Tres (trace)

Water

Today, warm raindrops

glass blurs, the blurry glassy,

sharp sparkles sugar.

Behind

Evening, it was good.

Leaves all turned into shadows

sky palette blending.

You

Broken glass, a cup

a puzzling of pieces

holds onto nothing.

Painting by Claude Monet, 'Pond at Montgeron' c. 1877 via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

And then...

 

Change is like that strong smell

of cut grass or chopped wood

that stops you still.

Patterns, a symbol can be

an illegible sign, 

at first glance.

Or a certain light at sunset, 

or dark that whispers

Where am I coming from?

You are always going

Somewhere.

Next to nothing seems impossible.

I am next.

Painting by Orazio Gentileschi, 'Portrait of a Young Woman as a Sibyl' (c. 1620-1626) from Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

Imagination

I have been mad at myself for random

Things.

I guess that happens when left to your own

Devices.

I have forgiven myself 

for all the things I can't 

remember.

I guess 

this can happen

too

often

I have held onto petty grudges and

I have let go of heavy resentments.

Occasionally, I have strong opinions

but always pick my battles

All of which

I have won.

You've come a long way

some have said.

Starting over 

means you've come 

empty-handed and grateful

for what was not taken.

And what is more

all that you are free

to take-for a time-

Interesting and cursed. 

I don't know

what I do not have,

nor can I imagine

what is better

or worse-

Living 

for giving or 

for getting...All

random things

Not worth

getting mad at myself for

or remembering.

ever again. 

Painting by Thomas Dewing, 'Lady with a Rose''c. 1915-1924 via Wikimedia Commons in ublic Domain. 

3rd Act

People teach you

about people.

Loneliness and Solitude

See-Saw.

Generations 

leave more than can be

taken.

Practice

gratitude & letting go

of things and people 

you were grateful for 

Once. 

Everything happens...

Burning bridges,

opening doors-

There must be more

than one way

In or out.

One way to look at it

is just that.

People need people

like signposts

for orientation.

Yet never to be 

in the same place

at the same time.

Missing and

Lost 

can be both 

alone and together.

When you find yourself...

Painting by George Hitchcock, 'Calypso' c. 1906 Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

Making time

 

Maybe it's how,

I gotta go in 10 minutes,

feels so different from-

I have 10 more minutes of sleep-

Or all lights are green

and other days every single one

makes you wait

reminding

Patience is virtuous

Following the divorce,

of course,

treading harder than ever

just to stay afloat-

On that same note

trying harder to keep 

inspired

instead of always feeling 

tired.

Grinding the mill stone

down to the metal

ore-

just

Stop and sink-

Or was it drop and think...

Into a poem

pocketing loose pieces 

while waiting

for the light to change.

Painting by Esperando La Pesca 'Waiting for the Catch' via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

Palette or Palate

Grace is always within you

it is said...Hmmm...

I think grace is pink

which is why its hard to find

when all you see is red.

Love is not all crimson cupcakes

still, there is gratitude, 

warm and orange. 

Citrus can be sweet or sour,

it depends on more than taste.

Every word

a jagged cube of ice

to crush or to melt,

linger into nothing...

Yet nourishing

by experience,

like white or wisdom-

or the sun.

What do I know

of divinity-

But hell

and evil, is black 

Absence or All...

Diluting color

of meaning, when

Time is demanded.

Faith is ordered.

I taste metal,

or my own

blood

while

sensing my fragile

green mortality

All over.

Painting by Vincenzo Irolli (1860-1949), in Public domain, 'Young boy eating a watermelon' via Wikimedia Commons.

Obviously hidden

The treasure chest is locked

of course

I cannot find the key.

Losing it

intentionally

was self-defense.

And of course

someone asked about its

contents.

Privacy excluded,

they meant no offense

to my memory.

But of course

certain things cannot be trusted

with others

Or oneself, really.

That is why

it is safer to hide

Inside.

Painting by Edward Mason Eggleston (1882-1941), 'Princess of the Treasure Isle' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Divisible

Blessed are thee

memories

chosen to be forgotten

dissolved into distant haze.

