Intro-version

Things fall into place and we can safely say
gravity had a heavy hand,
although it is a weak force and spineless excuse
for why we stand up-
right

despite the pressure this places directly on
our crowns,
fashioned from sand and stone,
the weight resists the wait
reeling into terminal velocity
blurs and gives
in, collapses into itself,

and condensing, reducing what is necessary
by its lowest denomination

We still build and rebuild as if we knew it would
all work out this way,
and not that way we tried
to change the inevitable, like laws, universal
and blind,
like this dark energy displaced
with good will

things were determined
by the absence of things
accidentally
heavier than we could imagine.


Painting by Jules Charles Aviat (1844-1931) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

tepidity

I said my feet were frozen,
he did not care
but took notice of my canvas shoes
atop the icy mud.

The fire he made,
started by Him,
should have been
enough-

but the wood was wet
atop the dirt that was sand,
the grass still green despite the dew
the smoke swirled
inside the pit.

His forehead and eyes settled into the comfortable scowl,
his red cheeks took upon themselves an orange glow
and I knew he felt
contentment.

I smiled at him over the inferno.
He often mocked
the speed at which I walked
on December nights near the open sea.

After explaining over my shoulder,
like salt,
why the air felt so distinctly different
between us

he said no more about what he could not feel.

Together,
we find our way
a-part
of accepting
differences by degrees.



Artwork by Felix Nussbaum [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Here yee

By anthropomorphic standards;
that which possesses the sharpest quality
is able to penetrate without drawing a drop of blood-

it is the words that slip under the skin,
instructing our sense of tactile awarenesses
that are permeable, absorbed
and mixed into our blood or consciousness streams
beneath the smooth surface, it flows like riptide

whereby, like all liquid bodies,
we obey the laws
thermodynamically,
by an embered blush
or spontaneous hurried chill.

I will listen more closely
when the words
are honed
to the point of Truth.


Painting by Théo van Rysselberghe [Public domain via Wikimedia].

ill at ease

Ill at ease
does not mean a discomfort
to the point of nausea
aroused in a state of self-satisfaction.

I suppose it is comforting to know
that this same word, Anxiety,
is on everyone's nerves
and coming out through the lips as
verbal indigestion, along with a liver and onion
aftertaste.

How many times have I needed to scream
a curse word
with the most volume possible to project outward,
to release some other demon
banging on the walls of my soul to escape,
as if my sound would shatter
gates

and makes me ill
swallowing this thought back like moonshine.

That was not a question.

Our survival depended upon this fine line between
cooperation and fugitive, patient and shaman,
poetry and prose
words and thier usage.

We made statues of security and braced ourselves
with agendas, acting in stone, we planned, we waited,
we toiled and cried over the temporal state of
poison, we consumed all we could with-
stand.

Resistance said not a word
about its origin.

Philanthropic to I

There was never enough time
and the anxiety pushes down
regardless of knowing that it is certain
to never be finished.

All of it.
None of it.

How long would we all go on
notching our lives in rectangular weeks,
segments and inclines, corner piles
sidling past
hurdles and ho-humming
thru the week til TGIF
and the recursive sickness of it all
as in another episode, chronic
cases of the Mondays,
if we can only make it
to payday to pay the day
we said we would.

There was no question.
We did and do.
Our lives depended on such
boxing and enumeration.

I figure
if I live to the age of eighty,
I will have a little more than two-
thousand weeks left
total.

And I realize I haven't taken a vacation
in 208 weeks, or four years,
I have accrued comatose
creative inclinations, arthritic
anticipation, or being too busy,
and paid or not
the work wants us
to not take notice of the numbers
always changing around
by only ones
and zeros.

My heart flutters in the rhythm of time
to myself, also frequently attributed to
quality of life, a pursuit of joy, or
volunteer work for the self.

Well, we all know we could never afford
to quit
counting,
adding and subtracting,
projecting and losing
the balance that remains.





Drawing by Louis Leopold Boilly, 'Studies of Hands' Unknown date, located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art [CC0].

a disenchantment of nearsightedness

We searched
each other.
Diving in
with our whole soul,
unafraid of the brackish waters,
darkness, mirth or depth
of each other's eyes

Seeking what we had
lost, once had, where did
we put it, over there, outside,
ourselves, and with the things
that keep us
apart,

Spinning wheels in alternating
rotations, going nowhere fast,
or beating our chests like hearts
and pinching nerves to make a
sound come out...

