The world in a puddle

Shiny onyx paved streets that shine 

like oil

kaleidoscope reflections of topaz gems

yellow lamplights tossed from windows

makes me warm

inside.

Lullaby metronomes count water

droplets, clepsydra down the side of the house,

this eave, my gutter

fills, pours this bass beads across paving stones

reminiscent of a game of puddle hop-scotch

I count the treble, 

it answers the hydraulophone

inside me.

That musty smoke that lingers like dye

in the sky, leaking out of rooftop chimneys,

house pipes blow and issue

a rescue signal, 

for those inside.

Countless poets have captured this in smaller 

rain barrels commonly called buckets.

We lost some along the way,

which accounts for the change in overall volume,

by composition, ice is also vaporous. 

Drops do both ways.

Nobody cared,

these were not the ideal conditions for thirst 

or poetry,

water was everywhere, like supply versus demand

as far as they could see, 

there was no end

to verses. 

Image credit By English: thesandiegomuseumofartcollection (Flickr) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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.

Thought Angler

...sounds a little like
reminding, word choice and voice
in head unleashed runs back over
itself, like long winds of Jack Kerouac.

When some words settle
like boulders, impressioned and set on
making a safe crossing of white waters
for rock dwellers and ware sellers
of Cages. When Neruda was no longer
a border,
Lowell and beholden-There
I was only a Rae,
scaled into a small Armantrout
aiming upstream it seems
by heart.

Planning my path further,
the banks beckon me with moving silt lines
that shape earth
with a wand of whim. All eyes swim across all
those cummings and goings
making sparkles
above.

I take Paz at the reflection,
amassing stones
and skip the flattest ones
across the Eliotic surface,
Poundless and unpuddled,

noting ripples like run on sentences
that could race round forever,
yet are bound by body, only to be
settled on the shores
in the act of abating the volume
of poetry
with only the words of Emily,
finally.

I have caught a current in a collective
intention, wielding a hand
with a hook that looks
like a pen.
I wait, feeling for the wiggle,
a sign, message spoken
through fingertips-

this was when silence
was most sought
by the spear.






Painting by Martin Ryckaert (1587-1631), 'Fisherman in a wooded landscape' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Astir (Haiku)

Before the first rain

the Poets all woke and spoke

of their sense of smell

Painting by Apollinary Vasnetsov [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Arts and crafts

Poets are stars
as many as the naked eye can make out
or point to
and mean precisely
nowhere specific.
Dr. Suess and crafts,
black construction paper and a poker,
make poetry for kids.
Now hold the holy black sheet
up to the light,
and see-
starry night
Today, and
as many poets as the paper will hold holes.
We cannot focus on the ones that fell,
but they do catch your eye
in real time.
It is no wonder no new ones
have ever been found.


Painting (oil on canvas) by Edwin Blashfield, 1927 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Echo-interpretation

Few knew
how little we were
hoping to be noticed

Not that
they wanted more
and less to be seen
here

Some found
they never heard
(of) the likes of you
before

Some sought
outside as outcasts
too frigidly
accommodating

Some stayed
in place and inside
by the fire
alit with artistic rage

Not many
more than we
can handle
touching
poetry
without scalding
the tips

And know
none pine
for ringing cedars, pet rocks
or chop words, but quarry
here
for the echo...


Image of painting By Adolf Mosengel (1837-1885) (Dorotheum) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.