Making magma

I’d like to draw a map of you

for perspective,

for options,

for borders, both imaginary &

reactionary.

Your vellum,

I now know like the belly of my palm.

And our lines converge, overlap, and seal off

familiar territories, provincial islands of natives,

like Us where

there is a sense of belonging,

lining up and finding places 

specific to our likeness and 
locale is in a sense

relative to distance to each other

within our limited spheres

flattened as Atlas can get
and remain.

Two souls collide Here, two bodies melt,

there two souls trapped, 
surrounded bodies of turbid water 

that become brackish by exchange.

This is all I can do 
with nothing else to make

but more magma

in these uncharted lands
and move on. 

Painting by D. Howard Hitchcock (1914) 'Moon and stars over Diamond Head' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Tenacity

The air being pulled
from the right to the left,
lets up only to adjust and
regrip its hold
on hills.

The ants do not recede,
do not retreat in holes.
Armies have assembled
along the walls, there is no
start, no end, like this wind
no safe seal.

The papers pile up under the
evenings in red and
drip down for later.
Ideas fly out the window
lifting hairs, touching
elsewhere,
never landing as said.






Painting By Antonio Parreiras (1860 - 1937) – Painter (Brazilian) Born in Niterói, Brazil. Dead in Niterói, Brazil. Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Pale whale

Call me Moby,
he moaned, I am
the white whale with the
golden ambergris,
a blue sheep in a green sea
the tilting eyes
that unfathomably see
and do not forget
breaking glass
and all the colors
not needed.

I have left
footprints, where I have no feet.
Though I manage to move by strokes, I tell
the surface by light in weight bars, falsetto
where exposure to so much blue and grey
was too much to separate species.
It makes one sink
and red
and takes one's breath away
making fountains
without gills.

It is my special skill,
Moby would say.

Five-thousand leagues later,
all blues went grey,
and all green
settled for sheep.



Photo credit By Commander John Bortniak, NOAA Corps (NOAA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A genda

Today, I will write,

Paint, read, make marks in space(s)

Empty of purpose ( ). 

Painting by Nicolas Henri Jeaurat de Bertry (1777) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Leave a message at the tone

The universe has a way of hearing the things we say,

aloud, Eliot knew this too.

No matter whom we direct it to, sound waves ripple

the atmosphere which hears this 

stretching--of---imagination

into speech tones, a whistle from the kettle of

the thermoshpere or body-cavity.

The rising sound, or the Doppler effect teaches us

the source

is closer than it appears,

-omnidirectionally-

It absorbs  itself and replies

as a twinge, wave or spasm, clenched

in the sinking feeling of a heavy heart

that beats on itself, calling everything an echo

of what was thought, solid enough to move bodies

into empty spaces and fills itself with volume

from heat, or by imagination.

It conceives these shapes and translates them

into words or wishes

which will settle for a collection of particles we

have  heard before

we knew the source. 



Photo By State Library and Archives of Florida (c. 1948), [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Danger zone

I got to thinking-
maybe we were doing it wrong-
facing fears-meaning
why not let the demons in-
hell, welcome them hordes and all,
feed them well, find out what they want
from us,
so when they leave
it is-
for good.

What if what soaks in our pourous mem-
brains, is what we ooze out-
that is All,
like Nothing is ours,
or New,
we just reiterate or refute,
repeat or recreate, take credit
and run with it like a baton-
on fire,
And the longer I live,
the more I've seen,
heard, worn, thought, been there before-
it seems All
stolen-
moments-that is.

Furthermore,
does one dare to consider entering
such dangerous zones as the solid realms
of love or death, one and the same,
before one has tasted
it on their own lips?

No. Not in poetry. It would be tasteless.
Alas,
beautiful things
are most draining.


Photo credit By:Henry Peach Robinson [CC0], c. 1860 via Wikimedia Commons.

RPM

She had been running like a top for the past 100 years.

