Friday, April 17, 2015

The Garden Warden


Just as we are the Writers
of our Life story,
Puppeteers of Plot,
we play God
in our Gardens.

Sowing seeds to grow our Eden,
stitched in asphalt cracks,
heathens weight perched on hunched backs.
Fairy dust seeds and pixie weeds plume in bloom,
sprinkled and spread, they lay in bed.
Sapping up the cool cement sky,
dripping with indenture,
incensed by concentration.

Gathering the steely clouds breath
in our ewer, we pour out Life in buckets.
Trapping it in our pitchers,
bringing to light a chrysalis
of our Creation.

Digging our trenches
deep, embedding nourishment
-dam river goes where it dam well-
-renavigate –re-irrigate-
plans, tends, pre-supposes,
suspends with droughtful neglect
still waiting, doing Time.

Corn rows abundantly lined.
Out-fitted, out-witted, de-pitted,
ripening in repercussion,
footed in this fallow sphere-
the Fall plummets from labored limb.
Free to stay, there's no other way.
Room to grow into what it's meant to be,
making shade under the Kismet Tree.
Trapped in its own grave,
the dirty deed is done.

Parching in the sun, it thirsts for more
juicy fruits of forgetfulness.
Tethered, the sapling stretches,
it can see the garden Gate, choked,
wrapped in thorny barbed vines.
And beyond the green grass glimmers,
beckoning in sinful diamond dew.
The only sentence the Kismet Tree knew,
“Life without parole”,
but still pretends
there's a different End.



Image By OSU Special Collections & Archives : Commons [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Take a load off


Outside splintering in the bright noon-day sun, the Adirondack poses like a chameleon of trees.
Always ready to go, framed cool by short hollow pipes that season summer with sprinkles of sand.
Spineless attempts by bench and stool to comfort with limbless hugs-barely a leg to stand on.
Past its hay-day from Grandpa's barn, Oak is forever, it creaks keeping time with its own metronome.
Slumped and spilling white airy grains, the shapeless blob sulks in deflated utility-empty wind bag.
Portable, broken in, not too hard, or cold-the best seat in the house (says the cat), my lap in whichever chair I choose...



Image of painting by Alfred de Dreux (1810-1860)'Pug Dog in Armchair' [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

An act of breathing

meditating lady
calmly cross-legged
thinking nothing
intentional unmentionable

quiet riot
creeps beneath
wily smiles
holding denials

blissful kisses
near misses
Eros arrow
strung out
flying fishes

Bitter bites
strangled air
choking up
thick ness
never was

for ever.



Image of painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) 'Painting Breathes Life into Sculpture, 1st v.' [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Ambient light


Are we hard-wired to be afraid of the dark
to imagine ugly things in indistinct corners
lurking and watching
light-less-ness amplifying every sound
in stereo
our world spins on wires
acrobatic static
a puppet in space
Yay! We made electricity
to conquer and fill the empty void 
with our brilliant vibrant light
enhancing our sight
penetrating every nook and cranny
slaying the black matter with our gamma rays 
with the force of direct and alternating currents
knobs, buttons, censors, trackers
we've become all thumbs
coded languages, levers, tactile sight
and its own glaring response
on the fritz is something to fear
unplugged no more, we're wireless anyway
signal shields
afraid of the dark
fear and trembling is 
to know Life all depends 
on a spark
for our mechanical animal things
and as heavenly human beings
still afraid of the darkness
inside
where the light cannot hide. 





Image of painting (oil) Joseph Wright of Derby [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, 1769 'A Philosopher by Lamplight'.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Passport, Please?


Fellow Traveler,
I'm looking for that place 
I think you just came from There
I can smell it on your skin
just now
so close
It's that Place where Time is frozen
not cold
as in Siberia, or those Potemkin Villages
but warm 
melted in sepia
It's not the place with the Great Fountain
of Youth-I mean
I like me now, but I think I'll like me more
later, at least
when we're more than just acquaintances
There's no reason to delay the journey 
any longer
I already freed up my schedule with 
lazy white gaps
I'm ready to go
to take this Trip
finally to see with my own two eyes
I expect it will be exactly 
as I expected
when I Arrive
I'm sure you've seen pictures-
read the books-
seen the movies-
the best is due soon
It will show precisely what is there
how it looks 
at any moment in Time
that frozen moment
But I simply got Lost
I was hoping for directions to the place
with No Name
You would recognize it
by the ghosts in the wall
Where I am known and liked, 
better than myself
Can you take me there?


Image By Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons, Forum Romanum Rome Italy.

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".

Sunday, April 12, 2015

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)'.
                                             

Tres (trace)

Water Today, warm raindrops glass blurs, the blurry glassy, sharp sparkles sugar. Behind Evening, it was good. Leaves all turned into shadow...