Noche de miedo

Cackles come careening around the corner

and climbing down curb-lined cul-de-sacs

on cool autumn evenings

Nothing can be done to prevent the amassment

the grandiose gathering

of evil intentions under orange lamps

illuminating holes.

Phantom leaves lay brittle on sharp blades,

sear, friable, vitreous and shattered shards of ecru erode to crumbs.

Ear-drums strain to find the bass, the bottom line

below all the trouble and high-notes, car alarms,

cat-fights, sirens, and ring-tones,

paper dolls were folding into cranes

and finger puppets on the wall were

pealing themselves off to crawl under beds

where the weary and wretched can lie 

awaiting a revelation, the bottom of the bowl,

the dark porch, the green-eyed monster or black cat

come out curious to see things through.

Los muerta de dia; la vida de disturbios. 




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

Nonsensical

As we explore the depths of the oceans, 

seeking the ends of eternity as

conceived by space, 

mapping the matrix of the mind,

We hope 

we are making sense.

Some more sense of what may be 

behind the Divine and beyond evil.

Veiled by our vanity,

we can only hope to master

some special skills.

We are instructed, 

we are given-with grace,

five senses to use, freely.

We all know better.

Untapped potential, 

the vein, the mother lode,

these things that we seek

are lying here

not waiting 

for us to see,

not weighting

to matter.

Now, tell me about touch…

Can you feel me looking at you from

where I stand?

Can I make you cry with words, 

or laugh with only

black and white?

How do you know something has been moved?

Do not step there! Slow Down! Watch out! 

Has this voice

ever saved you before?

And pray, tell me, mind over matters

like these explosions of energies that spin wildly,

may we tame bursts by will, tempt with them with time,

temper these with new neurons

and cast off-the surplus?

Is it all too much?

A little release travels faster than light

yet always

dissipates all ways 

with so much space and water

between bodies

empyrean expanses, abysmal astrodynamics and such.

It was current

thought, 

that the thought wave and the wave of gravity,

ate projected invisibly, the unseen senselessly

Ignored-

As if maybe,

it didn't make sense, as if

'may be' meant there were more ways to feel

than five, or how do we know anything is alive? 

None believed in what they could not see.

With no matter to feel, to put a name on,

with nothing to touch us with shape or edge,

with so much space, with all the emptiness

making up all the meaning 

It is all the more touching

that we find our way by feel,

getting somewhere, 

After All.

“Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?

Or hast thou walked in the search of the depths?

Have the gates of death ben open unto thee? 

Or hast thou seen the doors of

the shadow of death?

Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth?

Declare if thou knowest it all.

Where is the way light dwelleth?”

(38:16-19, The book of Job via Primo Levi) 

Painting by Martin Johnson Heade [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Six Reasons to Never Try Poetry

They call them mockingbirds, some are nightingales, a few may be owls or ravens,

but all are really pretending to be the pursuers

while they are in fact the ideal prey.

All are moths-

of which there are more than 160,000.

Drawn to their own demise, despite the heat, they repeat the fire dance,

a Danse Macabre in verse.

In all fairness, one should be warned-

1. You will never be good. Or done. Or get there. Never, nevermore. It will always be wrong, could be better, you should have never tried, a waste of your time, a sacrifice for nothing. If you want to feel a sense of completion or accomplishment, this is not the way. You will never be able to make it go away. Get a drawer, carry a pen, try to forget. 

2. You have only copied others far better than you-who copied those that were far better than they. 

All the words that are strewn about and unsorted,

the ones you polished up and put together and

something spectacular, or smooth, or morbid,

were not yours to put your name on. 

You were not the first person

to make your bed.

3. Warning: Also-they All die beautiful, decrepit and anonymous, poor and misunderstood. They pass away, they are evoked and manipulated, worshiped for saying one thing-over and over-apropos to those who know how timeless interpretations remains. They keep their keys. They take thier fortunes with them. The published, finished, are boarded up, condemned-to looting, pillaging and squatting.

The moth never learns from others smoke. The moth must devour the leaves and petals from poets of other seasons if it is to survive famished and cleansed by morning dew. 

Some say violets capture a certain raw nature, many others pine over roses, and there are those of silk, that bare no resemblance to prose, without punctuation or stamen. 

4. The night is shared by good and bad voices, loudest to those who listen.

5. Color is not necessary for presenting a beautiful display. Light and heat are most attractive when removed.

6. A moth is a critical link in the food chain. 

Fake eyes, ink stains, shadow, ash and dirt colored, clicks and sonar are extra like lyricality. Both predator and prey are symbiotic as reader and writer, both flock to the light despite the smoke and despite the act of dying every night. 

