Blue windows

Practicing her new monologue
from a Steve Martin play,
it becomes impossible to forget
some lines.

Some lines
slap the face, others rattle the cage
just between the ears,
and linger in the room
like cooking dinner.

She recites the lines in front of her closet,
and in front of my closet,
in the sliding glass door
when its dark outside
as I put away the dishes,
listening to her practice,
again.

Distracted by the shutters that keep slapping,
I await my favorite lines
about the shutters that could never be-
come forest blue,
because forest blue is no color,
and denying this existence,
makes it true, naturally.

I try to picture a hole in the forest,
the sky peeking through the canopy,
but my eyelids flutter at the steam
rising and swirling on the stovetop.

Shutters do not occur in Nature, the lines note,
and I wonder about Pi, naturally.
I like Pi,
Newtons apples are the juiciest.

And these occupations
keep our lips moving along,
fingers fiddling with locks
and minds simply wandering off,
it takes time, an open mind, a window
and practice.

Look at the face, the hands, the clock,
she knows all the words Mr. Martin wrote.
Now, I can open the kitchen window,
letting the forest fly out with the green.





Artwork By Juan Gris (José Victoriano González Pérez), Spanish, 1887 - 1927 (1887 - 1927) – Artist/Maker (Spanish) Born in Madrid, Spain. Dead in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Spectator Sport

Middle balcony

where reporters are filed

and whores are stashed

doesn't seem so long ago

Middle balcony

up in the branches

the birds mast

where cackles sink

and wails lilt

into the rafters

it used to be so

Middle balcony

cast in the dark

as a side remark

of jesterly hospitality

and for courtly banality

Middle balcony

too far to catch

the rigs and ropes

behind the magic

show down stage

Middle balcony

posts up extras 

for the epic play

with broken legs

and body doubles

Middle blacony

 is a caste idealist 

for the grand finale

leap of revelry 

one must take

into the pit

of the old

Globe.

Image of painting by Thomas Francis Dicksee, Juliet on the balcony (1875) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Pre-recorded: The following is not a Live poem

It's not like it used to be...
We used to dream about making robots
do our menial work, not our magical works-
those things only humans can do:
like cry, create
and ideate
ways to make life easier on us
less of us needed
participation nonessential.
(human auto-pilots)
A sweet serenade
became a re-mix, betwixt by
the sound, dubbed for deaf ears.
A vocal scale made smooth
by the synthesizer, equalizer
(humanizer).
An actor feels no butterflies
when he appears on the inside
of the idiot box,
he's no cracker jack.
Legs are not broken on blue-ray
slipped discs, but no risks.
It's bare (bones) entertainment.
Pictures say many things, it's said
about what is no longer true
they cut a slice of time, etched
on mirrored paper.
Once around
the fire, stories were told
yarns knitted
and lore was learned.
This was way before the plague
of plagiarism, words were invented
and tailored to suit.
Reproduce en mass,
a photo, a note, striking a chord
a player piano
knows your tune
pre-recorded originality
plays on repeated loops
serenading us
out of our own mortality.

“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.”

-Virginia Woolf

Image By New York : Broadway Music Corp., publisher. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, sheet music cover.