Oh No.
There were so many ways to say,
I see where you are going,
you are getting smaller
as you travel
away.


Painting by Lionel Constable c. between 1849-55, Yale Center for British Art [Public domain].

Go pace yourself

Two hands
for beginners,
my mother would always say without
knowing what she really meant.
She quoted Nietzsche with
the same naivete.

I told my daughter about books
on records, that bong when you should
turn the page. She liked my retelling
of Peter and the Wolf
best.

I watched her start off,
as passionate as possible,
with everything at her fingertips,
only to try to finish
like me, too hurriedly.

I figure
-Slow Down-
is good advice
for any age.

In the beginning
I heard myself say,
two hands for beginners,
knowing that holding steady
requires much practice.

We make it look
too easy.
When using both hands
we should say something
about the strength
required.



Painting by William Adolphe Bouguerau, c. 1899 in Israel Museum [Public domain].

7 WDS

There is nobody
who goes unnoticed.

♠

Time spent on memories
never returns more.

♠

Together two words
leave space between.

♠

Indulgence is for one
expression for all.

♠

I see you
seeing me as you-

there are things
that cannot be shared.

♠

A star, like the ocean
reflects light.

♠

A speck is not one
of anything.

♠

What is possible
has a chance too.

♠

A full deck
is not limitless
luck.

♠

Arrival is not the same as
presence.

♠

Here we are
just now
and then.



Image credited by: Snyder, Frank R. Flickr: Miami U. Libraries - Digital Collections [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photosynthesis

To grow in the moonlight
               whispered the purple breeze,
daunting its profundity
                in a lilac lilt,
makes for the most sensitive
skin, the thinnest rays
               wasted across barren lands.

A tiny trio of skylights
show how syllables
need less volume
when speaking in
                         moonshadows
across open floors.

Grey becomes more than shade
when the pale moon
was more than enough
to still feel
growing pains.



Artwork by Ohara Koson [Public domain].

Summary of a shadowed moon

Struck with a new Idea,
I held onto it like a treasure map,
rolled up,
with the lines inside.

I carried it around
so long, wrinkles
were inevitable,
weathering and what not
made it fade.

After revisiting this place
I am lost a little,
afraid to start
wrong,
I fear it will not become
as I thought I remembered...

No mark would be made,
no footstep
impressed,
unless
anywhere I begin becomes
a starting point
that vanishes...

which made it obvious
to fill the space,
flooding it in white
so I could build it
by taking away.


Photograph credited by Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Fertilizer

I distinctly remember
being told
when I was very small,
the plants and leaves,
of course flowers too,
but branches like
to be touched,
it moved me.

I wanted to spot
the stem bending toward the
rising sun,
I wanted to
believe

all things would benefit
from this sleight of hand,
a touching moment
or the gift
of genuine introduction
to irradiating warmth.



Painting by Grigoriy Myasoedov, 'Forest Spring' c. 1890, in the Public Domain.  

The hardest directions are the ones we follow

Take a left, or a right?
                          Go West-toward the ocean.
So, left or right?
                          Where are you now?
I'm in your neck of the woods.
                            I think you have gone too far.
Left or right?
                            Straight-toward the ocean.
I've come around the bend.
                            Drive-thru to the dead end.
Are there any land marks? I am lost...
                            If you keep going, you will find it.




Painting by Michael Zeno Diemer (1867-1939), Pera Museum [Public domain].

bird braned

small minded man
only capable of moving
one limb at a time
one a single plane

some said Stanley
explored out of his
comfort zone

and yet he is known
by other names
irrelevantly so.

The circle is wider than the sun
or, as the crow flies
across the radii
it would be a straight shot
between sight and
understanding
potential

the small-minded man aflit
fills his hands with too many
occupations,
he is past the limit
of how far eyes may be
set apart for depth perception.

After observing the same flight path,
year after year,
the soar-
ness sets in
and feathers fall off
my sides.

Painting by Paul Peel, 'Bringing home the flock' c. 1881, in the Public Domain.

thingamajigs

Call it crude
if you insist
to designate
that whose design
and functionality
seems rudimentary,
basic shelter
remains enough
for those requiring
little more than
distance from destruction.
Wallowing as we do,
from time to time,
the space becomes so small
between,
our feet become our shoes
and it was as if this was
plentiful,
the question of survival
posed as neither
safe nor sound.
Not saying
there were other ways,
and more than enough
to fill blanks
with trinkets.


