What lies ahead

Sun lifting the veil of purple sky-

might bronze forge strength

pungent as the turned dirt?

Thirsting through 

exposition, hide and seek,

those are lost and winding back 

around-

those that reap

shall be held against the light

shall cast atonement into the shadows-

thou shalt be measured against the day.

All ways an arm's length

a way-in every direction

aimed 

this focus spares no details 

no enunciation of echoes

when molding bodies

come to day with arsenals

of color intended to define us

by just what they had

known and felt 

against all alchemy

made from the excesses,

there was the sky 

with directions. 

Painting by Maksymilian Gierymski c. 1869 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Binding bed

Sought intimate spaces

for self-

lost private places

for nurturing health.

Grew weary with waning

insistence,

wilted and arid, the stem

aches with thirst

the worst exposure

to lunar light

this side of mourning

the death of circus dreams.

It seems the sun disperses

its golden dust

according to an architecture

of ideal.

Beholden to the barriers molded

by hand-

curses stand as they must, in spite of us

for a time.

As last

sunsets free

the stars, placing winking faces

astronomical units apart

and fixed on never being

yours or mine.

“Our tendency to build walls is useful only to provide a starting point for self-definition, walls that contain the bed in which we are born, in which we dream, we breed and we die; but outside the walls lies Siddhartha;s realization that all human beings grow old, all are prone to nightmare and disease, and all must ultimately come to the same implacable end. Books endlessly repeat that one same story.” (“The Library at Night” by Alberto Manguel p. 229)

Artwork by Evelyn De Morgan, 'The Prisoner' c. 1908 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Social security

Unless you were born
a boy
with silky chestnut hair
shaped like a perfect bowl of soft wound thread
nested as in a kitten ball
atop an angelic head dappled with
a sole magic dimple under the high arched
cheekbone amidst
perfectly placed and sized features,
jawlines of a steed,
eyes of witches hazel,
long indulgent black lashes,
long limber legs, strong steel shoulders
broad aspirations
long ago,
No-
you will not be chosen
as the one that was
a man for all ages
a perfect fit,
the right breed,
hand(y)some or skillful.

The rest shall be
Employees.



Painting by Benjamin Haydon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

All ways equals Why

Because we discuss our collective fate along with current weather conditions,
because we attribute the excessive bloom of flowers to wild fires and trained bombs,
because we consider patterns relevant to us, Alone gathering anthropo-scenic views called 'experience'
because we started it all and made it bigger than we imagined we could
not manage to consume but tried with busyness, settling more acreage of earth piling up with paranoia than non-
biodegradable trash and we will ask about plastics as in permanence as if this was a Thing-
How did we get so scared of Being wrong, or Right or Just being?
Because we were starving but could not manage to eat another morsel of information,
GMO, TMI lined with BPA and other sterilizers, for safety.
We felt tired, too precautious and nauseous but forced to moved on.
Because none of us saved our energy for ourself,
because the reasons were not lining up, or justifiable by reason,
because these many motivations made centripetal mirages of us
we had nothing left
but the thinnest hope
to collapse into a wave function and recognize our own ripples.




Image By Henry Peach Robinson (British, 1830 - 1901) (1830 - 1901) – photographer (British) Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The last volume

This last couple of pages 

I have edited quite impartially and frankly

heartlessly or as autonomous as could be 

anyway,

and I mean that in a most familial way.

This closing volume,2017 in the year XLI

much was burned,

including bridges and outback structures,

dilapidated and in need of wildflowers

after all these years of standing 

and resisting color.

This is why some things remain

and others leave no trace.

There was once a line,

or anchor

I cut

this year.

To say only the most necessary things,

required no speech or recapitulation

of histories and books burned all the way 

through to The End. 

Painting by Yehuda Pen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

l's and o's

It had been many revolutions
of a circular orbit
since the scribe had a
handle on things.

In such rapidly spinning
vertiginous times, you know
how hands go up
and loose things fly off.

It was still
that way,
the empty cavernous pages,
the sunken and smudged knuckle,
the barren creased hand
that holds a space
for words to line up with others,

and it won't happen today.
Again, the scribe refused
to record a statement,

for there was nothing left in the hourglass-
in the water pitcher-
in the ink cartridge-
in the world
to turn around
clockwise.

Undeterred, scribe scribbles through the days
of notation and inventory
until all is spent and broken with
vocabulary and slang pronunciations.

For the construction of solid thoughts and building
nations, do not rely too heavily on the current degrees
of angular trajectory
or wishes without a final destination.

The lines all disappeared, finally
nobody waited around to hear
the words that came before
Here, here
the echo never said who
I am
scratching the surface with lines none would read.