Painting By Michel Bouillon, Vanitas c. 1668 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

X-plosion(s)

This is not what I intended to say.
Nor is this how I meant to convey this multi-
layered
meaning-making
sense of sense.
I set out, propositioned with pen in hand,
I aimed the ink at the receptive white page
to say this
one thing
and the damn poem veers left, starts
skidding out of control,
hits something solid,
rolls over
Itself
and only comes to an abrupt semi stop-
where interia is held in
mid-air,
over their heads,
emits an ominous scent,
and makes men
flee for fear of losing
oneself

A paltry passenger without my own;
controls, levers, pedals, wheels, dials, gauges,
buttons to push,
signs or signals to lead and follow,
I am
Left with this
loss of direction
I resign to not fight the fear
of dead ends.
Scribbling and scrambling
I get out while I can.


Image credit By Anonymous [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Buteo jamaicensis (red-tailed hawk)

Chickenhawk,

or common pigeon raptor,

an immigrant in suburbia,

your callused talons, prone to thievery

bone protruding shoulders, penetrate the blues

excess in feathers weighs one down.

Perch and peer,

wedged between a wishbone branch,

hurling her duck observations in high notes

as if swan songs were her only repertoire. 

Tenacious she, 

returns three days crooked, famished with

foresight, laser vision, and perspective-poised, 

she waits, she sees green, she feels envy.

The fluffy housecat chases his tail 

to satisfy his urges

the hawk launches

and draws his keen ellipse together.

Photo credit By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters (Red-tailed hawk  Uploaded by Dolovis) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sensual segments

The lotion in the squeeze tube

intended

to protect this crumpled 

and creased rice paper skin,

carries a strong scent, evocative

of all the horses I once knew.

The big baby boy finally comes along,

appearing one month old

already.

Somedays, like other times,

Her voice soothes

but most often it seethes

something in me.

Crap-

that coyote in a boat scared me!

the visitor exclaims-

pointing to a small hanging sculpture

Of a baby fox sleeping soundly in a hammock.

I knew it, but did not say anything

This time

it would be easier this way...

The numbers man heard poetry

at night.

It scared him. 

This time

he stood too close

to the source.

Contagion is terrifying.

Warm spreading in back of the head,

happens with Prozac

and Jazz musicians,

I have been told.

It may spread further

than just here.

As we were like this

One time

found in familiar fragments

of others, 

clarity comes to the assembly

in single file lines. 





Image credit By Clyde Waddell, American GI's at a bookstall in Calcutta, 1945' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Moving moments

Fell upon, as light as drizzling

mists indistinct as an inkling.

There was a sense of something strange a-

round the sharp corner.

He walks confidently 

into newly woven webs,

framing the finished work.

The ground sloped, gravity pulled a-

long his footing in a groove.

One in front of the other. 
He counted on this order. 

Crossed over to a new dimension,

blended into this one image.

He is held up

to the sky and draped in silk,

with webbing in the corners, 
brushed by invisible lines.

He finds her hanging
where he left her last.

Never again

does he take

the last passage 
back. 




Painting by Claude Monet, 'A corner of the apartment' c. 1875 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Blue windows

Practicing her new monologue
from a Steve Martin play,
it becomes impossible to forget
some lines.

Some lines
slap the face, others rattle the cage
just between the ears,
and linger in the room
like cooking dinner.

She recites the lines in front of her closet,
and in front of my closet,
in the sliding glass door
when its dark outside
as I put away the dishes,
listening to her practice,
again.

Distracted by the shutters that keep slapping,
I await my favorite lines
about the shutters that could never be-
come forest blue,
because forest blue is no color,
and denying this existence,
makes it true, naturally.

I try to picture a hole in the forest,
the sky peeking through the canopy,
but my eyelids flutter at the steam
rising and swirling on the stovetop.

Shutters do not occur in Nature, the lines note,
and I wonder about Pi, naturally.
I like Pi,
Newtons apples are the juiciest.

And these occupations
keep our lips moving along,
fingers fiddling with locks
and minds simply wandering off,
it takes time, an open mind, a window
and practice.

Look at the face, the hands, the clock,
she knows all the words Mr. Martin wrote.
Now, I can open the kitchen window,
letting the forest fly out with the green.





Artwork By Juan Gris (José Victoriano González Pérez), Spanish, 1887 - 1927 (1887 - 1927) – Artist/Maker (Spanish) Born in Madrid, Spain. Dead in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Shaken not stirred Ma’am

(For Frankie)

It is hard to see things abstract.

We are more accurate Now

Encapsulating climate

When we mention Culture.

Let’s look at Value:

Price tag says, “As Is”.

No complexities.

No narcissism.

Loathsome luminaries loaded

In ink, inebriated, inoculated,

Imbibed in itself-“As Is”.

The Sardines became the Gollum.

O’Hara, Oh everywhere, oh Sun, Oh oranges!

Can you feel the rust coming on,

Or is it Out?

Aren’t we all magnetized toward the morbid,

the dark, the obscure, obtuse, or abstract,

as they can be good for hiding things in corners, 

shading over or making shadows. This depth 

achieves something like,

making good on promises.

Sometimes he seemed gay,

they say, he was happy, in so many words.

All the time, they say, they were true,

the poems. Because they were simple

they cannot tell lies.

Portraiture is paraphrased,

how does one escape?

Clouds come and go.

