A Spring in my step

Did you see how big the sky was today?
I took particular notice of her limber stretch
and wide grin
Happy and Light in forever blue

I happened by chance to be in a hurry
funny how these things grab you just then
On my way to Nowhere
more important than here

I'm not sure if I should guess
you have these strange long moments too
The air smells like hot Youth
and bottomless Freedom

The tempestuous whisper taps you on the shoulder
a sultry breeze murmurs something in your ear
about having fun
Shhh, your Time is not yet done

Like lust its so hard to refuse
a harmless offer to dance on air
or drown every pore
wrapped in blankets of flowing atmosphere

A smile sneaks up on your face hoping
you don't notice first or ruin it with thinking
Let it Ride at Full Speed Ahead
ringing and singing Hells Bells

I am suddenly parched
by this urge, or maybe a growth spurt
rapid blossoming
Now I understand wildflowers

There is no rhyme
or reason
just appreciating time
noticing I changed with the Season.


Image By Robbins, Ellen, 1828-1905 (artist); L. Prang & Co. (publisher) (Flickr: Wild Flowers No. 2) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Vice versa

Some people say
as the crow flies
to the point, to put it in a direct way
without circular lies

Some such phrases
do not translate
in juxtaposed places
that relate only to the date

Used for reference
time and setting
using inference
for aiding and abetting

By and by
hook and crook
we try and try
to avoid similarities look

Strange as it may sound
replacing new from the old
from Latin I have found
is really the same story told

Used to placate relate and abbreviate
temporal occurrences
another way to plainly state
'panem et circenses'

Things we need to live
laced in lovely distraction
so we can forgive
and forget any minor infraction

Of Justice laced with wheat
the generous goddess of grains Annona
who would never cheat
using her bountiful plains of flora and fauna

Bread and circuses, a tactic to please
what about the Futuere
it's simpler to just appease
with an act, circus, or some such affair

Part of the freakshow or third act
The ringmaster still rules
Bread and circuses from adage to fact
All of us once clowns graduating to fools

And two thousand years later
this archaic Latin term
is apropos even greater
as our society does affirm

You reap what you sow
When in Rome
as the saying does go
There's no place like home

Where two kinds of bribes work best
Games and aesthetics, beauties and the beast
Rule the roost, broody at best, squatting on my chest
For me, these loaves and lullabies sate and soothe me least.

"The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread."
-D.H. Lawerence

First image of painting by Alexander von Wagner (1838-1919), [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. "In the Circus Maximus in Rome".

Second Photo Image By Carpenter (Sergeant), No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. "Animals at War, 1945, Kiri and Many, circus elephants, help clear bomb damage during war in Hamburg".

So far...

Haiku VI

A millennial 

notch on the belt of Venus

under hungry skies

Image by Thomas Bresson [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Girls go to Mars

I need not see to believe-
this presence of Ganymede.
We were led to learn,
our blue planet Earth-
was alone soaking in saltwater.

But you showed yourself-
Ganymede.

I rose early too, like those stargazers,
eager to see what they wanted us to believe
was a Blood Moon-
but she was just blushing,
rosy from her fullness.

Like Eos at Dawn,
there you were again,
in the company of dead poets,
attending the school of contemplation.

Rising first, in rings around dreams,
taking lullaby swings, at gravity-
Who thinks nobody is looking-
thirsting for Truth.

Fixing the future, diving into their divinity,
stuck swimming in the stars;
unable to reconcile, to beguile or even manage
a simple smile to reconcile but choose denial,
Ganymede.

This galactic, Earth-shattering news about Jupiter
Intro-speculative chattering, simply makes me feel stupider

Composed 3/14/15.

Image By NASA/JPL (Ganymede's Trailing Hemisphere) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.  

A Spot of Sage and Mint-Tea

Haiku V
The only advice
We should heed or ever need
is "We too Shall Pass".