Painting by: Anonimous french master previously attributed to Trophime Bigot. See official website. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dem bellies full

When the fridge is empty,
I crave paper money.
When my pockets are stuffed
with receipts and detritus
there is nothing more to buy
into.

Love does not accept
money as tender,
yet it seems to alter
chemistry
dissolving this exchange.

As compelling as it is
to appropriate,
as we must, everything
has a place,
the toil never ends.

Pockets of air
take care of filling empty
voids and holes
and we are all full of it-

Language to gnaw,
gristle and by the way-
none of the above
ever satisfied the thirst
for our own consumption.

I will find a way
to take smaller bites,
preferring less
seasoning
or taste in love.


Painting by: Pyotr Ivanovich Subbotin-Permyak. Down the river (1918).

Cat got my nose

I lost another
poem last night.
It wasn't more than
a fetus
or a couple of lines
strung loosely together.

It never had a chance,
much less a second thought,
until now when
I was sure
it would be there
when I was-
ready for it.

I could assume
it was never important
and would not amount
to anything
significant.

Yet, a feeling lingers,
like scent
from another-
                      who was here?

Germination

So they go on, doing the deeds,
rolling the ball they tossed
as if it were not obvious
they were following
where their eyes aimed.

Like an animal behind a tree,
they think I don't see,
and I am partly to blame
for this charade,
a willing blindness,
suspension of attention,
inescapably-

there is a stench,
as overturned dirt
insists on being known
thereby making its presence
the heaviest air in the room.

And like the elephant Ganesha,
she leans in, the earth tilts,
her trunk drops
an apple at my feet.

It is my choice
to open mouth
desirous of a tree,
or keep the seeds inside...





Photo credit by safaritravelplus [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

nightmarish

I have come to believe
All poets
must be subjected
to living with an infestation
of cockroaches.

An introduction
or deep reading of Dante
and Dracula has much to teach
about finding ones way
through the dark.

I play my hand
on the Book of Change
with my three lucky pennies;
one, because of Honest Abe,
2, because they contain copper
and lastly, mostly,
they are worth no cash value.

There is a Canto
that smolders into charcoal,
I am drawn to
the source.

The house is bigger,
emptier.
I guess the walls speak
now only in echoes 

and embers.

Some of us will make it out

alive.

Painting by Petrus van Schendel [Public domain].

interesting times

Would we know we have a problem
Despite what we are told
All is well
on its way,
Hell,
like the Universe
no place like
Home

when neighbors disappeared
and people en masse
abandoned former posts,
in hordes
Left
the right
to the pursuit of a
Life without fear
thy neighbor
of footsteps
of spies
and their subjects
and secrets and probing
We would notice,
wouldn't we?

When every person you see
is rich and powerful
who can afford not
to be infamous?

The poor
neighborhood turned over
and emptied
of change
never was
anymore

on any map
you see
there lies
Borders
between inside and out
them and us,
that and this
is not
Real
life...




Photo credit by Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain]. 
Photo description via Wikimedia:"An old jalopy outside an abandoned stone building in the "ghost town," some of which is still occupied and some of which consists of ruins of the Chisos quicksilver-mining company which operated from 1905 into the early 1940s, and the residences of those who worked there. Terlingua, Texas" 

Wishsome

A little bird said:
Change your energy
    (in the situation)

She repeated Hope
in different ways
    indifferent to the tears.

Hold on-Al Anon,

you don't have to do
anything Now.

But it Happens
to be
anyway, the note
I only hear Hope.

Painting by Abraham Busschop, c. 1708 in [Public domain].

(Re)voltage

One day
it just happened.
          The tides that rose
could not be denied
by
  terrestrials.

Nobody even discussed it
openly
          how they felt
about it,             genuinely,
how they made
          it Stop.

The help?
Thanks,
             but no thanks.
The directions?
listen, don't
           talk to me, show me
what you sorted out
that I must like.

Enough of the misinterpretation
of
Results.

We can no longer be convinced
you were there to
                            Help us All
or recommend a
                           replacement
hip, knee, mate, job,
car, and family or definition
                       for the word
connections.

Don't be shocked
when all has been sifted through the
screens
and we say-
Let's do it the old-fashioned way.


Photo credited By Rob Croes / Anefo [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Two sol's

There is an ordinary old man,
I'm certain you must have seen him,
he walks the coastline casually
every morning
just before sunrise.
He wears a safari hat
which hangs on his back
in case he runs late
and the sun beats him home.
He seems retired.

