yes, I recognize this now,
the objective correlative
should peer much deeper
than the sure face
and shows what it true
is also false.

Some aim high
so as not to hit anything
directly,
likewise
some shoot low for contact.

It should show what a meta(s) for
and what it is not
in still
imagery-via the
word made flesh
and tastes like medicine.


Painting by Vincent van Gogh [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Oh's Well that Ends well...

To embody obscurity, obtusity or seem oblong or obwrong
or much worse obnoxious in and about ones oratory-
One may opt out.
It would be wise to steer clear of these
contortionists twists of voweling and howling and calling
it better or good or original or odd.

Obliterate this need for shapes of things and fitting.
Sometimes things do not fit.
There is no angle here.
There is no diagram or relief map out there.
Omens are only ominous if open to opinions.

It is obvious these are obsessive occupations,
making obscenes and calling them oeuvre,
it is a one man show.

Overtly, it is only overwhelming
to gain insight from inside optical illusionment.
Only by this sleight of hand or a twisting of fate,
on point, before it is over, the opportunity presents itself,
there was an odious
outbursting of objects exclusively
offensive to others.
Oh well.



Painting by Angelica Kauffman [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

When in Still(ness)...

They also called it an Empire,

and it was empirical by nature, 

such vast open space.

Larger than life, holier than thou, cliché ridden and

doctrine infested-martyred and named Rome.

But what else could they do

but try to live most-ly

in the little time they lived,

in their little worlds they called homes

making cities, breeding atrocities, too close to comfort

any one or another.

Some chose other-wise;

the exile, the recluse, the slave

those submitting to suicide,

and Then death was revered, a danse macabre.  

Otherwise, it all seems similar-ly

tied to one another by Now and Then.

A full revolution must be given time

to come full circle. Whose to say we could see it move

around so little.

Anyway, it could happen again.

And it could be that we, lately,

have been simply spinning much faster

From the top

All looks still…

There-

The people were all in tumultuous states

of vertigo-

But none said a thing to one another.

Watch they way they talk-

It was all in circles;

Copernicus to Dante, Socrates and the wheel,

and assorted likewise misappropriated

little narratives.

Later on, we read about the fall of Rome,

too easily condemning this ignorance

of inertia, or how our standing under

the weight of air, held us down

to inevitable endings with variable speeds.

It is hard to hear the words Here

with all the rubble in between the teeth

and wind inside the ears,

or see how much time can change so little.

Here we are,hoping the All’s wishing well has an end

in good being, every thing-

although at times

it feels as though we were falling

a little faster

but we could not know

having never felt vertigo.  

Painting by Josephus Laurentius Dyckmans (1845) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Enigmatic Einstein

After theoretically 'successfully' wrapping my head around

some semblance of cohesive understanding of relativity,

the Einstein kind, not just for arguments sake,

the soul relationship between mind over matter,

starts with a succession of power.

Taking all we can from one man, utility wise,

ah, needless to say, does it work?

Coming upon its inertial state, approachable this way,

it was easy to trip over that paradox that must have fallen

right off the shelf, under discovery of the missing item.

Newton would know what we should try.

Perhaps there are too many of these to count

individually. All bits and bites stored within the 

conceptually hard drive.

It was our fault for putting the poison away.

It has become so cluttered in boxes marked Unsolved History

it is now sagging our spacetime beds,

instead, this white head called it the ‘spooky thing’, so we move

away from being scared of what we cannot see.

What ever happened to Alice and Bob and their rocket trip?

Should they care they are always being observed

or the considered the being the observing party, as in-

aide, a party to the equation, without favors.

The measured sentence finds balance, busy, busy, busy

wWe real it all in and call it conservation work.

that was then.

Now we know rain can occur in reverse,

it has been shocking us

ever since

then we found spin has no velocity or zip code.

It is by close relation nomadic and

conceptually centrifugal without further observation

of just the box.

The ghost in the grey long-sleeved sweatshirt

with his ordinary pen which clamps onto the collar

by some sort of hook on the tip, 

the hugs the edge. to make it secure,

or so he thought.

And I better understanding why I dreamt that Einstein,

the apparition, a face of dreams,a symbol himself, 

reached around his neck,

grasping at air, pounding his chest for

what was suddenly not there

and had trouble

finding the words 

to mean what he said.

Some dreams are puzzling-

this is why there should always be a pen
with in relative reach.

Image credit by Ferdinand Schmutzer, Einstein in Vienna (1921) in [Public domain, Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.