All pistons were firing, the timing on, it was simpler then,
without all that electrical wiring and webs to get caught up in.

Everything started with a spark,
which caused the requisite chain reaction
needed for thrust and to accelerate
fuel through tubes and get the veins conducting
enough heat to signal friction, life, and movement
along with the exchange that lungs do, except
inside the dragon's breast, under the hood
there is smoke
where a heart should have been.

A simple jump was not enough.

It can always be fixed, we are reassured. With Parts
and Labor, the estimate is always exceeded.

Rebuilt,
She might have run forever,
had there been no end of gas, parts, expertise-

Or had the rules been followed as in right of ways
and merging. Had they not crashed, recklessly
leaving fumes, rubber, bolts and broken glass strewn,
we may have made it a little further along the road to civil
ization.

Aside from all the accidents and operator errors,
outside influences and distractions,
if we stopped all four ways, blinked Right and turned on Red
we would translate the road signs and Marx made,
as symbolic of the passed
and find a new way
to revolve.

She was broken down.



Photo credit taken 29 January 2005 . . Bogdangiusca . . 396x271 (52947 bytes) ({{PD}}) in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

What?

Hears drums and crosses lines.
Mumbles to self, too loud.
Listens for source, finds growling inside.
Forehead furrowed after thinking.
A grey hair, an old mole, an ache, a hunger,
a new sparkle, an old ennui, or lack of
commitment-
Where screaming will come in
side, when it is safe, and if the space
is able to absorb it All.

It All sounds tempting.
Obsessions are relentless.
Remember how images dissipate
when held under sound waves?



Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas via Wikimedia Commons.

To sing the Plague song

Too thin to help now,
with your lacy veil
a white sinew
you see through
the darkest of times.
It is clear
little can be done
to make it any lighter.

Two threads easily slip
through your shining armor.
The stars know they are the
pommel, the knot at the end.

To ashes, all that remains
can only be folded back in,
the way the body blocks,
and a shadow cast.

Only to catch
a crescent moon.

One twisted wick will
melt the whole ball of wax.



Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Perishable

The sieve separates us into fine counterparts.

Although, too many settle into miserable lumps.

Refrigerators and house pets no longer entertain

thoughts while locked indoors.

It was easier to break back in than swim

across the guarded moat, risking It-

It was all about how the timing 

lined up, or expired for you, 

risen to an occasion or 

rotting away.  

Painting by Jacob Jordaens, 'The Feast of the Bean King' c. 1640-1645 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Spoken word poet

Your mouth carries clues

crosswords, in pen-you project

ink-stained ideas.

Painting by Yeghishe Tadevosyan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Spasm

Silence sucks me through this narrow tunnel and only

in my knitted spiral, soundness burrows behind flat walls,

I am pulled down or out, never to get all the way

through to where

it is all white

there. 

Painting By Jean-Guillaume Carlier (1638-1675) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Translate-or not

This other language I speak 

-none understand 

outside my elfin ears. 

As if I mumble incessantly, compulsively,

as if I am fumbling my thoughts with stone words.

As if I were

seeking to release crystal clear meaning

from in-side the hollow geode.

If it looks like a rock…

Those wild words were all dear to me, 

took muster to say in such a way as to blur the 

sharp edges, land softly, sometimes it settled

in, others not.

The consonants were the hardest parts, 

the little lilt only the muttering of a passing bird,

waving its wings overheads.

Emulating butterfly kisses, lips

blown away

with all my meaning-

missed-dismissed.

As though the goal was only to tell you

something-

to commune-

icate, instigate, dictate-show and tell

about, something I have lying around.

Yet, I make no sound

like feathers.

Since I can no longer speak

in pure poetry. 

Artwork By Hills, Laura Coombs, 1859-1952 (artist); L. Prang & Co. (publisher) (Flickr: Flower Fairy) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Maxim Poetical

Grandma said
                Always wear a bra
                -even to bed.
She said,
                Put liberal
                amounts of lotion on
                everywhere every day.