There is a scruffy old man,
you must have noticed him
walking along the coast highway
every evening,
just before the sun sets down
the light for the night.
He wears different clothes
but has not groomed himself
in decades. I wonder
if he sleeps
or is grateful for rest.


Painting by Ester Almqvist, 'The Sawmill, December sun' c. 1914 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

cardinal points

Death
   Being
as Natural
    as Life
Why
   we made
murder a Sin
             and Nudity
             a profanity
(poverty a crime
wealth a blessing)
All just
because we are afraid

of Reality
Inevitably
I-denity
we live with
Exposure
               made up
with our raw materials
ore
data
and information
       easily eroded and likely
to give way
someday, in a word
too large to lie
eyes upon,
too precise to name
with exactitude and
                         Finality
just As
finis origine pendet.


Artist unknown, c. 1650, Master of the Vanitas Texts [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Insufferable

Poems do not feel
anything
Yet they are something that says
with words feel me
If only
there was another poetic way
to speak
to emotion
(in order)
to capture, to convey
What was meant
to be left unsaid
                           Silence
                           is full of
                                  This
                           pulsation
                           felt as a compulsion
                           to give way
                           to gravity
For no sound
reason.



Painting by Wada Eisaku, c. 1926 in the Pola Museum of Art [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Timethrift

How do we squander our breath
by counting to ten
or three?

I noticed a boys crown
his head was down
facing his lap, holding a short pencil.
Clearly, he was not writing,
By the way the pencil moved
in random places across the page;
middle, top right, bottom center.

Of course, everyone wanted to see,
even the old lady sitting next to him
who kept adjusting her hair,
her blouse, her scarf
acting uninterested.
He could smell her short
breath, I could see
her check the time.

A waste of time.
Drawing straws.
I was reading,
there was nothing to show
not a figure or shape to be seen
from the words I inhaled,
no crumbs from my feast,
no incensed smoke crept out
of sealed chambers.

I was high-hovering, as clouds do.
I never noticed
how many pages had turned,
how close I was to the end
nor had I kept record
of the miles traveled along
the lines it took
to get in between
here and now.

Painting by Charles Joseph Grips, 'Waiting for a Loved One' c. 1894 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Financial Sense Ability

Accountants and Universities
all too often
                     forget             
that they provide a service

apart
         from guarding the gold
the service would be of no use
had not the need to know

arose
          and smelled like a rat.




Painting by Thomas Eakins, 'Professor Benjamin Howard' c. 1874 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

(In)different

Her heavy greedy breaths

no longer pull air

from our shared spaces.

Her restless body,

laden in sleep, no longer flings

appendages against shared walls.

His voice, 

after all tese years

is distant and muffled,

a life spent

with his intonations 

and likenesses 

filling the quiet spots

of time

and privates places 

like memory.

I find myself

in new places,

quiet, desolate, 

unable to move

and different

than I thought.

Most sensibly,

and quite inevitably,

my own shallow gasps

leave no consideration 

or room for the limbs

to dance 

or provide sound
a body
to absorb.



Painting by Ford Madox Brown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Out of sight, out of mind

There was no homeless problem in our town.
The sprinklers had fixed that
one troubling grassy spot.

Sure there were a couple,
but it wasn't an epidemic.
The city wouldn't stand
(for it) (up to it)
a chance
against a larger economic problem.
Oh yes, the wealthier town next door,
they had never seen one.

Recent studies have shown
the middle parts, the guts,
are all without glories and good bacteria.
The classless class as a whole
is one deducted paycheck away
from being homeless.
Who knew it was that easy to give up
debt
or not have what we never needed?

At the shopping center on Tuesday,
a decently dressed man sat on an iron bench.
He did not smell bad. His eyes were not red.
His shoes were not worn thin.
He had no holes. He had no major injuries
that could be seen.
His hairs had all been trimmed
his frame hung
loosely folded
staring at nothing.
As if any more could happen by 10am,
he seemed spent,
and resigned
that the show must go on
without him.

He was chainsmoking
and every in between
cigarettes, he would stand up
for himself,
violently punching the air,
wordless and weaving punches
with his whole body
at invisible villains.
He had money for cigarettes.

The shopping center security had been called
by the elderly woman in the bakery
who only drank one cup of coffee
and complained
about its lack of strength
every day.
The restaurant manager
next door
kept his head down
not saying a word
until his meds kicked in,
until he had a stiff drink.

