Fluent in Word Play

A really good poem smells like a newly printed book to me.
Buying the book doesn't mean you own it. Ingesting is not understanding.
Being really good at doing nothing important does not make it important or good.
Money is made-from paper and metal only, the (inte)rest is in your mind.
Homes are made of metal, plaster and wood-sometimes glass.
Ideas are like soap bubbles, even after they pop they leave a residue.
Just because we may be contacted by cell phone at any time,
it does not require our immediate consent to be touched
-at any time.
Being able to tolerate the rutted steps and familiar roads of nostalgia and slanted memory,
is a flexing of ones Love muscles.
When tossed freely, Patience is a boomerang.
Assholes only make it as far as they can see.
Angels exist to remind us, that we too can be seen thru.
Emotions and weather pass.
Cynicism is simply hope masked with fear.
No worries, I should have the next epiphany by noon.
Literally, how many ways can we say what we mean without meaning something else?
Off the grid does not mean we are unplottable.
The climax always involves us.
If we are entertained, there is no time wasted.
Boredom is the opposite of Happiness, both are vagabond.
Endurance happens over a duration.
Climate change was always a thing,
should we be calling it something else like
Whether weather or whether or not weather records exist?
We were all born liars. We all learned how to walk by falling down, repeatedly.
There is no Privacy in Russia, there is no future tense in Germany,
Americans have coined the Economy, liberally donating interest-free anxiety to All.
There are trees to fall, there is pulp to be extracted, ink to stain our white sheets
and plenty of glue to put it all back together again.
Metaphors are bridges, some burn, and many more
build a new path we could never cross without.
Book burning could have been an act of spontaneous combustion
by poetic ignition.
The smell of burning wood is comforting, despite its dangerous proximity
under our nose.



Painting by Thomas Hart Benton, 'People of Chilmark' 1920 in [Public domain].

History v.1,792

        What if we learned our lessons backward

instead of ignoring what lies ahead,

would we start at the end and dig ourselves out

from there

or is Here too near to Now to know?

What if we learned language primary by poetry,

as in, taught this way, 

if we made an educated guess 

we would we think more

if we understood less.

And what about what the ocean says, its native 

cetaceans, their migrations…adaptations.

We would find a place 

in their tragic tales, perchance

see ourselves in the eyes on fish tails,

mermaids and white whales.

Yes, hard to translate

some things don't

clearly. 

Well,

what if we listened harder to things that seem

indistinct,

do you think we could hear the earth exhale 

say deep in sleep, could we focus then

on the multiverse-

But here we are fracking up.

Waiting for a guide out of some terrestrial curse.

Would it be worse

to know we were too little to hold on?

We have cumulatively uncovered

more historically,

we have yet to discover

meaning,

we barely understood

what all of this implied-

No 

Time to speculate

about Grand New Beginnings 

By starting at the infinite Endings...

After all, how could History be 

far too long ago and have not nearly enough

relevance or reverence for Us

by glaring reflection,

with Us reminiscing about the great old days

adding and adorning, making the old new.  

We like changing the story as we go,

we can know just enough 

to make it up

to you.

True-

with no good place to start

chaos will return,

before it was missed. 

Our Resilience is rote,

Granted,

we have witnessed starting over

and elliptical orbits

again and again.

And I insist, as the diluted optimist,

we are still learning

on a curve,

spilling as we spin.  

Shall we take it from the top?

Painting By Joshua Reynolds [Public domain], Fine Arts Museum in Argentina via Wikimedia Commons.

Growling Bellies (Haiku)

Hunger is not crave.
In a twist of distraction-
noise begets language.

















Image of painting by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Collecting words from the bone pile

The Three Oddest Words

By Wislawa Szymborska

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh,

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996

__________________________________________________________________________________

 Italo Calvino on Quickness-

"Words, words that make me think. Because I am not devoted to aimless wandering, I'd rather say that I prefer to entrust myself to the straight line, in the hope that the line will continue into infinity, making me unreachable. I prefer to calculate at length the trajectory of my flight, expecting that I will be able to launch myself like an arrow and disappear over the horizon. Or else, if too many obstacles bar my way, to calculate the series of rectilinear segments that will lead me out of the labyrinth as quickly as possible."

From Six Memos for the Next Six Memos for the next Millennium

 

Imagine words being 

disembodied

from their inky chambers

in confinement

of a stroke on whim

Words set free from

the constriction

of definition

trapped 

by convictions

Language as folk lore

posing as apparitions

opaque and outside

ourselves

a resemblance

While we wrestle with gravity

Here

Words are grappling with reality

Now

Set against 

the woven fabric canvas

of our chance encounters

in perpetuity

strokes on a whim

I get the impression

of vibrant color on a white day

either way

A container to store ecstasy

dripping down

and running

to meaning 

we para phrase

artfully appraise

Concentrate as you read

these words you may need

inside your head

with your minds i

while standing beside

ourselves

in

nirvana

projecting 

maniacal mana

Leaning on clouds

we rely

on coming to a compromise

in order to see 

shapes as symbols, like these

metaphors

thirsty for more

than thin air

An impression

a sense 

of being

with words

we try to share

interchangeable

synonyms

thereby

invoking and provoking

a sense of continuity

An encyclopedic

orthopedic

selfsame essence

Words are the

people pith

that make-up

our masterful myth.

Image by Gerard de Lairesse, 1690 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.