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.

Do, Rey, Me, My, I

I admit-

I hate poems that start with "I",

which means I also hate this poem.

I mean, there is no "i" in "poem".

There is though, in "poesis" and "meta-

morphosis", just one

I mean, the making of one into many

more I's and i's.

It is not as if I care

about bravely baring the skin or showing some soul,

a sweet tooth for eye candy, and me, me, me...

Besides your self 

what is important to the eye is not the you

others see, really. Not fooling anyone in that mask.

I know you smile when others look at you,

but fail to see your eyes,

really,

I see you mocking me, and I do too,

since it was never about you

only I and I hated it. 

 Photo of Norma Talmadge (c. 1919) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Kafkas Bee Stings

To go out on a limb
I dare test the weight
when I say, I understand Kafka this way;
It is not crazy to say there are Samsa's even today.

When I stand below 30 foot blades of grass,
called reeds,
when I brace the arch of my foot upon the burl
at the base of a redwood tree,
when I lean into the onshore wind, steady at 20 plus
while the ocean surges, spilling its seams

it does not unravel me

To know how small we may be
here and now, this and that
as is
can change
will
be-
come

When I see bricks and iron
trying to scrape the sky
I smile wide, and laugh
at our grand endeavors
so easily eroded
back into the dust of us
that never leaves
but collects and dulls,
and lingers in the light.

Now, to an insect, a mote may be a mountain,
and ant hill, the Andes;
one of those places we look up
and are showered in our deluge of naivete.
An innocence that washes away, sheds, refuses
its state, affixed with distorted perceptions
of name, place, size and domain, to roam and dwell.
While it is unnatural, deplorable to many,
to conceptualize that our taxonomy
doesn't belong with the birds.
None of us evolve as eminent as these.

That's what I believe Franz says
when he means, Gregor wakes from his dream,
hating honeyed honesty, preferring analogy
through entomology, so it would most simply seem
when explaining such reproductive things.




Image By Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), Metamorphosis XXIII, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.