Goldenlocks

I stumbled upon a short 

story, written

as if it were a poem-

Lines broken like cracks in the side-

walk that one steps

Over

Its title did not evoke its

gait and I hazard to observe-

if it walks like a big duck

it could be a small goose

and then

what do profiles 

Reveal or musings in marginalia...

What makes a poem,

a place, a sense of something familiar

almost like thoughts

Severed

So many stories

follow a straight line

and then

I 

turned a corner

saw a different path

without backstory and confident

Nobody

was following me

(anymore)

and then

it was done. 

Artwork by Virginia Frances Sterret, 'Old French Fairy Tales 0077 in Public domain in US, via Wikimedia Commons.

Featherweight

When the strength you need

becomes all of the strength

you've given...

When unexpected loss

Takes your breath away

too...

When you balance 

All of your own weight

on your own 

two feet

without feeling

push or pull...

Flight may occur

When your vision is blurred

from speed, you see,

Direction is irrelevant

to destination.

When arrival is relative

to departure

and landing is only

One stop

of many...

It starts to feel 

Easier to open 

Both arms, wings 

and just soar...

A rough legged hawk soars over Seedskadee NWR, looking for its next meal. Photo Credit: Tom Koerner/USFWS via Wikimedia Commons.

Empirical Spherical

In the sphere where clouds are formed

How high? Out of eye-

sight

Is where mind over matter mixes its

Potion

Something

from nothing-

Empty

As a periwinkle sky

filled purely with a howling wind

that you can feel in your

Bones

like rain

and gravity, the weight, and desire of

Still... 

the plane pierces through the dark wall

and

Nothing was there

After

All.

Painting by Nesterov, The_Nightingale_is_Singing_by_M.Nesterov_(1918,_priv.coll), in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Depth perception

With ten thousand neurons 

in one single suction cup 

on an octopus tentacle,

could even you imagine

what it would feel like

when touching

anything-

each other-

No contact-

like eye contact.

There may be a nest 

of tangled live wires

behind the wall

behind our masks

we are currents

of electricity.

And as the eel shocks every-

thing but itself-

we have so many blind spots 

not baited eye-

spots-as fish-

Don't you wish 

chameleon when needed to be

or to know so much

feeling

with only the lightest touch...

Photo credit: 800px-Octopus_at_Kelly_Tarlton's, October 2012 via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

Gravity speaks of distribution

While putting away the dishes

in my tiny kitchen,

I recalled over-hearing 

the man say to the girl

'Your eyes were bigger than your plate'

And now I was stacking the plates,

sorting large and small,

thinking how they were all made the same

Each one designed to hold only so much

And the inevitability

Of each one taking a turn

At the bottom,

bearing the weight 

Of all 

The others 

And never cracking.

With the dishes put away,

I look through the glasses

Thinking of the right size

for my eyes

Hearing the tiny echoes

Of gravity 

And thirsting for more. 

Painting by Joannes de Cordua (1630-1702), 'Still life with copper dishes' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Written in stone

All in 

One moment

I understood the

Buddha's parable about walking

with a stone in your shoe-.

I suddenly knew

It could happen to anyone

Anytime 

and after inspecting the painful

if minuscule annoyance

I found the stone

Made of calcified fragments, merely

Memories compressed and pushed out

like bone spurs sloughed off 

and re-attached to thought

Like a tumor.

Every step, someone else's shoes -

That was

Us

Now all that is left

is the loose stone

from the right shoe. 

Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), 'Woman tying her shoe' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What was the question?

Time, like money, isn't tangible 

Neither is love, truth and what

is real-

made up, rounded off, different

for you and I-

what is real...

And yet, some

times

are frozen or elapse slow

and many too fast to enjoy

Enough-

What about dusk-sunset 

or dawn, or the times

I look at the clock and it's the same

Times-day and night.

Well, what about a pastime or a memory,

Truth be told from one 

person in a place with

Nothing-

is real

for you-for anyone...

Do blessings count?

Photo of Woman at spinning wheel in Studeno na Blokah, Slovenia taken August 1962 in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Terminal Velocity

The blur through a window

from a moving train-

Escape is jumping

Off-another adventure

The temptation to forget

Your given name-

Every thing is new

Once

Or more, 

how many places and things

to see

versions of yourself

Landing 

Through the pane.

Painting by Eva Stort, Deutsch: Blick aus dem Fenster (Schöneberg). Signiert. Datiert 1890' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Aloha

Everybody's Home

Burns to the ground

At some point

The scenery changes

Like that

Old memory of

Open fields

Filled in with

Buildings

Now 

Vacant and

Antiquated after

Remote working

Everybody's Home. 

Painting by Jules Tavernier, 'Kilauea Caldera Sandwich Islands' c. 1886 at San Diego Art Museum in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

High Cue

Sap from heart-wood drips-

Honey, no one would call It.

Can you Smell the sun?

Painting by George Inness (1825-1894), 'The Mill Stream, Montclair, New Jersey' c. 1888 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Summer times

Some days smell like

Freedom.

I was with a bad (hu)man for

Far too long.

Often heated,

Bad habits, scarring and some

Evil-

Bloody mess...

Honest, my guts

torn asunder 

then more

Limbo, a sense of 

Death...

Dante,

One could say-

Then

In some particular way

the sun felt extra good today,

Felt my skin thirsting and gulping

every atom, warm and

Yum...

Like a perfectly ripe peach 

cannot be devoured without a

Smile.

Pure and True.

Each peach- the same and

Anew-

Even though, simplified

Into

As above, so it is

Below. 

To grow or die

this time around

the Sun. 

. 

Painting by William Mason Brown (1828-1898), 'Peaches on a White Plate' c. 1880 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Forest

 

Still the aftermath

Trees reach tall and wide, like We-

That is All-she wrote.