It was crazy, they all said,
watching the man,
boxing the air.
Clearly,
he does not care what they think,
it was lunatic
the way one could live
like that,
angry at nothing.


Painting by László Mednyánszky [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Smith, Black

Forged into the metallic morning horizon
Arose churning sediments
forming monoliths,
Silhouettes of possibilities 
stood starkly
As bodies take shapes
And outline the impenetrable yet 
more immovable.

Composed as we come
with letters into elementary symbols
or the other way around,
it dawns
upon us
this light shall dissipate our dreams

Awash in rust
with our veins of copper 
which could not compare 
to the sand that we use to measure 
Time
all that 
sharply resembled
a blade of grass
nourished only with melted dew. 




Painting by Winslow Homer, 'Early morning after a storm', c. 1900-03 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Proof

Don't look now
But
it is always inconvenient
to pay full attention.

The mirrors must not be clear.
Of course, there was backing
in this philosophy.

We were indifferent
as I came to discover with age
The wisdom was
quirky and quintessentially
duplicable,
making this extremely
life-like.

In fact,
there were explanations,
motives, charts, statistics and
microscopes as well as mass
spectrometers.
Facts could be made like laws.

Help is belittling, humility is compromise.

Say,
We now know
why women want pickles when pregnant.
Motherhood is mainly mammalian.

Nothing is new or novel.
It could be predicted with nearly ninety
percent accuracy,
Those who would be beaten and abused,
were confined, resigned to their situation,
like all atoms and half-lives.

It was worth looking around
if only to see
how natural it is for us
to reflect and blind,
bend and squint
without ever reaching a definitive conclusion.

This could be conveniently called,
Power
if only it was adopted as knowledge.



Image By Unknown photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Central Cancer Research (Immunology laboratory).

Trace

The difference between a clean slate
                                and a blank one
is a twist of lime-
stone,
made into a helix,
stacked with sedimentary
                            amphibious bones 
& the ligature of
dead words
                    around broken muscles,

like the lines left lingering
and entwined, woven through
resting vessels
                     slack and un-taut
across some surfaces
namely, Others
                              in a hurry to sea
this contrast.

The blackboard could not be red
in such low light.

Anyway,
erasure like evolution was never complete.


Painting (watercolor) by Thomas Girtin [Public domain], (undated) via Wikimedia Commons.

Latently

Just yesterday I noticed
somewhere else
the present moment, and all the past
for that matter,
always held the future
simultaneously
rolling it in palm
and under tongue.

These multiverses,
Baoding balls,
hum like crystal lips
and harmony comes out
making the individual notes
indivisible.

Presently,
today, Wednesday,
all rolls along in a blur,
small talk keeps time
separated from the thing itself
and it can only be tasted or felt
one side at a time
just like listening.

Today,
I read a little poem
about transformation
or metamorphosis,
it seems we have always known
these things take time.

Then again, I half expected it
to move too fast.
Sometimes shapeshifts
were mere projections
of light.




Painting by Nelson A. Primus (1842-1916) 'The Fortune Teller' c. 1898 SCAD Museum of Art [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

They carry no identification

The lost souls could not
have been
                -strayed-
unwillingly taken
from their way,
meaning-intention.

Did I mention
they found Us
in sad shapes too,
(round bodies in square
boxes),
what to do

about maps that don't make a clear path through
tough terrain
& letters that refuse to column, justify, paragraph
or add up to cents?

I swear atop the nameless grave,
I saw the spirits, the others
looking away, must have been
confused by their own disparate
directions toward the destination
all call
'Home'.

There was always more than one way
there and back,
although there never stayed the same.

The tree markers,
bleed and breathe,
resembling each other,
unlike the stone
every body was required
to find
a building for the soul.





Painting by George Elgar Hicks, 'Gypsy girl' c. 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Paleolithics

The professor professes all he knows

The light in the room stretches its narrow rays

between the pews and up the tiered aisles.

His word, Pedagogy, 

saunters through the active scene

where footfalls succumb to silence, 

the thought sits

Outside of the time

it takes to experience

a revelation, commonly mis-

pronounced as Revolution.

The mind drifts while his voice 

rests its laden brow

on grainy monotony and concrete definitions.

Meanwhile,

the insatiable self-seeking creature recites

all he has seen

and heard about phenomena like

boiling water and stunted grass

thereby giving his dark pupils

all the more reason to run

back into the cave.

