kindling

Dirac asked Oppenheimer,
how in the world he could practice physics-
theoretically and simultaneously pen poetry
when one is aimed at the succinct center,
the concisest way
to phrase the nature of things
in the most approachable,
graspable way....

It could have been rhetorical or figuratively
proposed in such and such a way as Dirac
may say 'applicable',
and Oppenheimer might reply by
giving him an apple, alleging
he is the fairest of all
that are ripe.

These translations into a broader spectrum
of greater visibility from the sides, specifically
and beneath, the poet speaks in waves of ultraviolet
and enunciates his infrared best
when he said
experimental imagery was everything that
could be hypothesis-like this...

And making up metaphors as a means
to sight ones sources makes
Science sing
the song of itself in harmony
when it silences the man interrupting
the synesthesia
with perceptive interference.


Photo credit By ENERGY.GOV (HD.4G.028), J. Robert Oppenheimer in [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.

The path is Brodsky

His sentences say

He never repeats them

With eye or I

How would we know?

He is only a product of

Progression, 
an obsession with freedom

Of speech and others

Sentences.

His composure, 
demure, muffled,

intonations

He shies away

From his fiction

Life. Sentences.

Written this way.

Point of Departure is too

Point of No Return.

Painting by Isaak Brodsky (1906) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Where silence lies

If you read me close enough

you may still smell traces

of a word meant

to echo in only you.

If you heard the way

it becomes spoken with my own lips,

a taste may not be enough

to say you have tried.

If you ever wondered

where the essence has gone, it is cold;

I only ask you to exhale me enough so

I may hear you near inside thick air.

If the silence were not

as sublime

as the word,

would we have this between us?

Art entitled, 'Woman at the Piano' (1889), oil on wood panel, 26.0 x 13.1 cm) by Tom Roberts (1856–1931).

The painting is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Recycling poetry

When we are children,
all we take in
is Poetry.
In adolescence
we lean on Prose
without punctuation,
growing longer to gauge the resistance
of rooftops attached to support beams.
It seems maturity makes less time
for more meaning,
the old begin shrinking time
too little to learn anything less
than Poetry.




Painting by Eero Järnefelt, 1895 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Conversion: Haiku(s) 3

To start to learn a

Poem, beginning in love

Ends inside physics.

To try to poem

Muse in music but listen

Particulate-ly.

Make something better

Hang words, draw self, a stick man

The fire needs you.

Image: Edward Steichen, 1921 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Description from wiki: "Steichen was on holiday in Venice in 1921 at the same time as the dancer Isadora Duncan who was on her way to Greece with her dance troupe. With the promise that Steichen would be able to make motion pictures of her dancing on the Acropolis, Isadora persuaded him to accompany her. While she managed to pose for a few photographs at the Parthenon, it was with her pupil and adopted daughter Thérèse that Steichen produced this startling and remarkable image: She was a living reincarnation of a Greek nymph. Once, while photographing the Parthenon, I lost sight of her, but I could hear her. When I asked where she was, she raised her arms in answer. I swung the camera around and photographed her arms against the background of the Erechtheum. And then we went out to a part of the Acropolis behind the Parthenon, and she posed on a rock, against the sky with her Greek garments. The wind pressed the garments tight to her body, and the ends were left flapping and fluttering. They actually crackled. This gave the effect of fire -- 'Wind Fire' (Steichen, A Life in Photography, np)"

Recipe for Primordial Soup

Words

We know

Hold something

Greater than tangibility.

There is no weight, but we feel them

Waiting in us. It is mysterious how they

Manifest themselves as thought

Lines, directions, and energies by focus

And I have tried to gather these threads,

To tread lightly, lilting to myself trying to hear what Paulo Coelho

Whispered once, 'The universe conspires for you', for me,

Then Elliot interrupts and challenges these universal disturbances-i.e.

SILENCE! Shouts Cage with his plump lips, holding full notes In,

And Stein, and Stein, and Stein, and Stein evokes our inner Einstein-Aha! Pre-cisely-
The math of the matter, the matter of math, math matter, the matterless
mathless matter, massless matter, the antimatter-as a mass of totality, see-

Too literal to be unilaterally likable-repetitive is as are (un)retractable. Stet.

