Terminal Velocity

My toes point to that familiar path
over which I tread the same very way
without thought, after days, after days
ground-soft
                               only it doesn't end.
The terminus dissipates before me
the exit escapes
itself

fracturing new matter,
atoms posing in new positions,
the frames along the long hall
                                        rattle and
all fall, shattering into
collage.

I have moved on and on
and recognize how the light changes
just enough to see
this
step
through and parallel time
at equal velocities and thus
all must be still-

transported. This is how
I can be carried along
in this metropolitan body,
incentivized, yet
                    infested with crime,
corrupt with ego, more so
hiding in skin
I was entrusted to always protect-
                                        but don't.

Animal eyes see me
burrow in my bi-pedestal body
and hear my heart beat itself and
echo through my unshod feet-
yet I do not run,
                                   I carry on,
erect, by these same narrow walls
plastered shells, caves or caverns
alternating distances passed
by vision and memory
                                        alone,
                                   barefoot,
weary but walking on and on
this way
toward the vanishing point.

Photograph By PCR Services Corporation, creator [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sensual segments

The lotion in the squeeze tube

intended

to protect this crumpled 

and creased rice paper skin,

carries a strong scent, evocative

of all the horses I once knew.

The big baby boy finally comes along,

appearing one month old

already.

Somedays, like other times,

Her voice soothes

but most often it seethes

something in me.

Crap-

that coyote in a boat scared me!

the visitor exclaims-

pointing to a small hanging sculpture

Of a baby fox sleeping soundly in a hammock.

I knew it, but did not say anything

This time

it would be easier this way...

The numbers man heard poetry

at night.

It scared him. 

This time

he stood too close

to the source.

Contagion is terrifying.

Warm spreading in back of the head,

happens with Prozac

and Jazz musicians,

I have been told.

It may spread further

than just here.

As we were like this

One time

found in familiar fragments

of others, 

clarity comes to the assembly

in single file lines. 





Image credit By Clyde Waddell, American GI's at a bookstall in Calcutta, 1945' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photographic Memory

There was evidence.

Documents that document what was evident then,

for now.

The documents were both rare

and fragile.

Some small rectangles, windows of film

frothing with substance, like acids and bases

jaundiced or molded and shriveled.

At times only the negatives

remained. No resemblance.

It is hard to see the value of any one.

when every person is packing clouds

with images.
Transitive types still holographic despite

imaginary inks and multiversions,

a.k.a. avatars, space holders, facetime-streaming

proof-until Poof!

What memory?

There is no evidence.

We were not there. 

Image of Martin Shaw, 1929 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Wireless settings

It has been unusual, of late-

compared to panoramic pictures,

sweeping views and one you...

Were you there?

Did you hear the pacing behind?

They did not come today.

The light flickered.

Must be

something wrong with the energy...

It looks all the same golden bar or promise

and warmth and yet

no commerce or conservative estimate
would add up to good conduct.

.

The dust piles

where entropy adds up to

total homogeneity.

Waiting is a dip in tango-ment
without charge, consentual even between two posts.

These quantum jitters move on

branes hold on to frayed ends
discharged from free will.

Photograph By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, March 1945 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Naked soles

Tick-tac with each step taken down

the tile floor hallway-

crept moving was the only way

to get here to meet there,

though the narrowing drywalls close in

facing the wall she wonders-

Whose purpose memory serves now-

As if climbing these textured cream walls

would help us all adapt to sharp

right angles, as accustomed,

and if given a sideways glance,

one may admire the frames for their brevity,

developed into more than the moment

of moving placeholders.

Time froze at her feet

the ceiling cast white over her. 

The slate she found was just cleaned.

Photo credit by Milko Matičetov [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

This image or media is available on the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum's website. 

Photo-graphic memory

Obsessed with photo graphs and charts,
we point our longest sideways glance right
away
and shoot for the best, hitting hope
happens square in the chest,
stars also aim for the numbers.

Numbness by position,
this poison saps our steady grip,
an aching up the arm from the aorta.

In this contraction,
we miss the moment around the image,
the time between sight and capture
or full appearance formed
in our human haste

Roughly,
to see and to show how it should look
from our island view,
by entitling
what was then as now.

The pictures portrayed only figures,
we made out images
believing in lines like these
holding black and were definitive
made by an arrangement or
juxtapositioning.

Framed in theoretical suspension
of time to believe in what we see
as all white.



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

Marsupial Mavens

Ninety percent of All humanity
live North of the equator
I sit in California in the sun
at thirty-three degrees or so
it is sixty-six and blustery-
(May gray has not arrived)
I read the latest Poetry issue,
origami ideas sent on paper planes
just out from Australia-al-
though printed in Chicago-
we pro-prose a die-a-log
through belles lettres.

After reading up on down under
I wondered-This Issue-
why more pictures than poetry-
Not really-but all I see, in imagery are
Faces
posing for poetry
Is it the mirror effect; akin to the water,
that made the artists smiles up-side-down-
And those scowls, sneers, poor-trait(s),
of some smirks where the mysterious
pretends to con-de-ceive perceptions
about Aussie affability.

Mutually masterful,
silence at the end, asks
for reciprocation, promotion,
looking for-word-one way to say
likeness, not-like-us, writer-ly
soft and polished up, be-spectacled
and dis-taught by degrees-
A-B-original-not left out back
in voluminous r-evolution.



Feature image art by Peter Purves Smith, Kangaroo hunt c. 1938 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.