Painting by George Hayter (1792-1871), 'After the Storm' c. 1833 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tepid

June thunderstorm

barrels thru

Humid-but isn't that wet

Anyway-All the little

People say "Climate Change"

But isn't the climate always

Changing-

People in a room,

Stars that collide and

Rainbows that break the mirror of 

Sky, 

as night and day

do not feel the

Same.

Never before is not impossible

or infinity imploding

As in a 

Cause to worry,

never fear

the constant Change

passes thru. 

Painting by Samuel Palmer, 'Summer Storm near Pulborough, Sussex ' c. 1851 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Any other way

Forget and forgive

Not the other way

Forward

Better to apologize

than ask for

Permission

Make sense

Of a million censors

One raises 

Voices

But acts alone.

There was a time 

of day

that just felt right

Now

is a different Time.

The sun sets

the sun rises

all the Same.

Image of Artwork credited by (Scan by NYPL), 'Sunrise or Sunset on Lake Champlain, NY' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The words escaped her...

 

Sometimes she speaks

Others...

Don't listen to her

How she doesn't know

What she says

Before...

She thought

They could hear

Her thoughts

filled with speech a-

loud voice

You could tell...

Image credit User:Zmaj, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

For 15, 23

Today,

Two years ago

To this day,

I drove away

For good

has never sounded

So Appropriate

Into fate

As it were, 

As it would be

Left behind

Behind me

Now,

I drive on paved paths

In the dark

Streets

only silver linings

Guide 

The way.

Photo by Author Kelly Sikkema, Unsplash title 'As far as you can see' Dated 13 January 2017, Location: Fenton, United States

Confession

There was nothing left 

for me to do except take him to the edge 

of land

and see if he notices

what is missing

would he read the horizon lines

and turn the page?

Together we watched the boats

come and go

at the mouth

of the harbor

saying nothing 

of directions

like wind and gaze.

The further we went on 

drifting by degrees away,

where the edge becomes and end 

before us

anyway, a moment of stillness

Arose 

to this occasion

of reading-

The End.

Painting by Winslow Homer (1836-1910), 'Chindren on the beach' c. 1873 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Lucid lyrics

This one body

of water

This one me,

one drop in a sea-

where matter makes

greater than one

me and

to see a body-

Like mine

drenched in spirit

like the One 

This is some thing

only I can feel

this one reality

of a Being

that changes

less or more

and more or less

by blood and water

when every thing is 

Exposed

Nothing is just 

itself.

Image by Dietmar Rabich / in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons / “Wassertropfen -- 2021 -- 8024” / CC BY-SA 4.0.

A-scent

A vile

Odor repels

something sinister

kept safe by scent

Just so

A vial

of perfume

Lingers long after

the liquid disappears

as pen on paper

fade

In residue resides

A verse

Contains a moment or more

than matter, intangible yet

Solidified somewhere

such as Here

Averse

to keeping a poem

Imprisoned eternally

Ascent is always

Released. 

Painting by Francis Philip Barraud (1824-1901), 'Prisoners of War' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Magnets

True to form

February astounds

How the stars and planets 

        align

For the sky 

       moods

Atmosphere as in

Invisible rules.

Where one pauses

suddenly and 

Often to notice 

The unseeables and

         unmentionables

Or as quiet and mystical

as the snow 

          topping the distant 

Ranges

And dissolving

Time

         Marches on. 

Painting by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), 'A Storm in the Rockies' c. 1866 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Directions

Creation is the opposite of

Destruction.

I wave my hand

in a certain direction

and create

Havoc or Hope

it makes

sense further away...

As far as I could see,

All that can be

Destroyed

was never meant to remain

the same

Goes

for Us

Undoing

what is Done. 

Painting by Edvard Munch (1863-1944), 'Woman in White Sitting on a Bench' c. 1906-1907, in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Natural selection

The way 

Blessings pretend-

disguise themselves 

as heavy and foreboding 

Such a gift-

Good riddance 

feels, say-from divorce,

sweet endings and 

Lighter.

Life is only choices,

the pathways and doors

Present all themselves

as such

choosing persists

and curiosity is 

Chosen.

After all,

Giving up

may be 

weight or wings

such things 

open and close 

Inevitably. 

Artwork by Emperor Huizong of Song, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Chasm choir

The way a stone is tossed into a dark well

to find water, a level, to hear it hit

bottom.

There was no other way

than by placing our whole body weight

upon the suspension bridge-

between slats, between selves

could we feel it have hold

We could stare into the infinite 

and never know the safest way 

to move atop such vast darkness

By one step,

one stone, 

one question, one more word

about trust, what lies

below 

reveals it self 

in sound but out of sight,

Finally

landing is only the end 

of falling. 

Painting by Gerhard Munthe, 'At the Well' c. 1886 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Pinned down

 

...perception is us

not manifest

destiny or dream

boards and images

attached.

Artwork by Anonymous Unknown author, 18th century, in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Storm front

 

Nor did I chase

the storms, even as 

they came for me, that way

Did not run

for shelter stops

Nothing

we wed in between

such pouring days

as if a window

Opened

to a raw and fresh world

Where death and birth

dwell in unison

A reddened dawn 

bled deep

into horizon lines, gashes,

words of warning defined

Old

wives tales,

words of prophecy

fairies and fantasies,

Or metaphor

like We could be

Happy, sirens.

Thoughts as thick as 

Mammatus

dissipate for clearer 

skies shall 

Pass

Blinding truths

anyway...

For now 

I stay shuddered

while wet and wiser

atmospherically.

 

Painting by Hart, James McDougal, 1828-1901  (artist); 'The Storm is Coming' L. Prang & Co. (publisher), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.