Cherished are those

brilliant first rays

alighting the new path

of unknowns.

In the sky

and in the sea,

the clouds and waves

do not recall those passed.

Likewise, made of the same,

and never the same

You and I

remember-

Painting by Henry Scott Tuke, 'Looking out to sea' c. 1885 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Blinking

Every new day-

recovered mind,

rested eyes,

pocket moments

pulled out-

placed under the tongue.

Bitter-sweet

and so savory-

a memory can be...

Distant clouds 

of dreams, residues

shade daylight hues.

But atmosphere

absorbed after

sublimation and slumber

is re-minding 

Oneself

of one's self.

At least as far

as reflections like these

appear to Be. 

Painting by James McNeill Whistler - 'Resting in Bed', c.1883-1884, via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

Synchronized subsistence

How the greatest life

can only be attained

by the destruction 

of previous lives 

re-positioning, per se.

Nothing is unchanged

by time moving 

so fast we cannot feel

where momentum 

begins and ends

And again

that wonderful life

felt slow

in coming and

so fast in passing

All at the same time.

Painting by Edgar Degas 'Four Dancers' c. 1899 _Google_Art_Project via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain.

Pulp

Oh bare soul

                    Ink stains

On white sheets

                 hinting impressions of what

came before

                    Without a dark mark made

Leaving no footprints or

                             creases and whatnot

Simply sinking in

                            a breeze shuffles

across the surfaces, 

                                      Lost in the sheaf

reams of lives, 

trembling forests,

                                     all are ashes too...

In the tree outside

the bedroom window

                                     Atop the tallest branch

A mockingbird gives an Aria

Jumping up in bursts, 

Flapping,

                Landing, bleating again

Relentlessly

                   it seems to me

that if a free spirit were

truly so

                     No one would ever know

The full story of a tree...

does one begin with roots-

                                 the buried seeds

nay, so I draw 

a delicate leaf

                                   Hanging mid-air

and am fixated

                        noticing the fallen

Bark below, scratches, and scars

That healed long before

                                       Now sloughed off

and suddenly I erupt 

                        laugh aloud

Along the same avian pitch

                                    Mocking my own

disbelief in the resilience

of composition

                           finding forms

of Liberty.

Erasing all I have done

In the air, irrigated charcoal

           a trace, a gentle summer 

Rain is coming

           so I jump up and go for a run

In the nearby woods

Blood pumping

                       through limbs

Pounding the soft earth

                      I carve a secret Path

instead 

of writing this poem.

Image Title: Bob; the story of our mocking-bird

Year: 1899 (1890s)

Authors: Lanier, Sidney, 1842-1881; Lanier, Charles Day. (from old catalog); Dugmore, Arthur Radclyffe, 1870- (from old catalog) illus

Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons

Contributing Library: The Library of Congress

Credit via Wikimdia Commons in Public Domain

Reciprocity

Both rules and laws can be broken

So what is the cause

And effect, re-

action to the action of say words like

Karma, luck, Fate,

and due course or so

It should follow, anywhichway

eyes for eyes and

Crossed Tees

The beginning, middle and

End of give and take

Or not thin lines like justice

Is it transactional

Back scratching and barter

What is fair trade when values

Are bendable

What can never be dependable

As a cause caused by

A butterfly swooping some

where when why was what

Made meaning.

TITLE: Friendship love and truth

CALL NUMBER: PGA - Currier & Ives--Friendship love and truth (A size) [P&P]

REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZC2-2373 (color film copy slide)

MEDIUM: 1 print : lithograph, hand-colored.

CREATED/PUBLISHED: New York : Published by Currier & Ives, c1874.

CREATOR: Currier & Ives.Source Wikimedia Commons, in Public Domain. 

Topophilia

It was the Place

I fell madly in love with

Not him, not the time.

It was always

That Place, all the time,

Lips raw from kissing her

Broad-shouldered salty shorelines

Lapping up

Barbeque sun and metallic rain storms

Alike.

The tourist ebb and flow,

Hats, cameras, new sandals,

coconut oil and seaweed

Wet sandstone and dripping agave

Too numerous to name such

Stimuli.