Grandpa advised
                looking up every-
                thing I did not know
how to use or say
Smile
Grandma warned,
               those are the better lines
               to make.

My heavy skin agrees
                with these
                ad(d)ages.



(This poem was inspired by Lorine Niedeckers' poem, '(A) Poet's Work')


Painting By Mohov Mihail (1819-1903) (Mohov Mihail) [Public domain, Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sit & spin

Sometimes the body feels too fleshy,
repulsive and the layering excessive
and feels like swelling-

Other times, my own sharp cheekbones
jab these bulbous thoughts
with sharp words, as in No More,

and I try to swallow them
before they creep out any further
or scrape my pink warm flesh deeper.

Nothing is mine anyway. These hairs grow,
out of my control, these moles do something,
the fingers I stole from my mother.

The time is not mine, not even this one.
The body refuses to cooperate with a grander vision,
without blurring the edges and intruding on space.

My left justifies my right and intentions are made up,
despite knowing that I knew this before the fingers did,
the neuron that jumped at the thought which took credit.

Resistance holds our places in equipoise,
it's nothing to do with style,
just keeping things in place, in check,

afloat in my theoretical state of chaotic
reassembly with additional small parts
never mentioned.

Feel this sitzfleish,
like chain mail
awaiting my reply.



Painting By Daniel Hernández Morillo (Salcabamba, 1856 - Lima, 1932) – painter (Peruvian) Born in Salcabamba, Huancavelica. Dead in Lima. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Break of heat

The air was thick as clotted cream, felt curdled and
pregnant with wet heat. While white and stacked grey clouds
weighted down until pushed themselves into fog,
it was mist.
As hot as it gets, they said, this is it, the tops it can get.
An inferno.
The hottest it has been yet.

A lone human in the dark morning,
no cool breeze finds me, sultry summer lingers
at the front door, breathing heavy, loitering across
the eggplant sky, hanging on with bruises.

Eighty-six
degrees at three a.m.
nothing moved but magma waves
hiss and ess. Yes,
this is the sound eighty-sixed.

Finally, at six, three more hours
the sky cracked, the wind awoke, stirred
and whisked the steam into lemon meringue.
Now the brown edges protrude.
The silence dissolved like refined sugar,
and moments filled with birds and their wings.





Painting by Ercole de' Roberti [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Traffic

Strangely, and somehow ever still
we all agreed, we all believed
despite the odds for and against
a higher power
the harder the fall
be it for truth or justice, karma, saintliness, etc.

I guess something else made itself known
privately, intimately, miraculously, coincidentally
called Acts of God, meaning no explanation,
meaning no known cause or capacity or possibility
of escape from these well-kept secrets
about proof and feeling, outcomes and solutions,
and there was us
stuck in the unknown. Needing nurture.
Navigating through Despair,
getting lost in Hope.
We keep trying to solve for seasons or reasons
for the unpredictable Nature
mirroring our mirage-

And just perchance,
the devotion toward loving God(s),
holy spirits and the angelic, is an obsession,
with Death-the passion-ate rose, heart, compass,
pulled by this magnetic feeling.

Better to stop and smell the air about you,
make some sacrificial vows, He Loves Me (Not)
He loves me Now, in lieu of later.
We (will) Be Good, and ask ourselves
What Would (a) god do?
or a man
in our case?
We (will) wait.




Painting by Hermann Ottomar Herzog [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Disillusionment

I am here.

And now, I begin, again,

With space and commas, breath and white

And see clearly how obsessed

With spacetime and specifics

With Here and Now-

I have been…

Have virtually

Erased all presence

Of mind

Or need for then,

Than,

I have made sense with time,

Grown with space

A sense of place

Within the hour,

Finds me.

