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. 

wait less ness

It bothered me
    so much looking down
                   noticing the tangled web
of weeds and picturing the worms
when
I felt a finger
             lift my chin
Up
     to the words
     floating
Up there
      across the tops
                 blooms and light spread
freely
as they have all ways
been
not needing to be
seen

Up here.

Image of floating leaf taken in the Superior National Forest, photographer Unknown in [Public domain].

the gazing tree

Words are my mirror.
In one frame, there Is
an accuracy and simultaneous
Alienation,
projecting from This compact structure,
such as a singular dimension,
as in Ego,
ergo sum
perception.

I pointed
my gaze
out-
side-
this Home
provides no shelter.

I wanted to pick the words,
like weeds,
carefully including the root,
which is a sure sign
of eradication, or hope
of never returning.

So my eyes and hands scan
scan the sky
but only a breeze
could find meaning
There.

What does remain
Solid
after trying to convey
an idea, to prose?
Must be made with
origination,
in other words,
something like; a black box, a red wheelbarrow,
13 blackbirds
and a parched poet
scratching tan paper under an old oak tree.


Photograph by Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Senden, Venner Moor -- 2013 -- 2305” / CC BY-SA 4.0.

reflection

The difference between man and his
                                              Nature;
Primarily,
the words will fade away
                                        meaning
                      altogether

whereas colors come
                                bright and new
blending in
after each and every rain.





Painting by Henry Ward Ranger, 'Bradburys Mill Pond No. 2' c. 1903 in  [Public domain].

Mis(s)worded

Since
I couldn't
no-wouldn't
stand the voice
No-noise,
the incessant barrage
of worded white noise,
I wrote poetry
(for constraint).

What does happen when
2 pennies are rubbed together,
a spark
of sense?

The sound that silence plays
while filling in the gaps
has become louder the older
I get, as if I get
something.

Who is the I
that claims to Be not I-
the poet

The words with an alibi
from elsewhere
saw how small and narrow
the mark Itself made, and made
more width and depth
to shroud the naked nouns.

When I went
quiet
you covered your ears.
My two eyes narrowed
even more,

the poem burst and dissipated
in front of us, like memory
maligned
for lack of metaphor
or something nice
to be noted.






Image credited by Edgar Degas [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 
Title: Louise Halévy Reading to Degas, c.1895

id est (in other words)

The ink pot solidified
in the -unpreventable- evaporation
of
all things
considerable.

Words were
the only way we could try
to grasp the conceptual -framework-
of the time
it takes
to become
a person, place or thing.

Of late,
it is more common than not
to notice the disappearance of
what
seems -indescribable- where only by means
of observation
could we conserve our precious
resources.


Artwork by Hugo Charlemont in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Puzzling poet

The last line was laid and this tied it all together,
Success!

Yet in the excitement of the assembled vivid scene,

the poet dropped his masterpiece onto the tile floor,

Whereby words shattered and scattered about

Everywhere.

Dejected and deterred, he could only kneel down

and try to pick up the pieces flung in far off places,

watchful for synonymous edges 

and similar shades

and of course, he paid particular attention
to the edges.

It had been done before, 

he told himself to start over,

it would be easier this time,

never imagining a different picture

put together,

he caught himself still glued to the finished image

of the new poem before him-
Stunning!

From out of Nowhere

its edges disappeared,

he saw it would never be finished,
so he took it apart and put it away.




Artwork by Harry Willson Watrous [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Explain yourself

The words were all too long,
became easily tangled and how I kept
pulling at what I thought was an end,
pulling, pulling, pulling, and
thereby taking too much
out of me
the body became barren.

What was understood as a major shift
of power, in direction or by time constraints,
was the anticipated and alternating current
as in that way
opposition acts by force.
Listen, it was my fate,
or decision
to do or not to do.

Small acts, even one
may be a miracle,
after all
this, one thought, one
surviving-

the risks were all there, caution was
issued too. Accuse, dismiss and relish
the sound of ones voice,
and how it comes out, represents
the avatar or holographic image
taken at the ideal angle
or time.

We were all Free
to walk around and not utter a word,
or like me, never give thoughts away with
dignity,
to light, to mind, to mouth, to hand
and inevitably, words were dying.
The Words
were writhing and gasping for shape,
despite the hand that rushed
along-

Definitions, unlike synonyms
carry want and need, unable to
extract and dilute the difference
between
I am and I was.


