Moving her lips

Distracted by a flicker, brutishly I burrowed

under the thickset arboreal pathway, forward through,

not needing a Virgil

Whereby, I found myself subdued and lowered

my angel body, knelt upon the gathering scrag,

with knees upon the well curb, my two soles

Watching my back, I feel the frosty shade

Safer now, I may close my shamed eyes

And I know why others have come too.

I reach right into my hip pocket,

making a tiny discomfit chime,

half-expecting the birds to flap.

I take out the three pennies

used for the i-Ching,

fingering the Nineteen eighty-four first,

it sits in the color of old adobe

streaked in rain grime.

I toss it into the blackness that is not

Empty nor dry

and I wait, waiting, listening, breathing,

hearing nothing...

The next one picks up the red in the sun and

glows facing its prospect of good conduct-

Two thousand and one

sided History, the honest man does not smile

I let it go as impersonal,

It falls quickly

I lean in

this time

and I don’t hear it hit

gulping back it was swallowed hole.

I never wished.

The last one left, I save for a

second thought, more

about splashless wishes

for Change.


Painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Lip locked

“ Matter turns out to have no other substance than spirit itself…In a pure monism it would make no real difference whether we called the one reality God or Nature, mind or matter, water or fire or will, since in any case this substance must be the seat and source of every kind of distant existence…The great stream of “life” is said to run through matter…” -Previously Unpublished Essays of George Santayana, John and Shirley Locks (1969)

We all collide in photonic pride,

mix and co-mingle our palettes

to each his own.

Humanity.

Expressing our cannibal cravings 

in a hungry kiss

as an arc of attraction

thru and through exchange

of energies

as Desire.

Fruits of our Labors.

Mind molds matter  

more perceptibly erected

as spiritual sculpture; 

foundations for 

the body in clay.

Is symbiosis the essence of 

phenomenal bliss, sweet

soul mates in super symmetry?

Dualism fusing with monism,

electromagnetic discharge 

as feedback static

grounded on belief

in single resolution

holographic by belief?

Negative. 

I feel the friction 

in the denial of not knowing

the all that all do

under clear conviction

that nothing is known, certainly,

except what we don't know

Absolutely

nobody knows as much as he doesn't

in real time, 

or (f)actually.

Embrace the wind,

a kiss blown, a fallen star, 

a swollen heart or dry eye

moves nothing but air.

And there we stand, firm-

trying to get through

mind over matter.

“I might sustain the theme indefinitely that you nor I nor anybody knows as much as he doesn’t know. And that isn’t all: there is nothing anybody knows, however absolutely, that isn’t more or less vitiated as a fact by what he doesn’t know.” -Robert Frost

Painting by Edvard Munch, "The Kiss" (1897) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

O' Frosty Well Wisher

On a crisp October morning
                                pondering
For Once, then something,
                                and walking up to the
Well
knowing-this space of Sunday-
                                light like water
can be contained
in a soul cup.

A leaf
          Bob's on top, floats,
ripples rile his rite to disillusionment to-
day,
the way
some seek these shimmering somethings-
Although, as the pessimist already knows
the echoes
                                 signal emptiness,
or
depth
perception.

When he peers down
                                 beyond superficial self-reflection
he alone wonders
why water doesn't wait
                                 for focus
or stand as straight as a
Wall.

On Frost,
with the-
               well,
                        frozen over,
whispering whiteness wonders
when it will all become clear again,
For once,
then nothing
                    but wishes taken for granite
reliable as a wall.




This poem was inspired by and in conversation with the poem by Robert Frost titled, For Once then something.

Image credit By Syed Usman Ali (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.