There can be found familiar

mountainous men, rigid in their routine

for survival, passing time by

holding their profile up against the heavens

in order 

to demonstrate the concept of 

contrasting outlines

and where they meet

without becoming the other. 

Painting by Thomas Eakins, c. 1844 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Obscurities

Dense fog rolls across the chiseled terrace
steps from West to East.
Downtrodden and quite oblivious
of Man's conventions, this mocking
mist, as in a gathering of ground clouds,
shrouds the serial sequence of events,
entrances and exits undefined and occupy
our focus, hazily
we get stuck
when we cannot see
ahead.
Shadowless spaces between,
scoff at the series we expected,
anticipated
of Inventions and Evolutions
and Apocalypse.
We've tried to rise and plunge
gradually
to adapt
in this solid state.

We seem to seek the End as if it were
the top.
Admiring an ascent out of view
despite our narrow window
to appear or seek
escape and opportunity
everywhere but specifically
over there.
Such low lying obscurities like
grey matter gathered in this way
concealed the landing
so we may walk across the clouds
making us feel mist
the most, despite always Being
invisible at certain angles.






Artwork by F. Childe Hassam, 'The Spanish Stairs' c. 1897 in  Los Angeles County Museum of Art [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Green copper pot

When a woman has
One child and makes
Zero investment makes no
sacrifice(s), contributes
None,
the yield on this bond
does not depreciate
into negatives-no
this product multiplied
Itself,
condensed and compensated itself
entirely with exposure to the elementary,
the obvious and raw goods,
thereby taking its own shape
by directed collisions
with steel objects,
only adding
character and patina
values molded with age.



Painting by Martin Dichtl, 'Still Life with copper pots' circa 1639 (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons. 

kindling

Maybe the best way

to keep love alive

between two

is to

always start

but never end

with a Maybe. 

Artwork credited by Charles Jacque, c. 19th century in the Metropolitan Museum of Art [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Blind i

Losing one's eyesight is the prelude to
insanity,
indirectly.
The words lie there, lined and
blocked,
and the Brain knows what to do,
but can no longer sharpen
the peripheral
imagery with ease.
Poor lighting perhaps
not more than denial
that it was all a blur.

My grandfather had Alzheimer's,
I used to think it was called 'Old Timers'.
My grandmother got glaucoma,
we don't know when it started,
nevertheless
we never saw each other's point of view.
Makes me wonder which is worse...
I think up and makeup
for fading memories, visions,
and finally, recall, I remember
what I came here to say-I now see
Time erases All



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

Mis(s)worded

Since
I couldn't
no-wouldn't
stand the voice
No-noise,
the incessant barrage
of worded white noise,
I wrote poetry
(for constraint).

What does happen when
2 pennies are rubbed together,
a spark
of sense?

The sound that silence plays
while filling in the gaps
has become louder the older
I get, as if I get
something.

Who is the I
that claims to Be not I-
the poet

The words with an alibi
from elsewhere
saw how small and narrow
the mark Itself made, and made
more width and depth
to shroud the naked nouns.

When I went
quiet
you covered your ears.
My two eyes narrowed
even more,

the poem burst and dissipated
in front of us, like memory
maligned
for lack of metaphor
or something nice
to be noted.






Image credited by Edgar Degas [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 
Title: Louise Halévy Reading to Degas, c.1895

Time's up

The two women acted tough,
forgetting their lady-like roles,
trying to win a popularity contest
without a prize,
and as petty little ladies often do,
they threw a-round the word "Best"
like a dodgeball.
But women can jump in heels,
can see behind and see through
costumes.
Make-up is removable.
****************************

The gentleman was gifted but
he knew the charges were coming,
soon. He would owe more than he had.
Hands on the trigger.
His desk is packed up in a box
that sits dutifully like a dog
by his dull loafers. Emails erased,
trash emptied, a final scan a-round
a corner window office
formerly occupied by a-round peg
seeming to be a dull square. Any body
could hold his chair. Professional,
calculating and an all a-round good guy
with a giant fear of the female,
her articulation, his worst case
just dis-missed due to conflicting
interests in gender roles and their
unjust entitlement or oppression-
he wouldn't say.
*************************

The young boss man is full of vim,
vigor, rigor and righteousness.
Bless his greedy hands clutching the reins
of his tall steed. He tramples the herd,
whipping them into his desired geometry.
Only now he found,
there was nobody a-round to
blame for missed fortunes, for the gaping
holes, balls rolling, for getting in his way.
Elders eyed another path,
an alternate pace, a safe place to
participate without giving away
experience.
*******************

