The words escaped her...

 

Sometimes she speaks

Others...

Don't listen to her

How she doesn't know

What she says

Before...

She thought

They could hear

Her thoughts

filled with speech a-

loud voice

You could tell...

Image credit User:Zmaj, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

E. Pifanny

I was more in

Love with the 

Place than the man.

-I thought-

Humans are complex,

Addicted ones are

Predictable.

I think-

If you are not given

More than you think you can handle-

then how would you know-

How much more

You could...

I figured,

Turning a blind eye

makes you 

Feel more than

hind (in)sight like fore-

shadowing.

I realized,

Loss enhances the value of 

What you have, irreplaceable or

simple, nameable, and not.

Holding on to 

Nothing is free

falling-

Until 

I knew-

Everything

Lands

Home again

Like a name you've never heard, but

Think you know or a place

You've never been and find 

Yourself in

Love.

Painting by William Orpen (1878-1931), 'The Eastern Gown' c. 1906 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Jalopy

When learning how to meditate it is a common tool
to imagine
yourself
being on the side of a busy road, a freeway say,
watching the cars zoom by,
noticing the varying speeds
and taking in
the flow.

The automobiles are commuting thoughts
in this scenario,
unremembered by make, model and color
unless focused upon
in passing.

Being stuck on the shoulder
more than once myself,
some savior often pulls over
to offer help

it is fair to assume I simply ran out of gas,
it seems reasonable to conclude
I do not have reliable transportation,
and it is purely logical to reason
I have somewhere
to Be-

as if I could use a lift.

I try not to use the hazard lights.





Photograph by Alan Levine, 'Roadside Susans' taken 7/17 in Public Domain. 

which explains the silence...

The monkey and the muse
were in the
den
together
waiting for one
to speak-

The muse sat,
arms crossed
across the locked up chest
and the monkey just
gesticulates
in wild attempts
to aggravate
a predicted response-

whereby
two arms finally fell like pillars
allowing a plumage of smile to seep out
of the rubble-

You don't need a hand-
were the only words
I heard
eavesdropping
I struggled
to recognize the voice.

While trying to listen in
I lost sight of where I stood
momentarily,
and then the den was silent
while the world
was deafening,

when I could not
help
but find focus
there seemed only one-

source of the sound,
and only
one shadow
emerged.


Painting by Janis Rozentals, 'The Princess and the monkey' c. 1913 in the Latvian National Museum of Art [Public domain].

Wolf dreams

The  blood flows as current
through and around the brain
spilling into empty as I lay
down to sleep.

We say-Wheels Spin-
is this where we begin and end
that recapped thought, witticism, and dig
deeper as I have a conversation
with self, explaining
why Ezra Pound is not
considered
an American Hero-
although I fancy the lad,
I now understand and so
much evil clumps in corners
the sealed eyes squeeze and fold in
the car repair for son, the phone for daughter
colleges, dinners, stories and towels-
so many towels-folded, washed,
thrown down, tossed, appropriated in the rain,
picked up-creamer but forgot the bunnies
and the pain better not grow or settle down-
the ER is not OK today, I am OK, I say,
I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am
hear-not here,
my body belies deep breathing
and I still think
I sleep
too much.



Painting by Albert Joseph Moore (1875) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

inner child

My body disrupts this empty room.

Thoughts are just whispers

but move matters around.

Inside voices, 

no need to interrupt

by asking

Nobody was home.

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.

Vestigial Flexing

With these tiny words
trickling over my skin,
these pithy lines I draw and scratch,
in my head from tucked deep in bed,
in broad strokes that spasm and spark-
streaking in wisps that leave light trails,
I am comforted and swaddled
by my brittle skin that knows these
are the strands that connect my spirit
to its terminal boundaries.
This is how I speak to me.
I say to hear, I think to find
the same self, tucked in amid
its ways of saying untranslatable
and delectable daunting poetry.

The heavy blanket protects me from
exposure- you cannot see more
than the shape of naked, the outline
is enough for some, sameness...
There is That, This is I, There, There.
I've found just
in another beating heart
that echoes
Thou art That-
Art Thou That?

I wonder, I think
it is warm around you too...
I must be closer to your world in words
or I am sleeping tight inside definitions
sweet dreams, where these words want me
passionately and privately
for their own subversive desires...
I listen intensely and densely rapt-
catching any waves of sound
that may keep me afloat, on the
shiny surface of sonorous daylight
hours, too conscious to care
any more to day.




Image of painting by Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov, Sleeping Girl, 1840 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.