Ex-isle

This world 

is not for breath

for feelings

also come and go.

As hard and light as 

Push and pull

Go.

Busy hands and 

bees-electricity, alter-

nating currents, the unseen

Never again 

Now

Where were we-

Many moons ago

and always one moon

stoic satellite

Spinning our own orbit

one side-sunlit

Not saying

darkness always becomes

Her-

Or shall I?

Painting by Robert Henri 'The Reader in the Forest' c. 1918 via Wikimedia Commons and Google Art Project, in Public Domain. 

Line by line

Life unfolds this way,

the face now resembles our grey matter

what is inside comes out.

The clouds will unravel again,

you can hear the wind 

moving them along.
I am done
telling others to listen.

Paper, then. My life. Drawn to fire.

All those the people carrying dead burdens
on their cracking lips.

They burned books
into their memories and cauterized the wounds

with chanting and invocations

shaped to sound like smoke rings

they read the signs.

As with people and colors
they gather but do not become,
one another,
as with clouds, the heaviest fall
and we say we needed rain.

In these conditions

the symbols bleed together

and it is red
Open.




Painting by Emile Claus, c. 1898, 'Ampelio, old fisherman of Bordighera', in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Bare Essentialism

When we speak of

Ars Moriendi

You and I are finally getting somewhere,

beautiful.

When the Poet dies-finally-

The poem is freed.

The libertine line advances

meaning, perspective.

Morals are not the main characters,

plot is where we were going,

a scene made, is setting,

is a container, set and broken down,

a frame to hold all the pieces

to gather in one assemblage

and enable anyone to walk around.

Implicating exclusion by category, genre,

red and not read,

unbounded through decohesion, 

letting leaves fly-

Well

we must determine-

To finish or decompose.

After all This

Art is all that remains after speech,

after thought, in memoriam,

the pictures point and the words paint

only where there is

Life. 

We recognize these reflections

and find them beautiful. 

Painting by William Orpen, Reflection in mirror c. 1917 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Fight or flight

I propose

to usurp the power that death takes

hold, clamping its rusted iron jaw on degradable values

make diffused, diluted and convert to decrease aversion

Fight or flight for

Fear?

(clipped wings are for peacocks)

I have thawed my right angles

to meet the idea of my mortality

in mirrors and simulations and held white

for a time, essentially accepting

dirt nor ash is enough to subsist us

For the birds-just-ice

Leave me

Happily ever after

Life.

Lastly, carried away

Wishes molded into clay sink

while the will

always ends 

with wind.

Painting by Melchior d'Hondecoeter [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dead-lines make us dance

I am going to die.

Not today, I really hope.

Inevitably I will it so someday.
Not this one,

I know, I can control that. Will. Be.

Able to stop the Time: why we write. Though,

all know, the endings are not ours.

Cracks in the porcelain grow-stress-lines

like faults at forty. At thirty, we don’t think

of meeting our match-in dem eyes. 

Now Ecstasy we see

helps alleviate the stress.

Chemically, elasticizes the skin,
that tightens in fear, out-looking grim,

youth is fear-less-ignored-immortal.

I’m-mortal-immortality?
How could we want more…

sublime with the time we have

had-enough time-time enough.

“Relieved of the burden of passion, and freed from the pressure of desire”

Sounds serene, quiescence, in essence, is nothing left to say

any other way.

Sleep. Sueño.

Nobody stops to Thank Death
for bringing these:

Dreams, drive, to do, be for, we go.

Dead-lines makes us dance.

“The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.”
-Edgar Allan Poe

Image of painting by Thomas Pollock Anshutz [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Little Ms. Pants on Fire

My black jacket with the fur-rimmed hood
whispered in my ear yesterday,
that one day
we will go live in the snow.
Although, we don't talk much,
since I live near (warm) San Diego
(now) it has been cold
so we've been friendly lately.
Then, when
I was having dinner
with a lemon verbena candle
the other night, thyme on the table
I read something interesting,
which actually gave me quite a fright-
but the candle jumped in and uttered a spark,
'You wont die in the dark-
and it wont be from fire,
those words were written by a liar!
Tho', idle fears, I have years and
I don't necessarily think so-
acrophobia,  arachnophobia and pyromania.
Fear, Love and Webs, scary things
to get tangled in.
To things I harbor like hobos
And as I begin to listen in
to assorted precocious objects,
threadbare trinkets and baubles that pop
I harbor like lazy houseguests,
I still hear the ring of fear
in the old quaking clock
five-fifty-five-tic-tock
five-fifty-five-tock-tic
I was told
this fateful mortal time
I accommodate and appropriate,
still chimes in my head.
My watch has no comment,

it's face, expressionless
and lays like a remora, leech.
I proceed  with today anyway

as though I too, 

have no need to know
such sagacious

miscellaneous things

such as where, and when, by how

I will die, not now

from animated things with no eyes
who see my future
and how it
lies. 

Composed 1/18/16.

Image by By Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A Wild Hair

Once

I grew a hair

upon my

chin

& remembered

& recognized

& recoiled

seeing a mere mammal

Both of us-We know

how these things grow

Us the inconsequential mortal

& all its wild tortious things

That come and grow

Not that

You

or I

should care

about an unruly heir.

Image by By Detroit Publishing Co., publisher. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons