A4 in B-tray

Certainly, not the first female
to have been betrayed
in this way.
And we are told to throw up our
arms
and we are told we should
Celebrate
how far we have come
making progress,
as far as equal rights and
equal wrongs
will come along someday,
even if we pay to play,
it costs us more
than we have to spend
finding a balance between
bankruptcy and wealth.

If we take away
only what
serves us,
we may not crave
revenge for the last
course.




Painting by Johannes Vermeer, 'Lady and maid servant holding a letter', c. 1666-67 in [Public domain].

The Big C

Judging by the looks of you,
I am okay.
I will live
with this.

Good or bad never announced their intentions.
Blessings wear disguises and often underneath
is a curse.
Curses only tell us,
there are bad words.
Save your prayers for the good words.

We all have this disease.
How do I know
I am:
middle-class-near-poverty-independently wealthy-
broke, whole-some-a little
pretty-creative-ugly-short-average-sexy-smart-
except/accept the artistic tendency-
to never finish-
And
Not good enough, light enough, fluffy enough
to rise to the top.

It is a degenerative disease
but not lethal,
causing many people to become
bed-ridden whereby,
nobody can see it happening,
the Big C
inevitably crippling
and eliminating any breath
of fresh air.

There was no
Placebo
that would prove
originality was a sin,
or provide support
for the proper functioning
of such complex systems
commonly called
Culture.

That is not the source of the plague.
But living in such close proximities
there is no immunity
from the compulsion to Compare
every person, place or thing
as if we could be grammatically correct
when spelled out,
none knew how to read the
finest print.

It will cost you.

Hey,
You over there,
is the grass greener?
Take a picture, send it to me,
no filter, really?
I guess everyone else is better
off
than We.





Artist Rupert Bunny, c. 1915 in Public Domain.

Flick-her

Opposites attract each others

Curiosity

At first sight

Rapture is often mistaken for 

Attraction,

an alternating current-

Notice the friction...

Sparks are not always a promising sign,

nor an indicator of warmth,

as in

A promise to burn.

Painting by Martin Ferdinand Quadal (1736-1811), 'By the light of the candle', c. second half of the eighteenth century, in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Spell

Nobody practices
Magic anymore,
Other than for
Amusement.

We are losing
our skills while being
focused on
what went wrong.

Who knows better.
We know.
We do not like taking medicine.

All doctors begin
Believing
that all of our inoculants,
all cures were right here,
waiting to be
spelled out
on the tips our of tongues.

There is a familiar smell
growing stronger
Outside of the lab.

It was always Life or Death.
This time
A muse meant
Healing.
Some words are harder to swallow.



Artwork by Paul Klee, 'Fish Magic' c. 1925 in the Philadelphia Museum of Art [Public domain].

ROI

He looks forward to
a cold beer
after balancing the books
all day.

She looks after
the home and kids
before they fall apart
again today.

He questions
if she has done enough,
She answers,
Dirty laundry is never done.

His job is Important.
Her role is Obscure.

His time is well compensated.
Her life becomes poorly defined.

The tension to stretch
makes them both
recoil
at the thought of
broke(n).

She asks him about his day
now that he is relaxing,
he tells her about the stress.
No wonder
He does not
ask her
the same.

Eventually, he passes out
cold.
She checks in warmly,
to see if he needs anything
more.
He spends the night
breathing heavily.
She treads lightly
earning her commissions
in Time.

He will be right where
she left him.




Painting (still life) by Gerret Willemsz Heda, c. 1642 in [Public domain].

Light-years

The mid-September moon
rests its heavyset bulb over in the West,
while the new days sun
stirs behind the
Eastern shoulders.

The sky mixed the lights
just so-

-no conclusions could be made
mid-stroke.

What feels inexplicably
right about certain alignments
gives us false hope
that the observer ultimately
affects changes.

There is more in a moment
to grasp
than our primal hands
can hold onto.

The season changes
its mind-
even if,
the movements
were always the same

-the differences became too small
to notice
the rate of spin
unravels
in astronomical units.


Painting by George Hemming Mason, 'Harvest Moon' , c.1872.

May I borrow your skill-set?

She still looks at me
that way,
One day...

Take it in while you can.
I have always felt this
slipping away...

Passive-aggressive is oxymoronic,
aren't we all
both (hyphenated)?