Do You-without question-understand the definition? Who knew-

Which one of many contradictory theories 

to listen-too much advice causes root entanglement 

and naturally, chaos unravela such intricate complexities, all

Gathered. Feel! Knots. Grasping for straws and strings 

to locate the (in)tangibility further up the line, at a beginning, 

where it went wrong, where A is for Adam was crossed out, gasp,

the people knelt, Adamant this evening without repast

famished for

an other.


Photo credit:  Archives, Argentina, children eating soup 1938 in [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Wont you let the wind in

No poetry-

Silence it said.

It was raining and how could we live without

The yellow porch light, that lit the drops aflame midair

sent falling matches while we inhaled its sultry cologne,

It smelled like kerosene.

Nothing should be said,

but sound jumps and throttles anyway,

hits its edges

and snaps.

Let it fly,

was another way to lay claim on wind and smoke rings.

Seasonings and salt made new flowers, steeping in the dark

deeds have been doled to uncharted territories, stay-

what else is there to see?

The words will escape me just

this day without poetry… 

Painting by Paul Cornoyer [Public domain], 'Madison Square after the rain' c. 1900 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.

In the Rain Singing Purple Poems for the New Year

Another one

bites the motes, spits a clod, 

and is claimed by fame, all in a name.

Again, not I 

anonymous

let the book worms crawl in

and out as though it were all natural

and biodegradable over a lifetime

to deteriorate

this way

all of us bound in romantic tragedy,

we try to forget this poignancy

with age.

What comes

are words not unwise, nor mine.

Summarily, I listen.

My work is done

a hush has fallen.

Including this

one there were four hundred and sixty-nine

times I’ve stabbed at Truth-

only to burst bubbles, finding nothing

inside. I wrestle, is this not episodic

or just melodramatic...

I can guess. 

My pen is dull, I have no credit to my name.

What feels right in living like me

is all wrong for others

(monetarily). I owe them one

for their certainty. 

I feel no Nationalism

or sentiment

may be strong enough

to overcome

its little people. 

And here we are, another orbit around,

One (more) Earth year

To reset

our broken watches and records. 

Play it again Sam. 

Let us dance.

It may be our last chance 

to take it in

Memoriam.

Let us hum(an)

auld lang syne. 

deScribe

   

       

   You write mystery

I heard-     Poetry-     that is

          the same difference.

Painting by Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Bio

Her tepid clay pigeon pen

Unresembling wings or other flying things

Flows

She strangles its narrow neck, interrogation by noose

                                                            Loops and scratch

lines. Facts. Only the boldest,

                                                            truest statements

apply. Condensed herself in this square space she avoids and

skirts the far edges. Newspaper crisps in the October low sun

and pollen makes her more 

Miss Chevious.

Her plump pinkie smears tracks while the pointer pushes on, blame, and her thumb has its privileged back-

space-deletion is better than insertion.

They want to know-she said-Or do they?

Write a Bio 

or abbreviated autography, They have requested                                                                              do in process…

Theories sound better in white, she writes and smears-

-Eternity in a paragraph-

History at present, is blurry. I have aimed at Life in a picture.  It is coming in-and per-fading, presently-the eye-just passing through.  That she-writes poetry. She lived there, has left -no forwarding ad-dress. She still dwells, not here, not She. 

Miss Chevious. 

Good? He too-with two shoes walks the same line. 

Post-haste. 

Mister Place & B. Gananew

Painting by Florent Joseph Marie Willems [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Stress test

Can you tell it's right if you hold it up to the light?
Do you know if it is better than good
if it can be completely understood?
Is it the ideal size-target market wise?
Does it truly sound like all the others that abound?
Is it flammable, is it like the animal
in us-
indigenous?
Is it harmonious or relevant, erroneous and malevolent?
Does it make you dance in some clandestine way
Does it have something significant to say?
Then-
is it worthy
to be called poetry?



Painting by Marie Spartali Stillman, Love Sonnets (1894) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Rage is rabid

Rage is the creature with fangs
that cannot conceal those points
And snarls soft lips to show
not all poetry is Pleasant-but Passionate

And acute or cuspidate,
sparks spit fire from its place
that abstains mutation,
that ignites others-enflamed.

