Magnets

True to form

February astounds

How the stars and planets 

        align

For the sky 

       moods

Atmosphere as in

Invisible rules.

Where one pauses

suddenly and 

Often to notice 

The unseeables and

         unmentionables

Or as quiet and mystical

as the snow 

          topping the distant 

Ranges

And dissolving

Time

         Marches on. 

Painting by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), 'A Storm in the Rockies' c. 1866 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

See-thru

She turns to words
and they turn on her-

And in that deafening silence,
it was too serene
to make a scene.

Paper froze
on her
and condensed its icy pulp
into a dull reflective surface
whereby sharp-windows-
the squinted eyes
circled in hoarfrost
which blurred
the edges
of a thousand panes,
simply knowing these as
thin margins between
virginal definitions
making lighter 

inside-out.




Painting by Maurice Cullen, 'Moret, Winter' c. 1895 in Public Domain. 

Scissor Sprinter

This poem is dedicated to Shaun White, who won his third Olympic gold medal in the Men's Half-pipe snowboarding competition February (12) 13, 2018.


While everyone watched frozen under flat light,
the announcers named the tricks as if they had
a secret menu with special combination numbers;
"Double McTwist twelve-sixty, front-side double cork
fourteen-forty, backside one-eighty" and on and off
from -helicopter height, the windows were rolling up,
and up and- they kept saying, it's like
"Running with Scissors",
"Running with Scissors"-

And on the rails,
the blades were dicing ice cubes into flakes
and carving deep lines no body falling
under Newton's law should follow.

As if the white backdrop was not ghastly enough,
the fretted intensity was only further
ratcheted around by the foot-pound, experience
is no receipt and injuries, grand slams, more curdling visions of
gore galore, with winces and
careening through the barrel came this dominant figure
with a thundering force of Nowness
and such intense Presence-
the crowd sensed this-
and like tea-kettles gathering steam the people
whined while he calmly rocks, they all speculate, he breathes
the wind screams, GO-
Now
outside of this high-pitched rapture-
white noise-froth and heartbeat-
he hurls himself aloft into the thin mountain air.
An Olympian finds himself folding and
forged with steel will, armed against all avalanches
gathering doubt,
gravity does not all ways
get her way.
Not today.

He insists his mortal self against the elements,
in hot white floods of force and musculature
tightened to the verge of splintering and fraying
at every fibrous ending,
without terminus, such as manifest dreams
repeat victories, underdogs and hometown hero's-
ending up, and up- upon frozen water afloat
and mindful of sharp edges,

-Suspended-
in the plane

gliding

victorious and humbled,
the competitor maintains his position
needing more blank space to trace his lines,
he finds reams of paper to shred,
and this Scissor Sprinter salivates
gathering the gauze of this paper plane pulp
to soak up the blood of mistake with stars and stripes.

So Sochi seems like destiny.
Challenge accepted.
Regret is erased with White.

Sweeter, this time, his sheer act of execution
in this balancing craft of the one versus self,
trenches a pipe-line between seeing
and being seen, striking gold
and going for gold,
performance and performance,
tomatoes being thrown at you
or being known
as the thrown one
at eighteen, twenty-two and thirty-one.

Overcome,
he has raised the gold bar.

[The Olympian brings waves of joy to quiet homes
on a Tuesday evening in the seaside town of Carlsbad.
The residents run to get the Wednesday paper
whereby, 
front and center, the Golden Boy
brings home the rarest thing of all-
(Real) Good News from Korea!]



Photograph By Sarkavagyan (Own work), 'Winter in Armenia' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Why not whistle

Care not I can make many more rhythms right now when prompted

Too, new order-never placed spot on true treeness via atmosphere-years.

(in here).

Help us. Past I caught looks; dropping names, and buckets for rain,

wet-ware, grey matter, categories, shuffling, say-ing-sing-song-sounds,

na, na, natural intrinsically nervy non sense, while willful wandering whimsies

not here-No way! Cold, dead, serious, adult hands, clasp, grasp

rigamortis or ultimatum sets down a tension, an out line about acquisitions, not knowing

all Is Ars Moriendi, comprehension via dystopian villages laying in the snow

to rest, a moment ago.

Well. Why not whistle?

Painting by Caspar David Friedrich [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.