Blades of the Trade

If Rock and Roll stars can call the guitar

an axe

I can call poetry a katana

That is a samurai sword

                             the long one

not a Haiku-

that would be a dagger,

                            or Ninja Star

Maybe you think a poem is more like a machete

you'd be right

                            if you travel to remote places-often.

It will blaze your trail

                            ignite and light

to help you see where you are headed

                            not where you are going

Poems are not maps

                            of the real world

Life is a jungle, They say

                            not Poets

A poem is a katana

Its precision cuts through anything too

not just paper cuts-surface level

but deeply-through thick, dense fibers

before they know they've been severed

beheaded but indebted

bamboo is strong and fibrous but still

just blades of grass

that only a katana can mow

It will leave a mark

                             that smarts

stings while it sings

                             lyrical with steps

that cut

to the chase

but drop seedlings of new thoughts

leaving a trail

Some poems will leave you in stitches

                             those are for practice

to soften the blow

bokens of faith

like Samurai ‘Giggles Shel Silverstein’

a mean, clean, rhyming machine

amateurs should start with these

                             and wear pads

real poems are sharp, hand-forged

of tamahagane, not a wood,

                             but steel folded

holographic hamons prism,

                             cooled liquid in ripples, the poem effect

lining the traces, tracing the tails, watching feet,

hearing our heartbeat

                             in time with the light sabers swing

there for you to read,

                             if you can see it

before it fades so fast it was never there

when you try to speak of it

you had to be there

A poem is a katana

Making contact, shattering reality

with its crystallized matrix of pearls

lined in a common goal, on the steel cold page

double edged margins, sharp side up

pre-requisite knife skills essential

but you knew what you were getting into

it was for the show, on the cutting edge

one who wields with words like using

a poem as a katana.

Image By Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons,“Retained Weapins of vigilantes".

The Rainmaker's Prism

There's this thing I'd like to show you

                  -but I found

                                 I am incapable

                                                        without poetry...

Which is exactly where I first discovered this guarded secret,

                                                        symbolical sound all around

I assume the answer is Yes

                                                       -but from so far away I can only guess…

See first, we must see
Both

Science and Art so often             stand        so         far          apart.

At opposing ends of each spectrum,

without blending a hue, without refracting a filtered thought,

                                                       contrasting, considering, what may or may not be-

but knew with certainty,
both Science and Art were connected by the arms of Man.

                                  And for just a spot, a moment right here in between
agree to see congruently,

both Art and Science know

the Beauty of a rainbow.

                                  You see, Science will easily explain how tears are not

                                                                                       the same as rain,

but only Art can undoubtedly prove

                                                        a compelling hypothesis for the Sun to move

from day to night, casting various shades of light

                                                        glowing proudly in-between-

questioning, magnanimously, spreading is possible rays

                                                         for everlasting days…

Now if you just look through here-

and squint your mind’s eye without flinching or fear,

See-Science cannot make Art,

                                                         in symmetrical chaos

by simply building and implementing its material parts

                                                           of mirrors and prisms-

directing the light, the rainmakers plight, the triple refraction effect

                                                   
reflected back in the miraculous infinite true blue skies.

                                                          Aha! Now I can see it clearly in your eyes.

                                             Beauty.

A lens through crystal tears, prismatic rain,

light making rainbows,

gathering its energy scientifically

perfecting the Art of rain.

Image By Madhubala Naicker (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, 'Rainbow over Boulder, (CO)'.
                                             

Mirror, mirror, how old am I?

How old am I

                       you asked me

as though I were here first

                       which I was

You were talking with your Grandma

                        enjoying and knowing she'll be

passing soon...

My cousin was born when I was a decade

                        or so already checked-in

She just passed Route 30,

                          her two young girls fine blonde hair

flying in the wind-will be snarled soon enough

                          stopping at the next town “Generation"

just passing thru...

