Never mind

There was something important
I was supposed to be doing
with my life
right now
instead
I look for
a purpose
and find myself
in your gaze
living the way we once did
one more time
it felt different despite how
intimately we held onto
memories
of the way some feelings
make us forget
ourselves.



Painting by Boris Grigoriev (1886-1939), 'Woman in a green dress' c. 1926 / Public domain.

Clean sheets

The poem stared back
at the two pleading eyes

saying nothing
about white or black

nor was any indication given
as to where a poet

should set up thoughts
for the night

with rigging and taut lines
for a reader to traverse across

in high winds
and find their own

-balance-

if the stanza is strong enough
to support mass tourism

and photography.

If you look long enough
or blur your eyes

an Image develops,
what comes through

was over-exposed, covered
with a starch of pareidolia

it was still safe enough
to be considered
shelter.






Painting by Désiré François Laugée [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Nonsensical

As we explore the depths of the oceans, 

seeking the ends of eternity as

conceived by space, 

mapping the matrix of the mind,

We hope 

we are making sense.

Some more sense of what may be 

behind the Divine and beyond evil.

Veiled by our vanity,

we can only hope to master

some special skills.

We are instructed, 

we are given-with grace,

five senses to use, freely.

We all know better.

Untapped potential, 

the vein, the mother lode,

these things that we seek

are lying here

not waiting 

for us to see,

not weighting

to matter.

Now, tell me about touch…

Can you feel me looking at you from

where I stand?

Can I make you cry with words, 

or laugh with only

black and white?

How do you know something has been moved?

Do not step there! Slow Down! Watch out! 

Has this voice

ever saved you before?

And pray, tell me, mind over matters

like these explosions of energies that spin wildly,

may we tame bursts by will, tempt with them with time,

temper these with new neurons

and cast off-the surplus?

Is it all too much?

A little release travels faster than light

yet always

dissipates all ways 

with so much space and water

between bodies

empyrean expanses, abysmal astrodynamics and such.

It was current

thought, 

that the thought wave and the wave of gravity,

ate projected invisibly, the unseen senselessly

Ignored-

As if maybe,

it didn't make sense, as if

'may be' meant there were more ways to feel

than five, or how do we know anything is alive? 

None believed in what they could not see.

With no matter to feel, to put a name on,

with nothing to touch us with shape or edge,

with so much space, with all the emptiness

making up all the meaning 

It is all the more touching

that we find our way by feel,

getting somewhere, 

After All.

“Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?

Or hast thou walked in the search of the depths?

Have the gates of death ben open unto thee? 

Or hast thou seen the doors of

the shadow of death?

Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth?

Declare if thou knowest it all.

Where is the way light dwelleth?”

(38:16-19, The book of Job via Primo Levi) 

Painting by Martin Johnson Heade [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

X-plosion(s)

This is not what I intended to say.
Nor is this how I meant to convey this multi-
layered
meaning-making
sense of sense.
I set out, propositioned with pen in hand,
I aimed the ink at the receptive white page
to say this
one thing
and the damn poem veers left, starts
skidding out of control,
hits something solid,
rolls over
Itself
and only comes to an abrupt semi stop-
where interia is held in
mid-air,
over their heads,
emits an ominous scent,
and makes men
flee for fear of losing
oneself

A paltry passenger without my own;
controls, levers, pedals, wheels, dials, gauges,
buttons to push,
signs or signals to lead and follow,
I am
Left with this
loss of direction
I resign to not fight the fear
of dead ends.
Scribbling and scrambling
I get out while I can.


Image credit By Anonymous [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ear-ly Eve-ning

At the end of the day, 
when the crickets find me

most attentive to their feast of roses and drunken

nectar songs,

The darkness that settles in the pit I carry,

this stone heart needs no theorist

to confirm this is where the swallowed

Information has been broken into dark energy

as a compression of all things

in one day

Though they needed my light to see

and absorbed all thermal emissions,

fueled by love and friction

seared in and cauterized, the hole

Space for consolation with these over-

flowing words, no sense of black contains

All meaning

At the end of another day,

crickets had their final say.




Painting by Henry Golden Dearth [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A poet in prose

"Always be a poet, even in prose." 

-Charles Baudelaire

Succinct                                   Finger words attempt to grasp the shape

                                                or solidify some things that matters

                                                enough to cast shadows.

Withheld itself                        Where we have both eyes

                                                and this simultaneous process of thingness,

                                                the space it takes when ones eyes are closed

                                                or looking too long at any thing,

                                                turns to creamains, a small pile, still smolders.

In rote repose                           Mind over matter is when matter takes hold

                                                of our mind and an argument ensues,

                                                this circular discourse becomes a deep rut,

                                                here we go again, making a smile with left overs.

Umbra                                     The darkest parts, those chunky photons assembled

                                                from all particulars and are open to letting the light

                                                expending the conservation in equal distribution

                                                of temperature into background

Where loss of certainty           as love and mild.

Makes one move around         Musical chairs taught us how to listen

                                                while in a hurry to save ourselves and

                                                change our point of view without preference

                                                for any place other than staying in the game.

Look                                        Listen.

Within                                      Many layers of glass make mirrors. 

