Looking to score a mentor

Haiku IIII

WANTED: A Pound for

an Eliot, can't pay more

than a nickel a notion

Image via Wikimedia Commons, c. 1944 from North American Aviation, cartoon drawing, Robert F. Yonash.

I'm in the din

The peace and quiet,

of sweet retreat,

costs a pretty penny,

                      know those who buy it.

I used to live next door to the Pacific Ocean,

she's a tranquil sea with moody tides.

Lullabies of foam white noise,

                       swirled in predictable motion.

Humbly not in a castle or large house surrounded

by sand and fog, but a boxy cubby with holes,

for the salty air to settle in,

                        knuckled undertow and pounded out.

The street grime, all the passers by,

dog walkers, perverted gawkers

linger in the marine air- over there where

                         pteradactyles in vees fly high.

Now, dwelling in the neighborhood,

the freeway hum, and soft suburban strum,

gives the beat of the civil street-

                         moving was good for us.

But a new boisterous big band

plays this bouncing barrio cacophony

from squeals to words next door, grows the baby-

                         each side stoic fences watch.

Hidden outside in backyard nooks,

under the bamboo pergola, behind the garage,

the short STOP sign was here when we moved,

                            perched in peace where no one looks.

The train blares through the solitude,

left on time, right on schedule,

a siren wails in urgence, whoop-whoop the cop

                             car cheers in calm pursuit.

Busy builders compose machines,

climbing roller-coaster, screaming gears,

out front a concert speaker rolls by,

                               dimmed by security screens.

Chalkboard scraped shrillness,

rings, beeps, tweets, buzzers,

crunching, growling, laughing, crying,

                                 alert to dying in all this blissful stillness.

My volume button broke,

listening to folk voices of vagrancy,

echo emptily, ringing in my head,

"No one's home," I said.

Image by By Ford Madox Brown illustrating a scene from Shakespeare's King Lear, "Lear and Cordelia",  (1849-54) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Haven't I seen you somewhere before

The soul divided
Twice undone
to the power of one
made whole by reflection

The moment of the shortest light
Good and Evil ebbs and flows
in the Noon and Midnight glows
your shadow hides, refusing to pose

You are still the same You
even as you grow and change
recognizing your old self as strange

A reunion of sorts
to meet in the middle
of life, like solving a riddle
reminding one of deja vu a little

Don't be afraid to peer deeply
past the pane, into the windows of the soul
while reciting the rote lines of your role
Acting like still life takes its mindless toll

Notice the view as you climb
Up, or don't and stay the same
but you cannot blame
your over elevated aim

Running into yourself
after all these years
no longer judged by your peers
or motivated by fears

Easily spooked, a sketchy outline
of who you really are
now grown older and traveled afar
mapped and trapped by your own falling star.



Image By Harrison Weir (1824-1906) "Reflection" [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ode to a Comma

As one like you can surely tell,
a poet uses new and old words quite well

Tho' this is not about the poet that is me
'Tis a tribute to a little mark-you'll see

Of course reading certain words can make magic
Or their arrangement can prove to be quite tragic

Placed in such precarious ways
deciphering both what and how it says

since this symbolic form of communication
is not simply a mere matter of translation

Language is omnisciently living
Poetry is an expression of giving

Words in their proper form and place
Dependent on others, used in a certain case

But the power of a quiet comma-
(O The sheer drama!)

It's an Order, telling you to wait-
hanging below the surface, like dangling bait

(If you may wonder why can't we use more than one
in a row, it's the sound of panting after a run
that is how that's done
and to read that would be fun
for both nary and no one)

Admit it, even a serial comma sounds a bit scary
it has me shaking in my Oxfords' a fright wary

'Tis all this blatant punctuation abuse
(O all the overt dis-obeyance and misuse!)

Yet, let us never forget
we owe the comma a great debt

For the comma controls and catches and releases your breath
It's diligent appearance delays the death

of a single, stretched and solitary sentence
that goes on and on with a vacuous vengeance.



I came across this article "Going, Going, And Gone?" by Linda Holmes on NPR after writing this poem-actually, while posting it, and found it to be thoroughly a very entertaining read! Witty, refreshingly honest and literally, no, poetically well written.  

Image By Historic American Engineering Record, Tim Whitely "Trolling illustration"[Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Parades in March

The sun rises

as the rain 

falls

harder

breaking the dawn

with angry gray

For-

To:

day

Image By Jon Sullivan [Public domain] "Palm trees in the morning", via Wikimedia Commons. 

Eyeless in Gaza PII: The Peaces of the Pi per Aldous Huxley

The following is a passage cited from the novel "Eyeless in Gaza", by Aldous Huxley (p.471,72) which I have also (see PI) converted into a poem for its natural prosaic eloquence on immaterial matters such as attempting to describe "peace".

United in peace.
In peace,
he repeated,
in peace, in Peace.
In the depth of every mind,
Peace
The same space for all,
continuous between
mind and mind
At the surface,
the separate waves,
the whirlpools, the spray;
but below them
the continuous and undifferentiated expanse of the sea,
becoming calmer
as it
deepens,
till at last there is an absolute stillness...

Dark peace
in the depths.

A dark peace
that is the same for all who can
descend
to
it.

Peace, that by a strange paradox
is the substance and source of the storm at the surface.

Born of peace,
the waves yet destroy peace; destroy it,
but are necessary;
for without the storm
on the surface
there would be no existence,
no knowledge of goodness,
no effort to allay the leaping frenzy of evil,
no rediscovery of the underlying calm,
no realization that
the substance of the frenzy,
is the same as
the substance of Peace.
Frenzy of evil and separation.
In Peace there is Unity.
Unity with other lives.
Unity with all Being.

Freedom from Truth.
The truth of unity.

Peace in the profound subaqueous night,
Peace in this silence,
this still emptiness
where there is no more time,
where there are no more images,
no more words...


Image of painting by Marcus Larson (1825-1864) "Stormy Sea" (1857) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Eyeless in Gaza PI: The Theoretical Unity of Aldous Huxley

"8th Root of Unity"

Image By MarekSchmidt (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The following is a passage cited from the novel "Eyeless in Gaza", by Aldous Huxley (p.467,68) which I have converted into a poem for its elegance in deciphering the properties, proportions, perspective(s) on the concept of Unity (as a whole/hole). 

The unity of life.

Unity demonstrated even in the destruction of one life by another.

Life and all being are one.

Otherwise

No living thing could derive sustenance

from another 

Or from the unliving substances 

around it.

One

(even in destruction),

One

(in spite of separation).

Each organism is unique.

Unique and yet

United

with all other organisms

in the sameness of its ultimate parts;

Unique above

a substratum of mental identity.

Identity and Interchangeableness

of Love, Trust, Courage.

Fearless affection 

restores the lunatic to sanity,

transforms the hostile savage into a friend,

tames the wild animal.

The mental pattern of Love 

can be transferred from one mind to another

and still

retain its virtue...

And not only Love,

but Hate as well:

not only Trust, but suspicion;

not only kindness, generosity and Courage,

but also

malevolence and greed and fear.

Reality of unity,

but equal reality of division-

greater reality, indeed,

of division.