Time keepers

What is there

to hear, here beneath the rain

falling?

The pianist across the street,

a poem being typed

after-thought,

above or under sirens and 

howls.

Fingertips dance

with swollen pads

across the scales;

ivory teeth, black cavities,

chatter seeking vibration 

or resonance

held in a line

that holds a tune.

Or thread of meaning-

unraveling feeling

and translating thoughts 

not our own

into sound 

between and beneath the horizontal cradle

where echoes may overlap hints of truth

there is a sense of unfolding

like pages turning 

a chord is struck

accord is sought

or scores kept 

for a record nobody keeps.

And all this may be 

called

keeping time

as if melody were many things

more than harmony

knocking and sending 

unanswerable notes 

called music or just

muse. 

Image credit:Baldomer Gili i Roig, Museu d'Art Jaume Morera, Lleida. 2555 c. Nov. 1899 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripted

Found some handwriting
it took forever to decipher
as my own,

with large open loops
and smooth sweeping strokes
outside the lines,
I read
plain as day, black on white,
set as granite

between these boulders
where I have been pinned
and slowly
squeezed into thinking
I must fit
failing
to recognize
how shallow
my breath had become
how tiny and whispered
my words were,

I take in less and less
of what is essential to live.

I do not recognize the freedom
of thought,
for a moment
things shifted,
weight-
and I saw myself
scratched out.



Image credited by 'Theory and Practice of handwriting' c. 1894 in Public Domain. 

l's and o's

It had been many revolutions
of a circular orbit
since the scribe had a
handle on things.

In such rapidly spinning
vertiginous times, you know
how hands go up
and loose things fly off.

It was still
that way,
the empty cavernous pages,
the sunken and smudged knuckle,
the barren creased hand
that holds a space
for words to line up with others,

and it won't happen today.
Again, the scribe refused
to record a statement,

for there was nothing left in the hourglass-
in the water pitcher-
in the ink cartridge-
in the world
to turn around
clockwise.

Undeterred, scribe scribbles through the days
of notation and inventory
until all is spent and broken with
vocabulary and slang pronunciations.

For the construction of solid thoughts and building
nations, do not rely too heavily on the current degrees
of angular trajectory
or wishes without a final destination.

The lines all disappeared, finally
nobody waited around to hear
the words that came before
Here, here
the echo never said who
I am
scratching the surface with lines none would read.





Image By Creator:Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Blue windows

Practicing her new monologue
from a Steve Martin play,
it becomes impossible to forget
some lines.

Some lines
slap the face, others rattle the cage
just between the ears,
and linger in the room
like cooking dinner.

She recites the lines in front of her closet,
and in front of my closet,
in the sliding glass door
when its dark outside
as I put away the dishes,
listening to her practice,
again.

Distracted by the shutters that keep slapping,
I await my favorite lines
about the shutters that could never be-
come forest blue,
because forest blue is no color,
and denying this existence,
makes it true, naturally.

I try to picture a hole in the forest,
the sky peeking through the canopy,
but my eyelids flutter at the steam
rising and swirling on the stovetop.

Shutters do not occur in Nature, the lines note,
and I wonder about Pi, naturally.
I like Pi,
Newtons apples are the juiciest.

And these occupations
keep our lips moving along,
fingers fiddling with locks
and minds simply wandering off,
it takes time, an open mind, a window
and practice.

Look at the face, the hands, the clock,
she knows all the words Mr. Martin wrote.
Now, I can open the kitchen window,
letting the forest fly out with the green.





Artwork By Juan Gris (José Victoriano González Pérez), Spanish, 1887 - 1927 (1887 - 1927) – Artist/Maker (Spanish) Born in Madrid, Spain. Dead in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Pheeling the Skein

Follow the strings and twisted wires,

everything and more than all that is there

is moving About;

spinning, buzzing, jumping, vibrating, rocking,

and it comforts most

anxious beasts.

Calm could come later.

Tied to chords that carry notes containing

amateur truths

capable of travel through walls and cells.

Tangles always teach by example.

How easy it is.

Free will- not worth the long lines.

Holding breath was a frugal way of sadness.

We make promises to indulge

at the ends, 
we find the nots are terminal.




Painting By Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Plea bargain

Their life’s journey is a treasure quest,

tough to solve for any X

with all the mortal obstacles.

They hunt for hints by feeling

for warmth on fingertips, and continents.

Not coming near a single solid clue

that was graspable within 

the fingered seams of coast.

Their tokens stacked tall,

They have amassed considerable ease

and yet

Nothing seemed more natural

Than making maps with more

movable lines, theoretical angles

and following the footsteps before

like ants

Inevitable colonizing, war was natural.