I knew words,

I said it all

And after all this

Was settled

It dissolved…





Painting By William R. Leigh (born Falling Waters, WV 1866 - died New York City 1955) – Artist (American) Born in Falling Waters, West Virginia. Dead in New York, New York. Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Always enough

On their walk home after school,
the middle school kids foraged among green ankles
in a patch of sour grass,
Don't swallow-Just chew, says the boy with braces
who spotted the little cache and reported it.

A lone girl sits criss cross applesauce
on the sidewalk in the shade of a pepper tree,
she wipes her brow, a paperback book splayed
in her lap.
She has never heard of a broken spine.
She doesn't look up-her ride must be late.

At the bus stop
a  stubbled man asks a teen
for the Time,
then asks the youth why he is out early,

I go to the Academy.
I have to go to work, he
explains.
How I remember those days,
retorts gruff with derisive smirk
Not the same, I'm sure,
the man reassures-
Academy.
Is this bus always late?

A crow hops next to the bench
looking sideways
every so often, adjusting his position
on cracking a tough nut,
or breaking a date.

Either way they look
too little
too late.



Painting by Boris Kustodiev (1911) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Made in the shade

There are no words for this nowhere night...
The branches that lean on lusty air,
the mind that sways without care,
to This and back to That-without photosynthesis
or reason for process just in this dim moonlit
moment for rest and breath.

Steadfast in the breeze, and leaves too shiver
in a display of stirring resilience and transcendence
mocking me, I see. So-we still strive fruitlessly further
for naught and knots
where such difficulty and circularity
is always relevant at the root under foot...

Well, that is deep-
We being anew-acorn to oak; choking up
our symbiotic exchange of needs
and invisible nows, for want of more
foliage for later, lushness across a lifespan.

For Now, nothing is more than enough
to keep me here seeking a lone moment
to feel my place and lose it
all in the same breath.


Painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1819-1820) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Do, Rey, Me, My, I

I admit-

I hate poems that start with "I",

which means I also hate this poem.

I mean, there is no "i" in "poem".

There is though, in "poesis" and "meta-

morphosis", just one

I mean, the making of one into many

more I's and i's.

It is not as if I care

about bravely baring the skin or showing some soul,

a sweet tooth for eye candy, and me, me, me...

Besides your self 

what is important to the eye is not the you

others see, really. Not fooling anyone in that mask.

I know you smile when others look at you,

but fail to see your eyes,

really,

I see you mocking me, and I do too,

since it was never about you

only I and I hated it. 

 Photo of Norma Talmadge (c. 1919) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A Lee alee

The moan returned, and it always came at precisely the wrong time. 

In these conditions, concentration pulls away and tapered focus spreads

its photons in flooding streams of white thought.

The wind knows this and is relentless, always. Careless 

to human needs for calm and order, real food and clean water, it blows- 

every which away.

The rising whine coming in all corners should have reminded us, nothing

is sealed completely. Same never remains cremated-

change or would be by the same name. Ashes. Should anyone notice. 

It is justified, to claim not to hear, to feel no steam rise, to believe 

this arrangement is permanent or static. Hope is clean energy.

Electricity is not a friend.

Dear me. It could never end. A break, a breath, and shriek, 

its thick harmonic resonance extending its reach in waves. 

The breeze dances its heart out down in the valley. 

It will twirl itself out haphazardly and we will see 

no steps in the routine. This storm was not predicted. 

Every light word goes out the window. 

The pain sank through.

Painting by Jerônimo José Telles Júnior [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Spies like Us

Confess?
Yes, I made it all up.
All of me that is-
whom I thought others could see
who I was
supposed to be, it was all me.

I suppose I owe
a debt to society, hand
manmade anxieties, cultured milk, hormones
and other treated things thought to help
growth by imagination and fermentation.

I coincide with these memories relived anew, you know
dwelt on the detailed fantastical, adorning
all embroidery and embellishments, lacy
fine threads that make pretty.
We are all make believe
and under cover, ourselves in hiding.

The body still
occupies us.