Painting By Yamashita Shintarō (29 August 1881 to 11 April 1966) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Stone's throw

When the words dislodged
and came hailing down,
as an avalanche seeking the comforting
earth below
in free fall, the lege, a paragraph
or precipice gives itself away,

all the dense granite words,
could never be shale, not fall apart
nor could any illumination find light
after the full weight suddenly shifted,
to be mined. It was only words that the
mountains rose to meet at
The End.




Painting by Carl Schuch [Public domain], 'Mountain stream with boulders' (c.1888) via Wikimedia Commons.

I was framed

Words wouldn't come
so I went with paint,
but the body was too thick
and the primaries screamed
even when kept apart

Those threads I cannot read
through
the prepositions and problems
drama and canvas scenes

in media res, centripetal
room at the edges
so bubbles don't pop
as tempting as black is

Purple pretends perception
like lines of sight
the same lines that bind
up brains and I's
omnisciently we see,
underneath it was red,

with light
become plane as day,
in a literal sense.



Arttwork By Michael Sevier (illustrator) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Her yin

The woman saves babies.
I have seen her catch one
in midair with one hand
as it was falling out of
a walmart cart.

The woman I have seen
juggles jobs, hats, dishes,
bills and priorities,
shifting her wide hip weight
when necessary.

The woman stands in front
of her own children, taking bullets
and returning aim, she puts her arm out
when they are driving
still
and says it is reflexive.

The woman always worries,
I have seen her furrowed brow
she has origami secrets folded
up in there,
she uses up more than she has with nothing
left
of self

The woman knows her cliches and expectations,
she recites them easily if you ask,
and somehow
day to day words assemble easily for her,
she may manipulate these into weaponry,
unless she sees
some innocence,
she proposes poisons leaving bodies
awake.

Painting by Bronzino (1540) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Edit(her)

Today
I pray
all the words fray
ravel away...

Whole words
                    carry too much

-much less, defenseless against
strung out sentences, slabs
posed in parallelographic paragraphs,
cover pages and such strata and likewise its
generous detritus

stacks up,
burying A brain within its grooves-
meaning between
pro-fessional and con-fessional
moves too fast to hold,
the rope burns
and I feel smolder.

Sleep did not bother
to muffle the pillow words,
vowels easily pass
through cotton screens.

Threads that vibrate not enough separation.
Too clear to hear, semi-permeable is
the peace underneath, the bubbles inside lips
of white foamed waves.

Those hard consonants could not be avoided.
Sound becomes
a wall between being and story,
bricks and dreams.

Mist always settles.

Black
is the language
when there are more words
than matter.



Painting by Jacob Vrel (fl. 1654–1662) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Recipe for Primordial Soup

Words

We know

Hold something

Greater than tangibility.

There is no weight, but we feel them

Waiting in us. It is mysterious how they

Manifest themselves as thought

Lines, directions, and energies by focus

And I have tried to gather these threads,

To tread lightly, lilting to myself trying to hear what Paulo Coelho

Whispered once, 'The universe conspires for you', for me,

Then Elliot interrupts and challenges these universal disturbances-i.e.

SILENCE! Shouts Cage with his plump lips, holding full notes In,

And Stein, and Stein, and Stein, and Stein evokes our inner Einstein-Aha! Pre-cisely-
The math of the matter, the matter of math, math matter, the matterless
mathless matter, massless matter, the antimatter-as a mass of totality, see-

Too literal to be unilaterally likable-repetitive is as are (un)retractable. Stet.

Do You-without question-understand the definition? Who knew-

Which one of many contradictory theories 

to listen-too much advice causes root entanglement 

and naturally, chaos unravela such intricate complexities, all

Gathered. Feel! Knots. Grasping for straws and strings 

to locate the (in)tangibility further up the line, at a beginning, 

where it went wrong, where A is for Adam was crossed out, gasp,

the people knelt, Adamant this evening without repast

famished for

an other.


Photo credit:  Archives, Argentina, children eating soup 1938 in [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Per: Fect Reader

Lucky

to have sparked your interest,

already, at first sight

I’d like to lift your chin,

letting my lines leach into your lips.

My fruit, my conception, bursting its peel-

Alas, I have known this thirst we share,

It was none but you, alone

more real to me, together

We both imbibed insatiably, yet emptiness 

abounds until whole words were filled 

in utterly

every open space drowned in white.

Open and sere,

I wish to saturate this dry dirt with

One of our tears

To make something you can use, of utility

To make more time

For thisness in these.

