Femme

Lips for licking words
sweet and sour said to taste, tongue
buds roses and thorns.




Image of painting by Władysław Czachórski [Public domain], First Roses (1891) via Wikimedia Commons.

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.

Skipping on the Surface

It is obvious where matter changes
its collective being lies
somewhere on top, outside of itself
so we can see it, making it matter

At face level, on even ground
I brace my stance at the waters edge
smooth wafer stone in flesh palm
before hurling it-out there

I pause to picture its path, knowing
the ripples go nowhere but below
I can see closely the other shore
this is how I touch it from here

Someone else is always over there
and they say the same thing, mirroring my
in between, where the details gurgle
over boulders blocking fish roads

Some words don't sink
linger at their own reflection
and babble along, afloat
without direction or depth

The stone wrapped in hand
remembers its destiny, making
3 giant leaps before being cast
to the Other side

visibly mattering
just beneath the surface
smoothly skipping over
in stoic silence.



Image By SAMIN (Own work) [Public domain] of Armand River, via Wikimedia Commons.

Jog Lam

‘Tis not that I have

only little to say

(today)

my use of words

is the wrong way

my peeps aren’t worth a pop

my pennies are in pesos

Tho’ the flow

never ceases

the spring cannot unsprung

I dam it up

the words get too eager beaver

and my teeth stick out

(so I shut my mouth)

‘Tis loud in my head

the din always wins

despite nothing said

relentless ringing, chiming,

rambling and gambling

that silence will only

be truly mine

upon death-

I’m not in line for that

(yet)...

At times like these

‘tis my regret

to be resigned

to quietly waiting

with unwanted words,

the line I’m in

is not moving…

Image By Luther C. Goldman, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

DeLiberation

Disappear
is a simple enough
request of such a pret-ty little word.

Pass
this test
of strength without kil-ling
this too

Walk
it off, putting thoughts
in some order, neat-ly notice
all the lit-tle things
in the path

        Above
Rise

Sleep
time taken
in an alternate real-ity
vacation and breath

Find
moments, like this
to feel
(me)
Charge
up, forward, through
the r-evolving gates of Dis
                   never
                                              falling
behind

Time
to think
about things
like pret-ty lit-tle words
like 

These.

Composed 9/9/15.

Image By Sonia Sevilla (Own work) [CC0], 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. 

Collecting words from the bone pile

The Three Oddest Words

By Wislawa Szymborska

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh,

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996

__________________________________________________________________________________

 Italo Calvino on Quickness-

"Words, words that make me think. Because I am not devoted to aimless wandering, I'd rather say that I prefer to entrust myself to the straight line, in the hope that the line will continue into infinity, making me unreachable. I prefer to calculate at length the trajectory of my flight, expecting that I will be able to launch myself like an arrow and disappear over the horizon. Or else, if too many obstacles bar my way, to calculate the series of rectilinear segments that will lead me out of the labyrinth as quickly as possible."

From Six Memos for the Next Six Memos for the next Millennium

 

Imagine words being 

disembodied

from their inky chambers

in confinement

of a stroke on whim

Words set free from

the constriction

of definition

trapped 

by convictions

Language as folk lore

posing as apparitions

opaque and outside

ourselves

a resemblance

While we wrestle with gravity

Here

Words are grappling with reality

Now

Set against 

the woven fabric canvas

of our chance encounters

in perpetuity

strokes on a whim

I get the impression

of vibrant color on a white day

either way

A container to store ecstasy

dripping down

and running

to meaning 

we para phrase

artfully appraise

Concentrate as you read

these words you may need

inside your head

with your minds i

while standing beside

ourselves

in

nirvana

projecting 

maniacal mana

Leaning on clouds

we rely

on coming to a compromise

in order to see 

shapes as symbols, like these

metaphors

thirsty for more

than thin air

An impression

a sense 

of being

with words

we try to share

interchangeable

synonyms

thereby

invoking and provoking

a sense of continuity

An encyclopedic

orthopedic

selfsame essence

Words are the

people pith

that make-up

our masterful myth.

Image by Gerard de Lairesse, 1690 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.