Pro Noun

When it is said

Something told me

Something made me

I sensed something-

where is the body

of the thing

that sometimes

does not resemble

Us

Like things

that feel or don't feel

Right?

Aren't we feeling

Some

Thing...

Artwork by Robert Lewis Reid, 'The Mirror' c. 1910 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sure lines

With these borrowed

hands, I preen and I prod, poking

this vessel,

taking exploratory measure-

ments

only I can comfortably make.

They do not fit-

together.

Fingers, tendrils, palms, 

veins; grasping, touching

or holding.

Yet I know I need them

as is.

This is why I collect the seashells

at the shoreline,

we may never fit in

as beautifully

as when we are ejected

from the abyss 

we thought we knew

as Home. 

Painting by John Morgan (1823-1885), 'A girl with a seashell' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Gesture

It is the same way we see heat
emanation, only by the rippling
of reality,
an oasis awaits further down the road.

Despite the distance we cover,
no matter how we adjust our focus
crisp lines singe into smoke
relaxing
feeling and senses
a source.

Desire is emanated
from the soul to the eye
that traces the shapeliness of
bodies around
a naked blur
which softly invites a gaze.

The way wind is welcome
where still
waiting for change
of pace moves no bodies
weighted with apathy.

The world spins, arrows fly,
hope floats, love kills, babies die,
the decrepit are reborn, the gates are locked,
gravity suspends its permanence
for a second
witness.

See how it feels...

Arid and parched
a body becomes
never reaching
for what cannot be held.



Image taken in Death Valley taken August 1982 by Roger 469 in Public Domain. 

Asylum

Two-too
Clean and sterile-
eyes-
cataract and contract,
sting with bitter solutions.

Brain washed, scrubbed free
of build-up, calcification of old deposits-
there grows lye.

In the right conditions,
isolation is cleansing
by promise of reward,
acidic seconds feel like
first wounds and kisses.

In doctrinated, what grows
in sand and silt,
by narrow slit or gill
does any thing survive?

I listen as hard as I can strain
the tiny hairs,
metal and maddening stone,
there is no voice or moan outside.

Whispers cannot be made
out or in complete
thoughts shift weight,
in a pendulum.
Hearts of palms, beastly as apes
beat their fanned fronds
in the autumn air.

An oasis sits and steams
with life, preserved in pits
outside these pillowed walls

pane-less as this space is.



Artwork by Austin Osman Spare [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Body

When composed
I have been most like a
lightly punctuated piece of prose.

I recently noticed this
when asked about tendencies
and putting ourselves into forms
or shapes.

When tasked
under grammatical conditions
we need not justify
why we do
to be understood through all the
various transitive verbiage.

Assembly was always required
of us
but never easy.
Only a certain grace found in
a harmless poem
could reflect lightly
a likeness of Others.

Our bodies of work
lie
in the white spaces
where there is room for the shadows
cast by the words beheld
and there are more than enough
glimpses of more
meaning
to be caught-

in mid-air-
afloat where we see
more than the sun setting in
(a day).


Image of writing by Joseph Carstairs, penned c. 1820 in [Public domain].

In-dividuality

These few
need to be near me.
Draw themselves into the fold in-
creasing the density of space it-
self-personal bubble, but
flat out refuse to be
touched
There. Too in-
timate to be considered
delicately. Anywhere
these bubbles abut,
list and lean in-
to one another, there is
a bursting of the seams.



Painting by Peder Severin Krøyer, c. 1881 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Learned

We have become wiser by (re)placing knowledge,

the study of science and acquisition of hard facts behind 

the gauzy veil of superstition, making senses agree to co-
here.

When we look up our horoscopes, we know it means superficially,

and specifically, something general about us and all others

born under the same stars, the same fate awaits us 
under the same moon,

for Now by proximity.

Where some of us are the observers and some are the affected,

which results in the observed being aware of observation through

filters like sieves, discarding the detritus and cause. 

As in the non-medicinal biology of our physiology

and newly altered chemical psychology,

originally the study of the soul, which moved up to mind

which won't be found, locally hovering over us.

The cause of all actions, dreams and motivations, 

are electrochemically bound to the nobility of gasses produced

and what cannot be seen is still ingested, gravity rolls in waves

to tip the harmonic float of equipoise in irony. 

Under all this entropy, chaos left a scathing impression

Of being busy and all amalgamated, diffused and placed

as a foreign body, easily pushed out over time

as a known irritant that refuses to fade away. 

And we realized it was there for a reason,

the whole time it was up to us,

which changes things intensely,

which overloads the first mover

who would be wiser to let go of certainty

by welcoming the only clear way

where stars have the room to line up

and fall, to burn out after emitting all

opalescence.

Pennies sink and still shine, unenvious of temperature,

windows will fly open in desperation for fresh cool air,

we were stuck thinking and suffocating, 
awaiting a breeze 

that breaks in and ransacks the soul

inside out

in any given broad day light

we were willing to learn from the past, 

but still collected worthless things

for others to admire.

We forgot on purpose 
what makes desire. 


Artwork (brush and watercolor on off-white paper) By Creator:Luis Falero [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.