Painting by John Downman, Robert, Duke of Normandy in prison (1779) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

echolocation

All the same words. All the same words in various orders.

All the same orders, word for word in so many words.

It all sounds the same. It was.

Are we saying the same thing?

Are you reading the same thing? We are saying the same,

reading the same things, so those are not mine?

If it is all the same to you too, it must be as disappointing to you too.

What is this maddening monotony, cacophony?

I am trying to say something original. Nothing was left.

No wonder none understands-meaning-deeper than face,

used all the same pretty words until threadbare, there,

two too many times. Make more!

Also, and Silence, I have said. I have changed for a mind,

momentarily in lieu of reverberating or reiterating more

echoes in empty rooms, pantries, and needs nearly nothing

for nourishment, nothing can be said hereto hear,

to hear only the same small words all lined up

in repoemed formation, loaded with an air of epiphany,

see, repetitive can be reflective, refractive, prismatic

mirror opposites 'true to scale'

said enough, with lips red

wardback

            ‘devil’

Painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, (c.1870) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Rhetorical riddling

Do you know this one?

What is propped up like a scarecrow,
but attracts small children?
What is semi-sweet
covering up?
Don’t answer that. Let us guess,
‘x’ or N/A, or maybe D-side,
all of the above.
And if all of your friends walked into a bar,
does it guarantee
all the horses drink
some algae
grasping at straws?

One golden delicious apple lies
about where it fell from,
while one woman and one man
stand around, wondering, Who
Dropped the first fruit.

If the man in charge of expending
Energy does not spend it by the hour
is he still working at the same rate?

What is blue, but only red when emitted
erratically? Emotion.
Twenty people gathered,
All twenty wanted to be happy. They said
some were-
despite how they stood under
the influence.

How many
Left turns
did we take
to make it all Right

living in circles.

Painting by John William Waterhouse [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cherubs cheering up

There were angels everywhere

like babies

carrying, your name,

like crows when carried by malicious wind.

Not real ones, with wings.

Figures, icons, folding feathers and prayers

soft shelter or guardians on their-
A game.

One should not believe in what one

cannot see, namely fairies or demons.
Good & Evil.

We should let these Be Both

(superstitious) (malicious) (separate)

fantasies! Alas, we gorge 

over-sated with our sponge cake bellies,
porous and too accepting.

Just a passing tickle

black flashes splash our eyes

making one look up

just to see what it could be...

Painting by Hugo Simberg [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Barometric Duration

Days end, All that could happen

Did.

That said,

It all comes back to you.

Last chance to change

your mind

in my direction.

One point aimed

at your heart, a foci.

Mist. Barometric pressure.

The duck glides atop

rolling water. Surface levels

Stones skip

Hurried to land.

All was settled

where places were

Set. 



Painting by Robert Vonnoh [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Wireless settings

It has been unusual, of late-

compared to panoramic pictures,

sweeping views and one you...

Were you there?

Did you hear the pacing behind?

They did not come today.

The light flickered.

Must be

something wrong with the energy...

It looks all the same golden bar or promise

and warmth and yet

no commerce or conservative estimate
would add up to good conduct.

.

The dust piles

where entropy adds up to

total homogeneity.

Waiting is a dip in tango-ment
without charge, consentual even between two posts.

These quantum jitters move on

branes hold on to frayed ends
discharged from free will.

Photograph By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, March 1945 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Every thing

It used to be about Other Things
It was always about 'other things'.

The more you think about It,
the more It thinks about more.

Stare long enough at any thing
and you lose all light discrimination
inside those black-hole pupils.

It has been said things couldn't be worse-
something about change, smaller
but felt the same with more things
and blame.

It was cluttered with chatter,
static, white noise, white holes
and light bounces off rubber words.

If you blink now,
it will never change.
Time wiggles out of every thing.


Painting by Thomas Wijck (c. 17th century), Alchemist in his study with a woman making lace, uploaded by Chemical Heritage Foundation [Public domain or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.