Looking back

Only hurts my neck

Nothing is the same

The tower crumbled

Bright as the days that were

Electric storms that were not

Sunshine and Roses

As most memories

Belie

Buried in the sand

Toes and shells, glass and seaweed

Never and forever

There.

Photo by me, 'Monsters house from goon' taken 11/12/2016.

Or deal

Memories are

Pick a card, any card,

except you do not choose

Well

we all carry a card or two

up a sleeve, lain

on the table

hence playing with

A full deck 

is rare

52 weeks

shuffle like thrown-up

cards, now the 

Five of clubs

Demands your decision.

Go fish for 

another

Hand read them

like palm lines

to call or stay

this time around

Krazy 8's and wild

Jokers interrupt as 

I shuffle through

these days,

Solitaire and surprised

at the random nature 

making a game

Of dealing with it.

Painting by Juan_Gris, 'Damier et cartes à jouer'  (Checkerboard and playing cards) c. 1915, Google Art Project in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Morsels of moments

We can't go back, pick up, pieces

Anymore

Than we can jump ahead 

To when we

Were nowhere

Together.

It was just right

After I left

A landing, a ledge

Caught me 

You fell past me

In a dream

Blood-stained hands

Grasping.

There was a river.

The sound conjures the divide

How it carries those times

And places

Elsewhere.

You got carried away

I took another way

Anyone's guess

To the sea, 

ultimately

Never again

One 

and the same.

Painting by David Cox -' On the Conway River, North Wales' - Google Art Project, date unknown in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. .

(Bone pile)

My lips are sealed with 

The caulk of deaf ears.

Born for this.

Lessons to be learned as chapters

Turned 

Over, like how to read our bodies

Instructions, building muscle

Memories such as

Tools we must learn how to use

Who speaks and who listens

Goes on and off 

As breath and tides, rhythm and

Numbers like thoughts sequence

And past tense

Lie in a moment

Between notes.

Painting by Wassily :Kandinsky - 'Silent, 1926' in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Before four

Must be some-one

Wakes me pre-dawn 

At 3

Mind a maze

Organs ablaze

Quiet cacophony

Stirring the still waters

Must be some-thing

Which must be known or

Revealed to the euphotic zone

Poetry and ghosts arise

And mingle, my solidity heavy

Disruptive to the lucid dream

Must have

Second thoughts

Choruses drone, stuck

So it seems, 

telling, reminding

Of lighter times 

Than the chasm and coffin can

Offer an anxious creature

Of habit and habitation,

A disheveled dwelling 

And the slumber until

The next hour

Or

Finding what I must be

Looking for. 

Painting by Edvard Munch - Sleepless Night. Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil c. 1920- MM.M.00076 - Munch Museum in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Avow

Truth be told-

The clean secrets

are the ones

most easily over-looked, 

like tiny happy pills,

like big gulps of fermentation

like bottled pride, 

once swallowed

often gets caught

tickling the throat

edible if not credible

sharp.

The bleached lies

are the ones treated

as though sterilization 

made us all safer

instead of regretful

for draining the color from

all storied possibilities.

Cheeks and skies

Sunsets and dawns

pinks and yellows

the way you see

plain as day

something always there

in between...

Kisses like clouds

Words like wind

fighting infection and odds

debating the will without power

Nothing to trace

Distance cured us all

to be saved for later

Revelations.

Painting by Gabriel von Max 'Praying' c. 1915 in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Rosa rubiginosa

I used to advise him to pick a rose 

by its smell

First,

which was like asking him to choose a girl for her personality

First,

the roses I chose

bloomed often, I cut them and left them

to fragrance the big kitchen.

The rose I have now,

Was lilac,

When I found it at the hardware store.

Now,

it starts magenta, fades to purple,

then pales to near white with dark pink edges.

I get a bud every

So often...

Like life,

I think,

I am always happily surprised to receive

He never tended to the roses

Anyway,

I remember vividly

the wild ones we saw on a walk-first

he denied they were roses at all

Despite the thorns, the tiny neon magenta buds, 

the telling

Leaves

And so I never insisted

A rose is a rose

always keeping

my scents

about me.

