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. 

Buried alive

My heart thumps
apeish pounding
and I try to keep my fangs
tucked in.
Wired and winded
together, denial was the
black matter
we refused to identify.
Barbaric as it Be,
pacing ourselves
in our cages, deepening the ruts,
muddy we get
stuck
unable to climb out
of our graves.


Painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 'Mountain Forest Path' c. 1919 [Public domain].

Double entendre: 4'33

Your Royal Madame,
Touche
I am a must be madman-I mean mad I am.
This incidence rather a coincidence,
                                           I think not.

It seems to me, it seems to be, and it just seems
an ironic twist of fate-wait-
                                     do I believe in that? Irony? Fate?

This is Shirley Sacrilegious? I’ve said that first name before-

No this is timing. Counting the time with you.
Not in a cage. Not a Cage. Nor Cagian but Timean era,
ergo, time and time again
-reduce-reuse-recycle-
wherein the cycle, rinse, sit and spin.

I met a girl, I met a poem, I meta read a poem
and know-know, know 'em-by heart, by shape,
by sound and better by sin tax, i-ambroken.

It was the eye. The i. Thy.
Universe. No place-like home. 

Always. Life imitates Art. Art imitates Life.
This goes there and that here and this fits and that works
and this is temporary.

And I culled, if that’s the word, took my due 

they said it was-but it sounds so sharp

and severe-the paper reaper is Here!

It is better when the cage is left open,
the books laid down comfortably,
the poems lined up and put to the side,
away, in the marginalia, as if part of the conversation
as if welcome in side,
where silverfish swim
and humans have traveled by sand
in glass hours of solitude.

Well, I just had to tell you-

I had to move the bookshelf in the bedroom.

Not the good one, the one opposite the bathroom.

To access the little door in the wall-not for me-

I think the wall was listening,
Modern Poetry, like water in the walls
falls through the pipes and vocal chords
like metronomes kept me calm.

Scaring sensitive books brittle by neglect,
oh I stirred it up all right! 

Two to six boxes stacked by the front door-

No need to be sad-it means room for more
not so delicious to corrosion.

No, I do not feel the need

to fingerprint them? Plate them. Serve or share them. 
Take something else, copied T's.  

The tribute Retallack retold, paginated for posterity.

The Others-Hah!
Obtuse out of context objects-

subjective-as though there was any other way

but to give those ones away.

The silence set in. Water absorbed. Cage closes in
the dust bunnies-butterflies-not yet-worms with wings.

Yeah, it is poetry answering life, the birds speak

the questions

that Timing is everything,
Those boxed up books are all Free!
Is this irony? Or just population control, Fate of the paper,
vaporous dates with destiny,
I see this not lasting, Dear John.

Art by Charles Emmanuel Biset, Still life with books, letter and tulip (1633–after 1693) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Thought Angler

...sounds a little like
reminding, word choice and voice
in head unleashed runs back over
itself, like long winds of Jack Kerouac.

When some words settle
like boulders, impressioned and set on
making a safe crossing of white waters
for rock dwellers and ware sellers
of Cages. When Neruda was no longer
a border,
Lowell and beholden-There
I was only a Rae,
scaled into a small Armantrout
aiming upstream it seems
by heart.

Planning my path further,
the banks beckon me with moving silt lines
that shape earth
with a wand of whim. All eyes swim across all
those cummings and goings
making sparkles
above.

I take Paz at the reflection,
amassing stones
and skip the flattest ones
across the Eliotic surface,
Poundless and unpuddled,

noting ripples like run on sentences
that could race round forever,
yet are bound by body, only to be
settled on the shores
in the act of abating the volume
of poetry
with only the words of Emily,
finally.

I have caught a current in a collective
intention, wielding a hand
with a hook that looks
like a pen.
I wait, feeling for the wiggle,
a sign, message spoken
through fingertips-

this was when silence
was most sought
by the spear.






Painting by Martin Ryckaert (1587-1631), 'Fisherman in a wooded landscape' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.