The company decided to set the price
as high as the bar
could be raised,
so the product always hovered
just out of reach.
The company did not discount
the value of free advertising,
disregarding all costs.
****************

The free world leader
traded his hefty income
for a chance to control
the immeasurable,
to push the ethereal agenda,
to take a title already under copy-
right, to hear himself proclaim,
denounce, hear his own voice
and believe the words
were enough to fill empty bellies
not just heads.
The leader chases his tail
and demands we follow a-long
the lines
what comes a-round
goes on to repeat itself,
itself, the same as
his 'huge' following.
***********

Insurance, like promises
does not provide tangible compensation
unless a claim has been made
on total losses.
We must be living
to learn.
The finest print
excludes all the
preceding liabilities.
******

A reaction is a result,
the equivalent of
a resolution.
***

The movement
already occurred.
**

We just witnessed-
A passive act.
*

In-dividuality

These few
need to be near me.
Draw themselves into the fold in-
creasing the density of space it-
self-personal bubble, but
flat out refuse to be
touched
There. Too in-
timate to be considered
delicately. Anywhere
these bubbles abut,
list and lean in-
to one another, there is
a bursting of the seams.



Painting by Peder Severin Krøyer, c. 1881 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

All Five's

Magnetic minute

reconnected to the time

of track, I am back.

Image credit by National Archives and Records Administration of William Duncan c. 1916-17 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Target practice

One of the most helpful things I have learned
(about myself) is my tendency to
Jump the Gun-

But I can't stand the thought of standing still
while others take aim
and bullets fly.



Image By Ronald N. Keam (awm.gov.au) Austrailian Women's Army Service, Queensland c. 1942 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Lock jaw

Her too young jaw locks 

And she becomes her father

In this tic, to clench and wrestle

Her heavy breathing seems

Reminiscent of the little girl 
Not letting go

Of her bottle

For one second

Chance to make it without…

She gags at the mention

Of breakfast

Quite suddenly,

She says she is repulsed

And it may be

Because it reminds her

Of those café's and

Scattered mornings 
Here and there 
With her distant father.

He makes her stomach churn 
She says, she thinks she never needs
Breakfast again

It wasn't me, it wasn't 
Him, it was the way it started
To get tough
To hold on
To promises 
That are hard to swallow.

She learned about nourishment,
and its ultimate
End.

Nurture does not provide enough

For closed lips. Empty rooms, 
Empty calories, empty pockets 
Never kept us alive.
She is learning that it is more 
Fruitful to say, than for 
Him to hear.
Standing here and listening
Through the cracks,
I see narrow bands of light seeping out.

Forgiveness will be the only key

That opens her too young lockjaw
Allowing the Light its fitting
Liberty. 



Painting by Albert Edelfelt, 'At the door' 1901 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mann kind

“The diaries of opium-eaters record how, during the brief period of ecstasy, the drugged person’s dreams have a temporal scope of ten, thirty, sometimes sixty years or even surpass all limits of man’s ability to experience time-dreams, that is, with images thronging past so swiftly that, as one hashish-smoker puts it, the intoxicated user’s brain seems “to have had something removed, like the mainspring from a watch.”

-Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)

Should I have sweat through those provocative dreams

Since time is running out

And shall I have watched, disturbed and overcome with infatuation,

Pleasure, intent on the scene, all its folded lines hung out,

The mosaic scene, the spackled tiles of moments to keep

Float over the surface of settled matters.

Transience penetrates us to move on and on.

This minuscule thought that writhes its way under

Eyelids-between us, selves. We are

Something small, private, intrusive, edgy and loose.

The Splinter severed from the smooth grain

Pierces its way deeper into our softness, 
past the seventh gate, writhing in quicksand

Only to break off the relationship,

Leaving a white fleshy hole with dead skin
light floods inside singing delicate motors

Before it can draw an arc, or a

furrow atop the brow with vapor and sweat
and feel the tickle from

blood running down wrists and pouring out nostrils.

Resilience needs rest and a sense, a little air and darkness,
solitude in a moment to hold on despite the vertiginous spin
We are in this together, that you remember 

That this horrific nightmare

Has occurred to me before, many times, before

I woke. 



Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, 'Pushkin at Ai-Petri during sunrise' 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.