Pulp

Oh bare soul

                    Ink stains

On white sheets

                 hinting impressions of what

came before

                    Without a dark mark made

Leaving no footprints or

                             creases and whatnot

Simply sinking in

                            a breeze shuffles

across the surfaces, 

                                      Lost in the sheaf

reams of lives, 

trembling forests,

                                     all are ashes too...

In the tree outside

the bedroom window

                                     Atop the tallest branch

A mockingbird gives an Aria

Jumping up in bursts, 

Flapping,

                Landing, bleating again

Relentlessly

                   it seems to me

that if a free spirit were

truly so

                     No one would ever know

The full story of a tree...

does one begin with roots-

                                 the buried seeds

nay, so I draw 

a delicate leaf

                                   Hanging mid-air

and am fixated

                        noticing the fallen

Bark below, scratches, and scars

That healed long before

                                       Now sloughed off

and suddenly I erupt 

                        laugh aloud

Along the same avian pitch

                                    Mocking my own

disbelief in the resilience

of composition

                           finding forms

of Liberty.

Erasing all I have done

In the air, irrigated charcoal

           a trace, a gentle summer 

Rain is coming

           so I jump up and go for a run

In the nearby woods

Blood pumping

                       through limbs

Pounding the soft earth

                      I carve a secret Path

instead 

of writing this poem.

Image Title: Bob; the story of our mocking-bird

Year: 1899 (1890s)

Authors: Lanier, Sidney, 1842-1881; Lanier, Charles Day. (from old catalog); Dugmore, Arthur Radclyffe, 1870- (from old catalog) illus

Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons

Contributing Library: The Library of Congress

Credit via Wikimdia Commons in Public Domain

Pale whale

Call me Moby,
he moaned, I am
the white whale with the
golden ambergris,
a blue sheep in a green sea
the tilting eyes
that unfathomably see
and do not forget
breaking glass
and all the colors
not needed.

I have left
footprints, where I have no feet.
Though I manage to move by strokes, I tell
the surface by light in weight bars, falsetto
where exposure to so much blue and grey
was too much to separate species.
It makes one sink
and red
and takes one's breath away
making fountains
without gills.

It is my special skill,
Moby would say.

Five-thousand leagues later,
all blues went grey,
and all green
settled for sheep.



Photo credit By Commander John Bortniak, NOAA Corps (NOAA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dinosaur Footprints

I have been gone
I was here
there
and
then
returning around
full circle through the loophole
suspending my rate of travel
to notice
now
anti-matter
wrapping my grey matter
around black matter
warped by white
the speed of light
taut with tension
pulled along a string
holding onto an inkling
a rope, a noose
to the letter T
a man hangs
swinging on his vine
ape-time-pendulum

I glance back
after collecting the
pitch morning dew
stuck on my soul and shoes
I stare intently
fixated
casually noting
the wide open gait
a first impression
that lasts
until
the mark
I made
is swallowed by exposure
atom slurping condensation
rising under pressure
of erasure
immersion
absorption

Then I was never there
I see where my wide left stride
travels through time
traceless
all over the space.

Back to reality,
the boomerang wanders
where I vacillate
and see
saw
between
cat gifs
and hieroglyphics,
making long To do lists.


Image By Augustus Binu/ www.dreamsparrow.net/ facebook (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.