Having the Midas Touch is not
the same as Pyrokinesis
but ignites a similar spark.

We never have any-
thing for long
enough to use the words;
Forever, Eternal, Always...

Things come and go
and its lightening to know
it has all
been done
before.

She still tries
to change
her outcome
by crossing lines
and parting ways.

No effort is wasted
judging
by the time it takes
to reach a point
of no return.



Painting by William Moore Davis [Public domain].

Costdom

Like seat assignments and maximum capacities,
for safety and simplicity sake,
there must be reasonable accommodations made
so there is sufficient room
for growth
without
hitting the ceiling, too soon, bursting through
and considered too metamorphic
to remain in your designated space.

It is a default
mode of ours
to do first
before
we did anything
that could be our fault.
So we don't...

There is no way to go back or over
without losing something in front of you.

Stay in line. Stay home. Go online.
Pretend to be anonymous and famous.
Pretend is what we do before we know
how to be.

If you move around too much it scares people,
they will call you a gypsy,
as if they could catch that curse.

Freedom never is
expensive,
and always costs more
than we carry with us.





Painting by Louis-Marie Baader, c. 1885 in [Public domain].

On Spinal Tap

Books talk together.
I have heard this.
You have too.
You see,
amidst sentences
not (in) between
each other but by reference
to me, not of
but For…
autobiography,
the stories write themselves
into serials.

Footnotes are added at the end.
All the words are the same
type-set in New Order.

Of course,
it has all been said before,
and yet
it seems as if nobody is really
on the same page,
or reads
between the lines,
between covers
under the sheets
on the walls.

How we prop up
the spines
tells more
of our posture
than the Titles
given.
What can be
gleaned from our
rough-deckled edges?



Painting by Giuseppe Crespi, c. 1725 in [Public domain].

Post: Meridian

What happens at night
to the air?
What is this
chemical cocktail
we absorb through osmosis,
take in-minus the photons
that cause thoughts to
sink
so heavily
and their intentions
stand so tall?

In this darkness,
we witness,
the end of days
and feel time
reeling
felt more forcibly by
the ever-changing set of
constellations that arise
in our latitude, or even-more
so by the
nocturnal notions as in
phases of the moon making
destinations
always
revolve around us.

By blending into
these dim hues,
our blue veins
resemble the Empyrean skies or the
dirty paint water in a glass jar,
wherein, all
blends, naturally
together to visit the heart.
This is all right.
It is only a subtle shift
in tone and pressure.
The blood always finds its
dew point.

These feelings will all
evaporate
with the sun-
rise.


Painting by Edwin Henry Landseer, 'A scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream' c. 1848-1851 in  [Public domain].

Fluent in Word Play

A really good poem smells like a newly printed book to me.
Buying the book doesn't mean you own it. Ingesting is not understanding.
Being really good at doing nothing important does not make it important or good.
Money is made-from paper and metal only, the (inte)rest is in your mind.
Homes are made of metal, plaster and wood-sometimes glass.
Ideas are like soap bubbles, even after they pop they leave a residue.
Just because we may be contacted by cell phone at any time,
it does not require our immediate consent to be touched
-at any time.
Being able to tolerate the rutted steps and familiar roads of nostalgia and slanted memory,
is a flexing of ones Love muscles.
When tossed freely, Patience is a boomerang.
Assholes only make it as far as they can see.
Angels exist to remind us, that we too can be seen thru.
Emotions and weather pass.
Cynicism is simply hope masked with fear.
No worries, I should have the next epiphany by noon.
Literally, how many ways can we say what we mean without meaning something else?
Off the grid does not mean we are unplottable.
The climax always involves us.
If we are entertained, there is no time wasted.
Boredom is the opposite of Happiness, both are vagabond.
Endurance happens over a duration.
Climate change was always a thing,
should we be calling it something else like
Whether weather or whether or not weather records exist?
We were all born liars. We all learned how to walk by falling down, repeatedly.
There is no Privacy in Russia, there is no future tense in Germany,
Americans have coined the Economy, liberally donating interest-free anxiety to All.
There are trees to fall, there is pulp to be extracted, ink to stain our white sheets
and plenty of glue to put it all back together again.
Metaphors are bridges, some burn, and many more
build a new path we could never cross without.
Book burning could have been an act of spontaneous combustion
by poetic ignition.
The smell of burning wood is comforting, despite its dangerous proximity
under our nose.