These twirled up murmurs were merely me,

reaching out with invisible waves

for your quiet, distant ear,

And just when I thought

The silence meant

I had nothing to say

To make any better-

You heard every word

Fulfilled

with this.

Painting by William McGregor Paxton (c. 1900) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

For what it is worth

Those words mean everything to me.

And although I may chose

to never see them again,

I must put them somewhere

gently, like here.

Because they held more than my meaning

for someone one time, someplace besides

in me. I’m sure of it.

Yes,

we get attached to material things

like they really matter.

Why not ethereal things

like they don't matter…

I wish.

Moved or Be Moved,

the wind suggests.

Besides, some key

words will point the way

in arrow-point-narrowly be

led out and in sides of times

whereby those grammatical

laws have all broken English.

These poems that I carry with me

have no cash value.

None may not be heard

aloud, but my change rattles as I walk

through this word-ridden

Life and I donate sense, liberally.

I am never broke

for long

but lighter

without the words.

Artwork by Giovanni Battista Naldini [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Quantity Quotient

None of it was good.
Others say it must be good enough
and I wrestled with it, tried to full nelson the
blue bloody life out of it
before I quit the last time.

You would think these simple words
which everyone uses every day in all
derivations of misappropriating ways,
would be something quite simple to me
whose word world
never stops flooding
the floorboards.

And I keep flailing around trying to see what will float
but the best words confound me, sunken.
And I cannot begin
to make them make something
to line up and make something.
There is no reaction.

There is no sense to this cold
natural selection, just rejection.
And it need not be the most profound, I most simply
meant to convey complexity in a novel way, some semblance
of chaos in a nutshell, since what sells is
simplicity as it offers beauty for the masses.
There is no madness in ramblings
when there is no place to get lost, and curiosity is what keeps
the clock ticking and nothing is done with
black and white shapes on white paper,
sitting there and undone
from completion
for good reason.

Twenty-four short little stories
abandoned,
seven attempts at a novel,
three keepers, one in no hurry to make it to the end,
or progress, I digress,
I guess it will all make sense later.

After eight hundred and eighty-eighty lousy poems
one word should be worth keeping
the baby in the bathwater.



By UnknownHerkulaneischer Meister, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Discovered in 1760, is one of the most famous and beloved paintings, commonly called Sappho. Actually portrays a high-society Pompeian girl, richly dressed with gold-threaded hair and large gold earrings, bringing the stylus to the mouth and holding the wax tablets, notoriously accounting documents which therefore have nothing to do with poetry and even less with the famous Greek writer.

Damsel in distress

When the guards eventually abandoned their posts
this is when, creeping out of overflow,
the words gush forth in a rip current-
coalescing in magnetic links-
weaving white sheets with
brown knots, by her dirty hands;
the escape plan finally hatches
and she knew she would now
let it all out.
Deliberated and free
to mouth the lyrics
all wrong.
She sings them
hums them along
in sweet harmony with self,
knowing all the words
had been mis-taken.






Image of painting by Evelyn De Morgan, Hope in a Prison of Despair (1887) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Alpha-betting on-Omega

All whole words are concocted symbols
lines scrawled to convey meaning
not unlike painting,
sweeping strokes of generalities
whet form into abstract impressions
desist and seize definition.

A collector of rare words
admires antiquated articulations
and such-and so forth
forms thought into projections
as aroma refuses to go unnoticed
inoculating ideas, contagion cures.

To say the words aloud, incant
taste the tone on the tongue, palatable
digesting the dreams of others
does wonders.
Look (it) up.

It is alchemy really.
If you have dined around
the periodic table, you know
letters combine
to become more than themselves,
explosive elixirs
of ionic interpretations.

I get the Impressionism
and I objectivist
for surrealism, cubed.
Post-pop abstracted
Neo-classical characters,
re-defined and framed
a sentence for Life.




Image of artwork By Coles Phillips [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Finding my way to say

Knowing the words doesn't count for much.
Some sayings are worn thin,
and should be treated delicately,
like I love you.
As far as directions go-
make your own map,
my destination is different than yours.
I offer no solace, I cannot save myself.
I have quit only to find one must start again,
this is why you must love what you do.
Holding on is easy when your life depends on it.
Well-being is a verb that goes past tense.
I know all the words, this doesn't help much.






Image of painting by Pieter Claesz (1597/1598-1660) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Poet (Haiku)

Why do you poem?

An attempt to word wisely

while I understand.

Image by James Sant [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons (Enigma).