I see you

Standing outside

Myself

lately, recognizing

point of view

can only be one at a time

I'm in shock, some suggest, surreal, soberly,

listening too much watching

another image 

Of I-not noticing

She is seen. 

Startling

fear of beginnings

bearing endings 

there can be no time

to reflect. 

Painting by Grigory Soroka, 'Reflection in the mirror'c. 1850 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ask the Sky Why

To lie
on your back
defeated
and speak your pieces
vehemently
as rain
at the ever listening sky

You know
this broad shoulder
of horizon
can take more
than your loaded gun
and spinning
chambers
as if a game
of Russian Roulette
would elicit a thunderous
STOP!

Threats empty
as a cloudless sapphire
catching light
and glaring
in its reflection
of you.

Life at this angle
in this volume
comes back
to us
in the same way
we know
every word has been heard
before you opened your mouth
and took
it all
in
as unnoticed
breath.



Painting by Francis Job Short (1857-1945), 'Sea and Sky at Seaford' in Public domain.

Upon further refraction

The dark parts are never totally absent
but make counter balance
while the wave-
lengths of light
lure us to the edges
of our material domains.

And tenacious as
we are, discover
how pointed
the arrow of time
must be-in order
to pierce the shield
we forge between
then and now,

somehow
All
observations become skewed
and miss their tiny targets
more often
than not.

All the while,
the incessant beating
heart, clock, hands only
amplify this glaring
temptation to shatter
our own gently built
crystalline structures

aligned and angled
just so-

objects prevent the light
from penetration
into the facets
that make us so
Reflective.

In retrospect,
the gradient
is held dependent
to a degree,
only to consider its own color
cast on the walls
and splashed across the floor
in the time it takes
to name
something never
There.


Photo credited by Kelvinsong / CC0, 'Prism tribeam' taken 2012 in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Reflection

A daughter is a distorted mirror
Image
of her mother
in a different light-

She reflects tiny scratches
caused by sharp objects
hurled at the surface
not hard enough
to break this concentration
of silhouette
and deformity of depth.

Only an Impression
too light
to stay in one body
fills the frame
out toward its beveled edges.

And all that cannot be contained
by Image is Imagination.

The daughter does not recognize
Herself
as better than
as more than
a mother could bear.

A swift movement of time blurs
the point
when the daughter draws her sword,
and the mother caps her pen.


Image credit: By Marcantonio Raidmondi (1480-1534), 'Justice personified' Engraving circa 1515-1525 in Public Domain. 

Continuities

Please consider this
an invitation for you
to take a small step
with me
here

into a warm pool
of self-reflection
with its coincidences
and resemblances
to the things we
can touch
that may also touch us back

for the same reason
or terrify
by
sheer proximity of skin.

It feels blurry when fully
immersed
here
because this liquid is so much
thicker than blood,

immortal and color-less
in order
to not conceal its particulates
as deposited into your banks
of experience.

It all comes together
like light,
gravity, family and an image,
for a moment.

This shape
water takes
the pathways
as they mimic the way of wind
taking the open path
along, long, way around
an obstacle that doubled
itself as a ladder.

Without braces and right angles,
there are no straight lines or perfect circles
to be found or measured
here.

We may picture
perfection but cannot describe
or swallow it without losing
our senses
of things.

In between
breaks of concentration
the glass spiders
but it is held together
in its frame

since there was no place
to remain
the same
as the way we found.

Let us both observe
how much further,
the way you have held yourself back,
the way you left yourself
so easily open to suggestions
such as novelties as in
the word and first-mover
who made us-

stand up
while the mirror-image stayed
observant and seated
in place.

See,
that was not you
there
sinking in,
drinking in, thinking in
collected bodies capable
of lucid dreaming
without ever remembering
if we should have
broken the surface.




Photo credited by Jon Sullivan, 'Ashes on the Reflecting Pool' dated February 2013. 

Like Life

Life is only understood in reverse order,
philosophically,
we trust the disasters and miracles
as necessary catastrophic shifts
and dramatic scene changes
the curtain drops
the Act is up.

When the world as we knew it
once hovered in equipoise-
disintegrated and crumbled before
our thin-soled shoes,
we thought of tides
and how they rip the earth
from undertow,
and leave us
to balance
less.

As chaos is to entropy,
we stand our ground despite the speed
of orbits and bullets
hoping to break the spell
of wait.

Pen and ink drawing by Henry Fuseli (1741-1845) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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.

Pass the looking glass

Face your fears,
is always more than
a dare,
underlying there is
the resurgence and recurrence
brought back by time and tide

Heavy in the air
inoculable preoccupation
to reflect
the return
a long lost relative redness
in the cheeks,
the submarine crystal eyes,
tiny peeks in a clouded
mirror

and there stares
back the terror of truth,
thicker than mist
draining all the same
Vain
by surface shine
in a spectacle
she sees a blind slave
whose never seen herself
anything but brave.

Painting By Tarbell, Edmund Charles (1862 - 1938) – Artist (American) Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Worry some, or winsome?

I feel no (blood) pressure.

No, I am

not dead (yet).

I wait for the machine to be triple checked,

and checked again

and asked

if I feel okay today?

(like always)

I do.

I feel my tail but don't tell 

and my blood is warm to touch.