Image By Creator:Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Location³ (Haiku)

Right people in right
places wrong people in wrong
places, I am both.





Painting by Yeghishe Tadevosyan, 'The Genius and the crowd' c. 1909 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

(H)ours

He took all the credit for green lights and always finding just the right words,

simply sitting there waiting for him, dutifully, right

where she left them.

He had a knack, he knew shortcuts.

Her mind went both ways,

of him, to her, for him, for them and then

perhaps she never said it in the first place,

since it was always his ideas

that she will be thankful for later.

There is a debt to be repaid for a life saved,

there is monetary value in a useful thing,

and a proper place 

she had never seen,

until he showed her the way

and locked the door on his way out

expecting her to be where he left her 

whenever he returns in need

of more perspective, flavor and wit.

But one day she was gone.

He found her 

empty of all things, she was smiling

with a faraway stare

and he felt anxious about his loss

not knowing any more about keeping places and sharp turns of phrase. 

Painting by Frans Hals, 'Portrait of a Man' c. 1650 in [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Warming up in the arena

The arena is oval
intentioanlly making

the full circle of time
longer
to come back around.

And again, there she was
propped on top 

of the highest hill
and I, as usual, 

stood down on
the slope to the sea.

We smelt smoke
simultaneously
lifted noses and sought out the source
at the same time
the lighting changed 

at once, dramatically.

The sun, abased,
hid his face,
and then ashes fell in fat white flakes
resembling a December snowfall.

The chimes rang in the festivities,
discarding suddenly
the carols for a cacaphony.
Twas an ode to Saint Ana, played
in her lowest latitiude
in lieu of Saint Nick
from the shrill Northmost pole.

And again,
it was watching the horses
that knocked the wind out of me.
I found myself suddenly breathless,
trampled and tethered to death-again
it was familiar, like a rerun of hooves

and clapping.

Under a change of directional
winds, the brittle atmosphere
carried things this way

on a warm winter day.

Amid the sea of grey, the longshot,
made a circle of gates

sent forth as smoke signals and 

red flags at the finish line.

One time we will learn
it is by noses alone
that races are won
or lost.

Photo credit by cogdogblog (https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/2672008614/) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Green stone fruit

If you eat an avocado in Italy,
genetically
it is a relative of a Calvino.

Italo's father brought the stone fruit
to the region first.

I have driven the California coastline
more times than I have had birthdays

and often I like to pretend I am somewhere else
among the rolling vineyards, to pasture with the

grazing livestock, and edged in by jagged cliffs that
plummet into the cold sea,

like somewhere in Italy,
right now I know

it could even be me,
eating avocados off the tree.




Image credit by Googsey at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

FourFiveTwo: with scales

Greed is the creature with scales
that dwells in the darkest depths
slithering so easily around Humility
and longing for longer legs,

And with the sharpest tongue, cuts itself
and coils tight to stop the bleeding
that tension sutures and dies blue red faced
that fire would also feign

I too, have heard the low-lying rattle
and been prey to leers from low in the fallows
yet, always, a path broken
gives every thing away.




Artwork by Arthur Rackham [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

What is:Mine

Ashen sky, late hour

we embers smolder low red

settled in the coal.

Painting by Frank Bramley, 'A Hopeless Dawn' 1888 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Thirteen billion miles

First, ask yourself-
is it interesting
or worth further exploration?

Truly we are Voyagers.
This generation of seekers
has reignited
a flame.

Now, put a price tag on 'Time'
or light years-
A full moment is three seconds
or pennies in hypotheses-
how much Life
you are allotted in diurnal
years of Julian speed,
minus eleven minutes
and some fragmented seconds
may be written
in a single sentence.

Told we should learn
to figure things out for ourselves,
memorize how to hibernate
for the future.
And it is wise advice
for one and all solid bodies
traveling through space
at this terminal velocity.

I wonder if gravity waves
make white noise as they ripple
or only when they crash...

Some say,
Exile is a death, a geographical terminus.
Knowing one's history is written
over, like footprints and
now traveling under someone else's shoe.

But if I have something endless
enough to keep me fully
occupied;
a tree, a rock, water, or the sky-
time does flutter a lot
like Hope.

At last,
I ask myself,
after every sentence has been read,
is this an interesting enough
equation to try
to solve?




Photo By NASA [Public domain], 'Farouk El-Baz, Ronald Evans and Robert Ovemyer via Wikimedia Commons.


NASA reported on December 1st, 2017 that the rocket thrusters on the space probe Voyager 1 responded 13 billion miles away in interstellar space.