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.