Storm front

 

Nor did I chase

the storms, even as 

they came for me, that way

Did not run

for shelter stops

Nothing

we wed in between

such pouring days

as if a window

Opened

to a raw and fresh world

Where death and birth

dwell in unison

A reddened dawn 

bled deep

into horizon lines, gashes,

words of warning defined

Old

wives tales,

words of prophecy

fairies and fantasies,

Or metaphor

like We could be

Happy, sirens.

Thoughts as thick as 

Mammatus

dissipate for clearer 

skies shall 

Pass

Blinding truths

anyway...

For now 

I stay shuddered

while wet and wiser

atmospherically.

 

Painting by Hart, James McDougal, 1828-1901  (artist); 'The Storm is Coming' L. Prang & Co. (publisher), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Cold tile roof

The cat was absent at breakfast,
a first,
and
unappetizing feeling found me.

I sought, and called softly
in the pale predawn air
which carries things
a bit too far.

I heard his pleas
directed at me, but could not see
him,
anywhere-

Curiously
his green flashing pupils
caught my eye
in the mortuary moonlight
looking down
from the rooftop
yelling, cat calling down
at bewildering me.

After I rescued him,
again,
climbed the ladder
convincing him
his life was secure in my hands

we humans,
wondered how
or what
lifted his seventeen-
maybe twenty-pound body
up
and exposed all
forty-degree night...

Perhaps it's all a metaphor,
like when survival
is not a skill
but we do it anyway.

And it dawns on me,
that in reality,
rescues often
go the other way.


Painting by Camille Pissaro, 'Red roofs, corner of a village, winter time' c. 1877 in Public Domain. 

Proof to feel

Exempt from Rule three
'Seeing is Believing',
poets have felt gravity waves for centuries
before proof,
evidenced in the condensed packet called
a 'moment', that hits him square in the numbers
chest-wise.

Arresting breath with bondage attention
the neck braces itself out there
nearly knocked into shadowed fear-
don't look here-
it seems safer to watch than feel.

Despite the blind faith and electric lights,
the poet reads the ultraviolet signs as liminal,
hairs will rise only to settle in an
oppressing scream. It thinks it is escaping in
reaching for its own echo, those
vibrations shake the sound loose
from source.

Entanglement matters most
to poets without deflecting further penetration,
those background noises were called white
for lack of definition.

The poet lights his metaphor,
inhaling all that remains too minute
to make time.


Painting By Charles Furneaux (Hawaii Volcanoes National Park archive) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Simile like a lady

They say she was like

No metaphor-thus appears

Everywhere. Here. See. 


Art By Daderot (Own work) [Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

No vacancies

It is the voice, or sound
as far as limits and ripples can----
as loud as the noise altogether

static, each wrinkle folds under
the aging and erosion,
older than dirt lays claim,

lighter than air, dust-skin,
settled palimpsest
on rice paper arms, 

by shreds of rags and stitches 
to cover the cold.
Shivers scream inside, 

turbidity of the spirit, malicious matters
needing shelter; brittle now
by leaves, dry twigs,

words, thorns, starlight and smoke
becalmed back to the senses
in a murmur of metaphor,

rewritten as revelation. 
Must Have.
Must Heard. 

Image credit By Scan by NYPL [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Hand me downs

I never claim to know is mine, 

                                                     alone.

Perhaps it is a preference of plagiarism,

a nose for improper prose,

an insatiable appetite for 

all ilks of altruistic anthema

I could not think 

of a better wheel design.

We have learned.

Where there is smoke was once

                                                    on fire.

Needs and devours

as borrowed without interest.

Solutions are simple echoes, 

                                                   echoes

what you said you heard

and comes back if it hits the right note

accord.

You know how others wrought words 

                                                    work

more harmonized than mine, 

in truth themselves together 

as wording that works

for real-ity-itty-bity life-like

                                             Projects

and Practice.

By stretch of imagination or by the life-

span of a metaphor

                                                    by suspension 

and leaps

abound archaic and built to last

for a time-as taut truth

entwined in tension.

Look 

out. 

Given eyes 

                                                    to see, 

Only art may remind us why

color is requisite to sight.

And why white space is free 

breath. 

To covet a glance, off the top 

take without change 

of rubberized opinion

or overcharge for overdrawn spirituality

                                                    from a paper One.

I imagine 

remembering clearly-

                            some scattered lines of poetry

in tangled threads, 

rags over-stiched spines, 

poets opine over each others

dead bodies doing it wrong

turning the soil, lying there

and re-cultivating the Garden of

                                                   I Will

re-Discover.

                                          Know only 

slowly may one go

to pull open space we need

vacancies never free, but insist

on appearance and flow from Others 

Currents

pulled into time by tide. 

                                           Drifters

we are all sifters, thieves 

of sureness,

presenters of possibilities,

tailors 

                                           of time-

space,

altering whose in whose

reality-one time, 

rerunning reminiscences

and savoring our own essence

familiar

in-decadence in fortitude

never mine in any time-frame

                                           alone.

Image By Charles Robinson (The Happy Prince and Other Tales) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

In other wor(l)ds (Haiku)

Sat-com: men build rockets
to penetrate atmosphere
beyond metaphor.


Photo By U.S. Air Force [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Are we speaking the same language?

Haiku VII

What's a meta for?

To build a bridge with nouns like

imagine this thing...

Image of painting by László Mednyánszky (1852-1919), "Forest Creek with a Bridge" [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.