Painting by Thomas Hart Benton, 'People of Chilmark' 1920 in [Public domain].

Run-on sentences

Keep reading as if the book

were a bible-
Take it with you,

I plea-

You can fit in

a few new affirmations

now and then-

Other currency

is needed

to retain

value.

I beg you
to commit
to memory
the lines,
(psalms)
that will save you
from having to make
up endings.




Artwork credited by William Etty, in National Gallery of Art [CC0], Public Domain.

See-thru

She turns to words
and they turn on her-

And in that deafening silence,
it was too serene
to make a scene.

Paper froze
on her
and condensed its icy pulp
into a dull reflective surface
whereby sharp-windows-
the squinted eyes
circled in hoarfrost
which blurred
the edges
of a thousand panes,
simply knowing these as
thin margins between
virginal definitions
making lighter 

inside-out.




Painting by Maurice Cullen, 'Moret, Winter' c. 1895 in Public Domain. 

Three bars

ATTN: s p a n s
have shrunk.

Our opposable thumbs bent back-
ward devolving in
QWERTY
case(s).

Connections are compared to signal strength,
the invisible lines we weave like webs
entangle everyone where wifi may be free-
for all-(paying) Customers-
staying safely inside
the gridlines.

Tipping is no longer
an indication of gratitude
for the service provided by a server.

There are no more bag people.
Paper or plastic?
Paper breaks down
into change.

The chip
did not deter identity theft.
The chip finds lost pets.
Everyone wants someone else's
wallet, until one realizes
'we carry no cash'.
Everyone wants a companion,
that doesn't care how much money
they have or owe.

Listen,
everybody is-
interested
in selling
you (on)
their junk (bonds).

See,
everyone is watching
your feed,
none are buying
your story.

Freedom fighters are all
chained to their cause,
the wealthy
are anchored by money
and the drifting souls drown in a sea
of selfies, imaginary images
of the good side
alone.

A lone observer
does not participate
in-
justice
spread
faster than 4G 5G.

New message Alert!
Precedence over Presence,
interruptions are multi-
tasking opportunities.

Our memory
re-written for the best utilization
of available space.

We should be doing something
(more),
we should go,
we should have gone,
we should be
(more)
(there)-
I swear
to never regret
intentionally doing nothing
for nobody but me.
We should turn off our location and reach further
blindly feeling our way around this life
we hold in the palms of our crooked hands,
rather than simply progress
across the monkey
bars
just to reach the other side
for fun.




Image of Radio tower, Boston College c. 1920, Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions].

A new day (refurbished)

Meeting with the sunrise again,
alone,
time strikes me as the lone
witness to this.

The mirrors are everywhere,
blinding.

I wrote it all down
to get it out of my head,
to silence the voice,
to make it go away,
and then it was there
in front of me,
like the horizon
line,
too terrifying to retell
today.

Better to watch
the light change.



Photo credited by Fancibaer [CC0], Morning Sunrise, 1/2013, in Public Domain. 

Fake news

Poetry is dead
The news went unannounced
the morning after
nothing significant happened
overnight, like the falling
of a star
none had ever heard
of.

All extermination outside
control is an infinitesimal iota
or inkling of discontentedness.

People are anxious and sad-
ly digressing.

These people around us,
called Friends,
dwell in a hive,
it is known to be
unsafe to stick one's arm
or neck out-
side.

Neither milk nor honey were effective
remedies
for the human condition
of bread and blood and jealousy and revenge.

Fact check: adding prescriptions won't remove you-
unless taken as instructed.

Poetry is often, by Anonymous.

All gossip is fast food.

There were reports of random rhymes and recently
too much illicit alliteration which went awry from
strict poetics, dismissed originality, refused mint-
ability and silently went about matching cases
where poetry became art and art made life
(more) poetic.

And yet it was always so,
documented.

Footnote: the value of 1,000 words has decreased significantly.
All photos have become 'Public Property'.

Religion has been resurrected for persecution.
Nothing is sacred.
Nobody is scared.
All coincidence is evidence of Magic.
And maybe
it was miraculous
and newsworthy,
Poetry was written
encoded into our genetics,
like the language
found on the tip of our tongues.

It feels good to roll your R's.



Painting by Francis Luis Mora, 'Morning News', c.1912 in San Diego Museum of Art in Public Domain.