Meanwhile, the pastoral artist demonstrating

how much one can hold,

runs out of colors, runs out to resupply,
runs hot, then cold.

Any poem can be an apocalypse,

this is how they all End

(in grey), 
except the last words say,

All days look the same. 



Image credit by Berenice Abbott, 'Radio row (NYC), 1936' in [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Bare Essentialism

When we speak of

Ars Moriendi

You and I are finally getting somewhere,

beautiful.

When the Poet dies-finally-

The poem is freed.

The libertine line advances

meaning, perspective.

Morals are not the main characters,

plot is where we were going,

a scene made, is setting,

is a container, set and broken down,

a frame to hold all the pieces

to gather in one assemblage

and enable anyone to walk around.

Implicating exclusion by category, genre,

red and not read,

unbounded through decohesion, 

letting leaves fly-

Well

we must determine-

To finish or decompose.

After all This

Art is all that remains after speech,

after thought, in memoriam,

the pictures point and the words paint

only where there is

Life. 

We recognize these reflections

and find them beautiful. 

Painting by William Orpen, Reflection in mirror c. 1917 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

He kneaded Her

She may be being beaten

As we read this

Together,

Hold on, it sounds morbid, but there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

One learns to accept the role of  I-witness, until one cannot bear to watch-

And then instead of gashes and broken bones, he could be pushing

Her buttons, shoving

Thing in corners

And covering them up with

Sickness. 

He certainly demands

ATTENTION! Obedience and privacy,

Of course, isolation and abuse are like marriages,

Ownership issues and subtle clues, like Grand Canyon colors,

Naturally, it was about the little words, the little monies,

The precious little time, the violent vices, the weak needs

And the only daughter they despise.

She is cowering, her nose red, her eyes black, her thoughts run away with the

Memories, tapes we tried to unstick, etchings I attempted to erase by

Geography and sandy paper,

Moments that seemed frozen

Then

And then

And then

And then...

Painting by John Reinhard Weguelin, Woman in the reeds c. 1895 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The green lantern

The face returns, a profile on the moon.

The serious brow exudes envy in its October glow.

The heat lifts its chain mail exterior,

unarmed now

the fight subdues, breathing resumes

as the humidity rises,

solemn fog rolls over the westerly

treeline

mingling out of character,

and brewing up a new ambiance

with wax dripping from overhead,

thunder gathering below,

running on low 

light, it becomes apparent;

Degrees are mirroring phases.

Image credit By Stephen Rahn from Macon, GA, USA (Waxing Crescent Moon on 4-1-17) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Storm chasers

Pulled one over on our Mother

Nature-When we 'wise ones'

learned how to chart               and predict, guess and check

her moods                               and storms associated with wrath

and names,                              personalities,

alphabetically                          with indexes and eyes.

We behold

color coded paths

where weather may walk-

sirens and alerts follow us

In spite of-direction.

Now that is not good enough             -anymore.

Without footage,                     there-ness, like live streams

in microwaves, invisible proof for the eyes-

It never happened that way.

Painting by Karl Bryullov, 'View of Fort Picu on the island of Madeira' c. 1849-50, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mercury’s Handmaid

In the second law of thermodynamics;

The poem as a made-thing is the

“Spontaneous emergence of self-organization”.

Besides this, in Science,

“The word magic means order”

So the symbol for Nothing

became shaped like the mouth in meditation,

in the midst of making more space

for Observation.

The numeral for the Universe,

One world, 1, as in Everything

Man-o-theistic made more calculating

layers encoded in an algorithm

to become binary bipeds seeking symbiosis,

or the meaning of Miracle. Walk the Talk.

Ecstasy is merely our abandonment

of a timeline.

Silence sought chaos,

letting letters separate from self in sound.

The tonality resonated

making all things

moving disappear

with (1) velocity (0)

without (0) reason (1).

We try to transcend our current state

if only for a half-life

chemical moment. Methodically mad.

there were bells to be rung,

the sentence was both a rule

and regret. 

Painting by Jules Lefebvre [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Atmosphere (with a teenager)

The light from her eyes had grown in darkness.

Her pupils emulating black holes...

I wanted to lighten her

dark mood,

so I showed her a picture from far away,

the moon-detailed.

Why is it so dark out there? She sees Nothing.

Why is space so dark? She gazed at the photo

a moment more.

Reflecting a moment-

Dark Matter, I retorted.

As opposed to Light Matter?

Yes, but not light enough

to see the difference,

I replied.

But this space in here is light.

You're right. Energy.

Energy? All of it, I nodded, Electricity.

She then sighed laboriously,

I heard the dark part is expanding?

Likely. Nobody hears it

happen. No body looks.

I can feel it, I think.

It can come in waves-

like gravity. That's heavy, she snorted sarcastically.

Actually, it is weak,

I added for weight.

Mind over matter,

she quipped back.

If you don't mind-

it doesn't matter,

I dismissed.

I guess I should lighten up, let it float,

she finally smiled

and lit up the room, once again, happily

ever after and growing.

Image of painting by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.