The wrong place at the right time.

Mountains make them move another way,

the learning left no trace

Of the gilt progress. 

Image credit(ed) By Jacob d'Angelo after Claudius Ptolemaeus[1] Nicolaus Germanus (www.polona.pl), Cosmographia , 1467 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The difference between a Dream Catcher and a Net

Sabotage is a safety net holding trust,

roughly forgetting the holes.

If thrown a rope,

                          followed by the knotty words

wound upin twisted and twined you'd find,

                                                   Trust Me &

                                                   Brace yourself

against loss of wind.

                                 This body will keep

the soul inside,

Believe where needed, as patches 

so sweetly in red clay

sabotage calls itself Support

and says you may

                            lean comfortably-

this way, 

                            hear the bricks stack up

Briefly before

the windows were all caulked in.

Nobody could tell

if the lights were left on

or if there is anything to eat.

If only we could get through

starvation seems imminent.



Image credit By Nicholls Horace, taken 1914 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

    

Miss Agnes Martin

And Agnes spoke.

After all she had seen 

                            and failed to portray accurately

“It seems to me, I am a greater destroyer than creator.”

The inspiration more reverent in potential than intellect

She suffered it seems.

The quiet part 

                                 a-part 

from the living with her art.

Agnes assembled some reason,

with color and line, like us, listening for the tone.

A message was delivered via postage stamp imagery, 

she found this in the box with the red flag

                                           too tiny to see.

So she was required to extrapolate 

and re-scale 

to make larger

than the letter

addressed to Resident.

Perfection, as though always made the same-

This one template mistranslated 

                                                 in the corners.

The migration from idea to ideal,

lost in most blending, space, silence, room, makes too much

semblance, geometrically so much more than medium.

All that

depends upon a nail, a red wheelbarrow and leaf capacity and

a multiplicity of task or cause.

Yes, Agnes knew her arithmetic.

And Agnes tried to forget rules, axioms, theorems

and the half charged radii she never saw as encompassing.

Less can be greater than

too much inspiration.

Agnes said the envelope was empty

but she received the message.

I know, I sent it. 

Per: Fect Reader

Lucky

to have sparked your interest,

already, at first sight

I’d like to lift your chin,

letting my lines leach into your lips.

My fruit, my conception, bursting its peel-

Alas, I have known this thirst we share,

It was none but you, alone

more real to me, together

We both imbibed insatiably, yet emptiness 

abounds until whole words were filled 

in utterly

every open space drowned in white.

Open and sere,

I wish to saturate this dry dirt with

One of our tears

To make something you can use, of utility

To make more time

For thisness in these.

These twirled up murmurs were merely me,

reaching out with invisible waves

for your quiet, distant ear,

And just when I thought

The silence meant

I had nothing to say

To make any better-

You heard every word

Fulfilled

with this.

Painting by William McGregor Paxton (c. 1900) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Squiggly lines

Draw the wind for me

                                             That is a line

This is a wave

                                             It is a cloud

it is not raining

                                             It is floating

It doesn't resemble energy to me

Because it can fall or disappear

If I cannot see it, it is not there

                                             What do shadows show

Movement

                                   You must move-first to see 

I see stillness, yes

                                   this second, do I breathe

Alive, you must Be.

Not imagine

                                   show me the difference

where water and air masses separate 

conglomerate as clouds 

                                   demonstrating the movement

of nothing.

No thing                     that floats.

Now your turn to draw the water

                              well are not those tears 

Artwork By Вера Владимировна Хлебникова (1891—1941) ([1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The early bird on the horizon line

A line
           is thrown out...there
A line is
           connection of the dots
           summarized by stretching spheres
lined up
like ducks
cluck clucking
in a row
Row,
row your boat by
                            parallel plotter
                                                   navigating the stream
                                                 
Tow the line
                    holding by a lifeline
                                                    hiking the EKG
Wait
        in line
wait for it
               carried down the line
               a vibration
               a sensation
                                 The Ripple-
                                    -r-i-p-p-l-e-
                                         effect
a lure lingers on the line
                                  barbed edges await
                                                                 an inevitable lineal fate
a direction
                 to take
                 to make
out side the lines
                            a circle of infinity
keeps out
               traps in, depending on where you begin
a snap is shot,
                     tracing the trajectory
                                                     tightening the arrow
in array
A line
          a single point of origin
                                              genetically tangled
entwined in limpid lineage
by dates and fates
                             times arrow
                                               on a string
A line we follow to the T
A line we cannot see
A line we fall for
hook
line
and
sinker
The line is cast
we are the worm.



Image by William Blake [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, from Jerusalem-Plate 78.