Good veins, they notice,

they roll over hearing this,

I feel those too as they go back to blue.

Despite the vitals-

I am (still) not lethargic or pelagic,

worrisome or winsome, anemic, 

or academic.

I am like this-

          land locked atop shiny surfaces

even keel

in calm waters

mirror(s) but blind me.

I look across the reflection

and see deeply through

under the surface, currents collecting 

all trace(s) leaden in me

pumping ferrous Iron  

or capitulate by capillaries.

I remain 

calm under the pressure.

Painting by Vasily Polenov, c. 1886 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Day dreams

The world is flat-after all.

From here on the ledge
of this precipice, crisp
ridges jut through hazy space.

Placed in perch, the pendulum,
humming in wide ether ebbs
across calm chasms float
ascending the abysmal
highs and neaps-
the watcher sleeps, while
I's skip across the surface-

It is good to know,
up-on deeper reflection,
if light were soft,
nightfall would not hurt-
so much as with onus-
we carry dreams, inklings
heavy enough for sinking stars.

In arches,
the moon bounces back,
putting herself away in phases
setting limits on the possibilities
of how far eyes can go in one day.




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

Mirrors without reflection

Easy acceptance is a mirror
some more flattering than others
framed and hung
for anyone.

I avoid telling and tip-toe around showing
despite being told
do not believe simply
what you see...

It should be said, instead,
Believe in everything you cannot see
clearly.

The best way to tell the truth is gently.

Does anyone discuss a passing breeze?
But oh how they know about that last tornado!

You too,
have felt time jump and stretch,
but can you feel yourself slipping
on the surface-
if you catch the continental drift-
you know-
Archetypes and Adaptations are Alive.
The same story with new lines,
reflecting the ages
for anyone
that does not appear
in natural light.

A mirror is no
window.



Painting by Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior with a mirror (1907) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Count of Poiesis

Should you meet me in the day
-Be Warned-
Under the glaring sunlit lamp
I am grotesque, in the worst light.
I avoid my reflection in hindsight
and it rejects me back.

They still say vampires
once dwelt in caves
nearby, while I dwelt
while growing up.

The solar alarm sounds
strong to vowels, soft with consonance;
sensitive in all tenses, and thirsty.
-Be Wary-
my dreamy stranger-
under the open atria of night,
we are both tied to the ticks
of blood-sucking time.
Transfusing our eternity away,
craving the sap of the skylark.

Composed 10/10/15.

Image by Philip Burne-Jones [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, Le Vampire, c. 1897.

Amore di sé

Atop the purple pale predawn sky
stirred my spirit to unrest
Arose to white worlds winking
afar and apart were we
but heavenly orbs lined up
in a row
Tho all alone at this timid time
watched, I was, enrapt in
warm thirsty waves of want
and shapeless yearning to be-
come drown in the love sent to
me in lights that others call
empty space.


Image by By Alice Boughton, Dawn (1909) (Camera Work, No 26, 1909) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Tide & True

The ebb and flow of tricky desire

peaking on crests

crashing loud and rolling calm

the horizon line wearies the eyes

taking in forever

a panoramic view

a scene in a moment with you.

Trudging against rocky seas

tip-toeing on the glassy surface

touching the liquid mirror

and licking the salt

of savory endings.

What does a wave want

more than release?

To rise and become more

than itself.

A glimpse of glistening face

in a marine metropolis

under the melting sky

gathering all the glow

and casting it back

in a reflection of the

whole whirled.

Image by By Amada44 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

After You, I insist

If we conclude

that the cart can pull the horse-

would we arrive

before our name?

Say we saw the shells

showing

the chicken hatched 

his plans

first

How many baskets will we need

to not shatter

the image we

reflect into existence

consciously mirroring 

before me?

Just One

holding half

of the analogy

pulling the last straw

to see

who goes

first.

Image by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

i contact

i want to be alone with you,
she said
her lips were puckered
but she made no sound.

It has been
so long
since you're looked me in the eyes
and meant it.

You've changed
is it Time

What has come
between us,

she said touching the icy mirror.




Image of portrait (color plate) By George Eastman House from Rochester, NY, United States [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Versmilitude

I have 3,463 reasons
to hate me
as seen through the spectacled
looking glass
learning pupils of others eyes
believing in
All truth be told

From inside the fishbowl
a ripple effect goes nowhere
waves of distortion
roll by in wakes
blown out of proportion

To see is to know
What you Do shows
I suppose
better than what you Are...
barely there
thin as a rail
hardly frail
by contrast
and that pale glow
(if you would like to know)
ghostly ashen skin
is not so thin.

Deemed some dame or debutante
with nothing to flaunt
talent, imbalance,
withstanding-
Despite the empathetic understanding
I squeezed into the mold
(as I was told)
now my metallic blood runs steely cold.

I tremble
at your thoughts of me
and the terrible what nots you see
that I cannot spot
any resemblances.

A two-way mirror
absorbs one reflection
shattering a reality
piercing in severe observation
a practice in futility
noticing the nothings
lacking depth perception
merely a dimension of what
you thought you saw
was me
was you too.



Image Guillaume Bodinier [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. (Confession c. 1826).

Breathe of Reflection

Image credit: Unsplash by Robin Benad

I once could breathe
wholly and deeply-
because I was outside
myself,
looking in...