Image information: from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain By Valentin Bousch: 

“English: The Prophet Isaiah. 1530. This window comes from a series of seven windows made for the choir of the Benedictine priory church of Saint-Firmin in Flavigny-sur-Moselle in the Lorraine region of France. Bousch was occupied by the Flavigny-sur-Moselle project in the early 1530s. Three of the extant monumental windows from the series each bear a date (1531, 1532 and 1533). Together, the windows presented a Biblical narrative reflecting the story of humanity, starting with the Creation and Fall of Man (now in a private collection, Langley, British Columbia), then consecutively depicting the Deluge (MMA 17.40.2a-r), Moses presenting the tablets of Law (MMA 17.40.1a-r), the Nativity or Annunciation at the east end (lost), the Crucifixion (Saint Joseph's church, Stockbridge, Mass.), the Resurrection or the Supper at Emmaus (lost) and, finally, the Last Judgement (lost). This medallion, together with the medallion of Moses (MMA 17.40.4) and the two medallions with the Craincourt and Savigny arms (MMA 17.40.5,6), was originally part of the window from the set depicting the Creation and Fall of Man (now in a private collection, Langley, British Columbia), inscribed with the date 1533; a drawing in Nancy, Bibliothèque municipale (Fonds Abel, carton 152), records the complete window intact in the priory church of Saint-Firmin before it was sold.”

Fish & Chips

There are many fish in the sea

but none exactly quite like me

Not one true carbon copy.

No nanotech cloning imagery.

Our markings are masterfully made

schooled in survival, games well played

decisions and debts to be made, repaid

resoled, rebooted,

eyes on tails

follow ink splotched surging trails

dreaming afloat where freedom sails.

Migrating maps pre-installed, recalled

streams of consciousness, or so-called

evolution, defragging currently stalled

in sleep-state.

Compress and refract by

blue chip, red chip, intelli-chip hacked,

flowing, downloading, backing-up tracts

for holograms in fact-

particulate of calcium carbonate,

brackish, choking, saline tracing, mineral state.

Four-going feets and fins of fate

sedated intoxicated waste-

carried along ripping liquid lies enmeshed in

holy nets, trawling along with severed ties and

anchored ambivalently under horizontal blue skies

and producing the Lowest Common Diatom

there can Be with so much salt. 

Composed 3/14/15.

Image of painting by Herbert James Draper (1910) "Flying fish" [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

FOUND! Gain's Partner-Will Accept Reward!

Why would you want to know- you couldn't guess

that this Pain is about to win.

Despite all my acute mental prowess,

I shall soon be defeated, I confess my sin.

I'm calling my own bluff,

I'm not strong enough.

Its unassailable relentless wrath,

grabbing and slashing from inside,

on its unforgiving hell-bent path,

leaving little me nowhere to hide.

I'm calling my own bluff,

I'm not strong enough.

From the vengeance deemed I am due,

as this sentence, to life, and all thereafter-

shall not pass as easy or quietly true.

My organs chortle, gurgle, cackle in mock laughter.

I'm calling my own bluff,

I'm not strong enough.

Not on my side-

without symptoms, forecasts, or warning,

I nearly died.

It was a calm early morning.

Now I wrestle with my watch.

Staring at its face, watching and winding.

Turning and winding up the senses a notch.

The old me painfully minding...

I've met its partner Gain-

although I cannot recall

how to get in touch without the aid of Pain,

a burden on hold, a stall, a trip to fall.

I'm calling my own bluff,

I'm not strong enough.

On my battered behalf of fragility,

beaten into heavy submission,

a memento in futility,

severed fibers corroded by contrition.

Senselessly stalking it lurks,

in many minutes for granted, in the idle hour-

it’s coup in the works

Pain without Gain is killing my power…

I'm calling my own bluff,

I'm not strong enough.

Turning me inside out,

I would never want you to understand

how much company of Pain I can keep or without-

a sound, painted a smile, with a sleight of hand…

I stopped calling, I answered stronger,

I decidedit won't be killing me any longer.

See Pain has no mind-

and neither should you-

but if you find

this other of the two

(although you have it made and are not apt to exchange)

I advise, I implore, you to keep yours,

I plead for you to take heed, don’t trade

or swap, barter or lend by standards or poors

keep your gain and your sweet lemonade.

Image By Guillaume Duchenne, 1872, "for Charles Darwins chronology of facial expressions and emotions of man and animals" [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.