Insolence-I've heard its
verbal lashings, intentional trashing-
yet always with a lisp
as a magnanimous sycophant.



1st Pub.d 9/2/16.

Painting by Edvard Munch, Vampire, 1895 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Back-up luck

Writers are superstitious-so are baseball players and tight rope walkers-
I'm not sure about astronauts or politicians...
Dreams are more important to writers than waiters-who are waiting to live their dream.
In reality most dreams are forgotten upon waking.
In the wake of a bad dream, I had a premonition all my poems
were gone, like eggs-hatchlings left in one coop
and really-this has happened to me twice before yet this dream disturbed me more.
I said something about it aloud-if you are superstitious you know this is not allowed.
Forced to act, I reacted in duplicate, making copies, I saved, re-visited and barely recognized
them as all mine.
When I had the thousand stacked up by grandiose
subject and sorted by type-
humanity looms tall over the rest,
space, time, love, humor, in proper tributary, in reaction and reflection-
the poets of yesteryears would have stacked up much differently.
Most poets, historically consumed by cult are exhumed for love and above all
to reclimb the Fall over towering babble
and the wild will of the west, toppled progress and drowning in duties.
This humanity trods heavily, the paper rises, trees topple
and as if in a dream the poems scream of dying desire,
the death of discovery, the final resource, of course a corpse of work, ashes to dust, toil and rubble without troubling to wake for the passing of people that speak in poetry, or the writers that were right all along these same lines.




Image By Henning Söderhjelm [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Photograph of the Finnish writer Lenning Söderhjelm (1888–1967).

Ripples of rhyme

There were poems in there...
A whole slew.

Now all I hear is a faint
whisper of you.

The pond is still
from over-fishing.

I have no more pennies
for poetic wishing.

The water waits
without reflection...






Photo By NPS Photo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Poetry Athiest

Through This
I have met wonderful words
Via verse
I have become Estranged
By thinking
This way
I have situated
and I have
sat while yours waited
Saturated myself in vocabulary
languished and lingered
here,
seeking how to mean
more,
but saying it wrong
and left you hanging
bifurcating and circumventing
all crystal-clear communication.

Through This
I have seen wonderous worlds
Making
I have molded and manipulated
matter, made grey,
so I could see both
Art and Science
poetically-particulately
condensed
essentially
and failed
to Make sense
This-
Density, I have done
I reason
and found None.




Image credit-By 'Not given' [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, c. 1920.

Chit for chat

You can keep your cloudless days
              I prefer the truth.
Don't tell me about the clear blues
              when I've been hazy grey.
Why waste our time-
why show me natural beauty-
when I am more of a metaphor...

You can take your warm sunshine
                I was already too hot.
Leave me alone in the cold
                where my heart feels homey.
Why talk to me about exotic places-
why try to fantasize about far away-
when I will always dwell in self-fulfilled...

You can give it up
                holding others happy.
Don't tell me it was yours
                when you've never had it.
Why keep saving everything for later-
why not save yourself-
when there's nothing left-now.

You can say you would
                  I will not say.
Don't think I might change my mind
                  when it's on too tight.
Why not convince
why not debate your own issues
while I'm sitting pretty writing poetry
not seeking what may be-
                                         outside of me.




Image of painting by Laurits Andersen Ring (1908) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Teaching us (poetry)

Her teacher told her a telling tale
of typical teenage turmoil
her own tale
and it was all true.

Learn from me, don't do as I did,
learn the lesson the easy way,
as tutors typically say.

Touched and teary
by the story
she thought she might
want to write a poem
with all the emotional vividry...

She mused on this
as the class continued.
But then,
the teacher yawned
and apologized
for her dreary demeanor
that day, distracting her
another way.

The teacher then explained
how her little baby boy,
had nightmares the night before
keeping her awake until 4,
it was about dinosaurs
inside his pillowcase.

She scribbled all this frantically,
the poem coming faster than she
could write.
She missed the end of the lecture,
but got the point,
she learned a lesson
she will never forget,
poetry is taught in many ways.




Image of painting by Franz Nölken [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Writing a Rebus

Poetry is where
we put words near each other
Pretty-true or not.











Image by Périclès Pantazis, 1884 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.