Painting by Maxime Maufra (1861-1918) - A Bouquet of Roses - YORAG , 19 - York Art Gallery in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Half-dozen Mud cakes

Back to wood

decks, quarter-size spiders, webs, moss 

and creatures stirring in the hollow

nights

Back to no

side-walks and skirting into the duff

or mud when cars and trucks pass

close-by

Back to walking

in the woods, again, sheltered 

from the horizon and its deep-wide

glistening

Ends of days

In so many ways

I thought I would 

Never

Be back

It all seems

to stay the same

Except I

Must leave again...

And then again

If I never left

I would never be

Back. 

Painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 'Combing' c. 1891 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

As the crow flies

On still days

with drooping flags

and contented leaves

Sounds somehow soaked in

between the crevices

of broad daylight

I sit as still as my body

Allows

shuffling feathers

a crow passes by 

my hair

Lifts

and the clouds tip-toe 

Along the rounded horizon 

I don't see any

Evidence of spin

and even while held down 

in place and time

I feel the thousand 

mile-per-hour trajectory

Of every thing 

and cannot help

but try to follow

Which way

it all goes.

Painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, ' Boy and a crow' c. 1884 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ex-isle

This world 

is not for breath

for feelings

also come and go.

As hard and light as 

Push and pull

Go.

Busy hands and 

bees-electricity, alter-

nating currents, the unseen

Never again 

Now

Where were we-

Many moons ago

and always one moon

stoic satellite

Spinning our own orbit

one side-sunlit

Not saying

darkness always becomes

Her-

Or shall I?

Painting by Robert Henri 'The Reader in the Forest' c. 1918 via Wikimedia Commons and Google Art Project, in Public Domain. 

Home

This name does not belong

to me-

This body will do

For mobility of the restless soul

Escape from all

This

killing ourselves

Sweet poisons of security

in a sense

Never enough

To fill the seams

To fit to the letter

To tie loose ends

Try to forget

Let go

without remembering

What it was

The name of something

That kept us.

Painting by 'Winslow Homer, 'The Green Hill' c. 1878, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

Kind of reminscent

It was the kind of morning

where the ocean on the

Other side of the range

Dances and mingles with the early air

making fog

as it thins in the strong sunlight

beckoning a body

of water...

It was the kind of day

the slanted afternoon sun

labored its rays through

branches burning the dirt of 

crushed leaves and mulch bark

making ones insides rumble

with a hunger

for Freedom...

It was the kind of evening

the sky tasted like rainbow sherbert,

a warm breeze from below 

that evokes the surge of a 

swing-set wind 

and smells of spent fuel,

a subdued din and

time slows 

in fading light

into the kind of night

Shadows don't bother hiding

leaving a chill as they pass 

and reeking of second chances

like other 

Times approaching.

Painting by Firs Sergeyevich Zhuravlev (1836-1901) Bojar Woman via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain.

She Leaves

Roots reaching in Thirst 

She acted-spontaneous

Limbs longing for light.

Image of 'Bamboo Canopy' via Wikimedia Commons October 19, 2015 in Public Domain. 

Taken for Granite

Whereby

a  storm comes ambling aloft

which builds upon itself and

You are there to 

Witness the change

in atmosphere

Almost a reconsideration of

Truth, as it pours down 

Over body and soul.

One becomes

Baffled by the way

Sound carries or

Falls

depending upon

the time of day or night while

those spinning hours

make a hum under

Thoughts that echo

Passing through

this chambered grey space. 

We are 

Well,

enveloped 

under this veil

Trapped in body and mind

the heartbeat is 

Small comfort

Persistent as gravity

the weight we hold

Ourselves

up against wind and wave

Enduring the 

Resilience

Even while

strewn about

We become

overflowing, dispersing

Violently sometimes

Breaking down into bits, drops and 

Grains-

Eroding to dust

before settling

Eventually

becoming a mountain

Once again. 

Painting by Marianne North (1830-1890) - View near Tijuca, Brazil, Granite Boulders in the Foreground - MN821 - Marianne North Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain.