Chasm choir

The way a stone is tossed into a dark well

to find water, a level, to hear it hit

bottom.

There was no other way

than by placing our whole body weight

upon the suspension bridge-

between slats, between selves

could we feel it have hold

We could stare into the infinite 

and never know the safest way 

to move atop such vast darkness

By one step,

one stone, 

one question, one more word

about trust, what lies

below 

reveals it self 

in sound but out of sight,

Finally

landing is only the end 

of falling. 

Painting by Gerhard Munthe, 'At the Well' c. 1886 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Go Fourth

The fire works
while clutching the cool stem
of rose colored glass
gleaning the glaring
moonlight into amber
crystalized tears
petrified
bead

kaleidoscope shaped pins
spin
colors that streak
high, piercing this purple sky
while the clouds bend low
to gather and take in-
side themselves whole
sound waves
to blind and echo
by distortion
and distance

like thunder,
like lightning,
like electricity,
like this short life

as in
sparks
that leave only traces
of sulfur
in a sense

bonded and bound
by this friction
as if it were
a release.


Painting by Thomas Fearnley (1802-1842), A Terrace in Moonlight' c. 1834 , in Public domain.

echolocation

All the same words. All the same words in various orders.

All the same orders, word for word in so many words.

It all sounds the same. It was.

Are we saying the same thing?

Are you reading the same thing? We are saying the same,

reading the same things, so those are not mine?

If it is all the same to you too, it must be as disappointing to you too.

What is this maddening monotony, cacophony?

I am trying to say something original. Nothing was left.

No wonder none understands-meaning-deeper than face,

used all the same pretty words until threadbare, there,

two too many times. Make more!

Also, and Silence, I have said. I have changed for a mind,

momentarily in lieu of reverberating or reiterating more

echoes in empty rooms, pantries, and needs nearly nothing

for nourishment, nothing can be said hereto hear,

to hear only the same small words all lined up

in repoemed formation, loaded with an air of epiphany,

see, repetitive can be reflective, refractive, prismatic

mirror opposites 'true to scale'

said enough, with lips red

wardback

            ‘devil’

Painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, (c.1870) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Skipping sounds

Thrown stones at glass ponds

Reflecting cracks or ripples,

though heard, no echo…

Painting By Józef Chełmoński, Pond in Radziejowice, (1898) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Bottoms up

Have you fallen
into a book, a slump,
into bed
too deep
for another to hear your muffled voice trying to climb out?

If so, please let me know, as I have been seeking
low and high for the loose end to grab onto
falling short of finding the eminent source
of your sound-
could I be late-
are you too far
underneath to speak freely?

Well,
we all make choices,
most have moved on.
I have pulled on this rope
without end
wishing and waiting for one more
buried echo-o-o-o-o-o-o...


Painting by Georg Flegel [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Twenty-six characters

Have I repeated myself?
            Yes, to excess.
If it is any consolation,
that too
            has been done.
And if this were a real poem-
            it would be a brush painted kanji-
symbolically inexplicable
            by its symbiotic smooth strokes.
It is flow.

So seriously, let us not pretend
            emphasis-a stress-is an echo-as an anaphora
Although,
            the lines look the same,
they are not along the same lines
bound by words
imitating poetry
that is never new-
but you knew This
I have painted it before.



Image from decalrocket.com

Orbit-uary

This again,
In
and spin-ning helix twirlex wound around
centripetal journeys sheered off at the base.
A tetrahedron and gone on and on
as origami is.
Ripples widen the longer we wait,
the in-between
to each his own vibrational state,
one is a wave of itself of
meeting ledges and
recombining in rings
that sing all the chimes notes
and signals the fade away
into the end of the echo,
just so
we should know
it was all said before
ideas take in shapes and sides
based on the circumsphere
we hear-
here ehoes.



Image created By Perditax (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. (Gorceixite crystal).

Echo-interpretation

Few knew
how little we were
hoping to be noticed

Not that
they wanted more
and less to be seen
here

Some found
they never heard
(of) the likes of you
before

Some sought
outside as outcasts
too frigidly
accommodating

Some stayed
in place and inside
by the fire
alit with artistic rage

Not many
more than we
can handle
touching
poetry
without scalding
the tips

And know
none pine
for ringing cedars, pet rocks
or chop words, but quarry
here
for the echo...


Image of painting By Adolf Mosengel (1837-1885) (Dorotheum) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Fifty-five shades of cadet gray

It was the thick piled blanket of gray
that made the metaphor more simile today.

Cumulative as a collector of dew
indulges in a spendthrift rain of blue.

Cowering behind high pressure,
it may have been up in the air,

but it lay down on all in between,
nestled in nature.

Birds under-cover, the grass
fast asleep,

And audibly thick sound
envelopes
from gravity's position
I fathom
to scream
inside-it does not carry
you out

I doubt it was definitely only one
up there-
clapping-
cutting, stomping, sucking, sputtering,
interrupting frontal intersections

Slicing with a mallet, tendering with blades
heart beating to ear drums

a-long the gray highway
in-complete-dis-guys

two-way mirrors like
our eyes,
the other side of sound
surround

don't bother to look-
it was only one-
a passing Chinook
in the stealth of May.




Image of painting by James Ward, Sky Study [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.