Painting By Paul Fischer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Smoking Rope Burns

Rope rather than guns

I said to the man

-in America anyway-

As if he asked for some alibi,

as if anyone Wanted me: Dead or Alive.

Not that

I suggested murder or hinted at a

lynch mob-no soldier trained for Tug of wars.

I have no skin in that game.

Here is the Reader

with their eyes on the trigger

pulling out meaning,

hanging there, in town squares,

the tangled mass pulls at twisted truths

by yarns and feet, knots and nots.

Suicide is never the last act.

Remember?

A rope also saves lives, he said

depending upon the need,

in his all-

American way.

Painting By Albert Baerston, Belgian painter, Ghent 1866 - Gent, 1922 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

I was framed

Words wouldn't come
so I went with paint,
but the body was too thick
and the primaries screamed
even when kept apart

Those threads I cannot read
through
the prepositions and problems
drama and canvas scenes

in media res, centripetal
room at the edges
so bubbles don't pop
as tempting as black is

Purple pretends perception
like lines of sight
the same lines that bind
up brains and I's
omnisciently we see,
underneath it was red,

with light
become plane as day,
in a literal sense.



Arttwork By Michael Sevier (illustrator) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

For what it is worth

Those words mean everything to me.

And although I may chose

to never see them again,

I must put them somewhere

gently, like here.

Because they held more than my meaning

for someone one time, someplace besides

in me. I’m sure of it.

Yes,

we get attached to material things

like they really matter.

Why not ethereal things

like they don't matter…

I wish.

Moved or Be Moved,

the wind suggests.

Besides, some key

words will point the way

in arrow-point-narrowly be

led out and in sides of times

whereby those grammatical

laws have all broken English.

These poems that I carry with me

have no cash value.

None may not be heard

aloud, but my change rattles as I walk

through this word-ridden

Life and I donate sense, liberally.

I am never broke

for long

but lighter

without the words.

Artwork by Giovanni Battista Naldini [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Putting it to Get it Together

This world 
was all pretty patterns and preparation.
We made
sense with these,
common and collective.

Why we cache and stash
something for our selves-
this is a game-keep away-such as
saving some sunny day money
you hope to forget about-but 
keep counting it in
the back-end.

Why we puzzle and play,
riddling and competing for solutions
and winners
between you and I-Or-
there are losers. Must be
unable to connect the dots,
incapable of collecting thoughts-

holy buckets, walking in labyrinths
following threads of logic
tangled up in theoretically.

It is the mystery that moves us,
to interpretation
without reason. Carry on. 

"And I wanted to examine that horoscope once more and to see its pattern, no matter how fantastic or catastrophic the prediction."

-Walter Mehring (from 'The Lost Library')

Featured artwork By Staecker (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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.

Titilating Entitlement

       All we have are letters.
We have made many names with these,

not to confuse utility with title.

When I say

This chosen wisely,

You have started to build-

What is in a Name?

Impressionism in colors.

Blend and bleed by disagreement.

I do not regret leading you on

down the stream, naming and pointing

at amphibious synonyms, 

like crayfish holding their feathered gills.

As only bends and boulders can dictate 

in a white water fury, insurgency in translation,

an explanation of how all minerals find their way

to greater meaning than assembly 

or Magic. Deception has its angle.

Words like water most transparent

when calmly collected. 

Dropping names sink

Ideas float
Titles tell This. 

Image By Romaine (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Alpha-betting on-Omega

All whole words are concocted symbols
lines scrawled to convey meaning
not unlike painting,
sweeping strokes of generalities
whet form into abstract impressions
desist and seize definition.

A collector of rare words
admires antiquated articulations
and such-and so forth
forms thought into projections
as aroma refuses to go unnoticed
inoculating ideas, contagion cures.

To say the words aloud, incant
taste the tone on the tongue, palatable
digesting the dreams of others
does wonders.
Look (it) up.

It is alchemy really.
If you have dined around
the periodic table, you know
letters combine
to become more than themselves,
explosive elixirs
of ionic interpretations.

I get the Impressionism
and I objectivist
for surrealism, cubed.
Post-pop abstracted
Neo-classical characters,
re-defined and framed
a sentence for Life.




Image of artwork By Coles Phillips [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Backwash

-Fulfillment fills up-
-Meaning is made on purpose-
...re-turns investment



Photo By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Under the see

Here, you in the middle.

Music in dancing smoke.

Dense vaporous heat wrapped in red

ripples and shards carry and throw

light bent, fractured panes

strewn before open eyes

widely receptive, a hungry glint

absorbing the whole shaft.

Do not speak of experience

like goosebumps and coincidence,

deja vu and waking dreams worn

on this path. You picked the way

reflected back in pouring pail eyes to

spinning sapphire seas stuck inside your inertial feeling.

You cannot tell

of the way the moon

holds onto you in the crook

of its long arm showing you more.

Or how the sun

seduces you under its warm endless well

of desire to strip you down, and suck you up.

Do not try to repeat what was implied

in the language

of hummingbirds that hover,

of cats that crowd around you,

of swaddled babes enrapt,

of elderly enduring and shaking

off your ghosts.

You stood under all too well. Father time and Mother earth,

hospitable surrogates serving

senseless, undecipherable epiphanies.

You see.

Image of painting by By William Savage Cooper, Phantasy c.1896 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.