A childhood friend who lost his mother

                            before I could find him again

noticed the 5 o'clock shadow of quitting time

                             resigned to put in some over-time

got a promotion of fast-track

                             merging lane, death draws closer 

but he blazes by....faster than 65

Last time I checked, I was wise

beyond my years

double checking lines, they cue my fears

the scale to weigh the time

gets heavier with one foot off

gauging the mass I now carry

until weightless without reflection.

Composed 4/12/15.

Image By Shymanski, Robert [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 1933, Hegeler Carus Mansion. 

A child asked Emily-

Where do tears come from?

Wet-I've been-Where

Tears come from-You have

dipped in the Abyss too?

Sprung from spaces-unseen-

Joy has never been-There

to melt away the bitterness

of an icy raw day

Seeping and Weeping push through-

guarded Gates-solid as Blinking

little trifles-Tears-like watercolors

Bleeding flowers drooping wet in the Garden

Image of painting by Winslow Homer (1878) 'Girl in Garden' [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Out Stealing Poetry, Be Back Red-handed

“Lowell and Behold! What do have we here?!-Move it a Longfellow!
Hayden-what in the Dickinson is going on here?"
                                                                         “I'm almost Donne. I'm causing no Millay, so there's little need to act so Wilde. I simply must be Thoreau in solving this riddle. Let me Goethe and figure out what are these Wordsworth-"

“I'll give you a Pound to quit right now!"
                                                                         “Keats your panties from bunchin'-Imma cummings Imma cummings-wouldja just be a bit more Patient?"

“Use your Whitman! I'm getting Frost-bit in here with these Dead Poets."
                                                                         “I feel a chill too but you Dante have to be so pushy-could you be Neruda 'bout it!"

****************************
Skipping through beads asunder.
Towers fall like the ominous night.
Fearing the chronic angers of lonely offices.
But Faith remains fine then too.
One saucy pedantic wretch coming up,
with or without, since my candle burns at both ends.
And all men kill the things they love most.
But Men Say They Know Many Things.
Listen to the cricket, crisp with delight,
perched with the free lovely little flower.
Cocorico-There is no high road to the Muses.
No flowery tale sweeter than rhyme,
in time(s) of daffodils (forgetting), lilacs (proclaiming)
and roses (to amaze thee)
in the leaves of grass, to sing any body electric
down two roads diverged in yellow
for the straightforward path had been lost-where was I?
Writing the saddest lines that were never mine...

*The poetry lines following the asterisks proceed with a line(s) from each of the famous poets mentioned in the dialogue with a corresponding line of their poetry in the sequential order that they are named.  (excluding T.S. Eliot, who actually used Cocorico in  “The Wasteland" and is not named explicitly).


Image By Uusi Suomi, V.A. Koskenniemi circa 1945 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.


                                                                 

Toilet paper tree

In the 80's everyone was wearing a Swatch watch
and rockin' a Sony Sports Walkman.
I didn't obey schedules then.
I carried a poetry journal instead.
Nobody could hear my music either,
but it wasn't shock proof like the Sony.

In high school my English teacher
was also the football coach.
Mr. Morris would recite poetry
like he was doing drills, his veins
protruding on his tomato Red-neck-
"I am the Captain of my Soul!"

My first boyfriend was gay,
peers used to say I turned him that way.
We made a deal in the forest.
His parents wanted us to get married someday.
He lived in San Francisco,
before he died that May.

One afternoon cutting school I was
hitch-hiking to the beach, I got a ride
from a perverted old man who was also
drunk, but the roads wind-
so you couldn't tell he was swerving...
He took my journal and wallet.

I was broke without a journal.

Those poems were so young
they didn't have time to matter.
I found paper scraps with my words-
swimming, rivers, tears, bleeding
hanging on branches like toilet paper-
where the bus stops.

The leaves whispered, reciting them,
nobody heard but me.




Image of painting by Zygmunt Waliszewski (1897-1936), "The Toilet of Venus"[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

An Orchard of Golden Apples for Eris

Haiku IX
Independence is
a fruitless tree of no-ledge
fallen far from roots














Image of painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), "My Lady Greensleeves" c. 1864 (w/apple blossoms)[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.