Copyright infringement (Tanka for everything)

-rain pulsing ripples

on puddles, the spider web

demonstrating the

answers to the Theory of

Everything patent.

3 Wise Monkeys Sitting in a Tree

See No Evil:

It is because the

owl bears witness

to the night

we know

who to blame.

Hear No Evil:

The butterfly is human life

quietly condensed into flutters

idly watched

sniffing roses.

Speak No Evil:

On a cloudless turquoise day

the sky has nothing

(better)

to say.

Image by Popular Science Monthly Vol. 14, 1892, via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

Symphonies of straw

A pin
A needle
      in a haystack
A drop
       in a bucket
A leaf
       on a tree
falls
         falling
                      fell
leaves
           leaving
                        left
with a thunder-
ing roar
A tree
            bends and peels
shaking and quaking
             in its earthy bed
shedding leafy sheets
              turning the page
the orchestra tunes
              its instruments for Autumn.


Image by By Rosendahl [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Support group

They do not have your heart in their mind.

They try to make you feel uncomfortable in your skin.

They throw off your gait, trip your pace, trying to get ahead of you.

They point, they name, they poke and filet.

They see you in their way.

They say to fare is too fair for you, they say you’re okay-for a stepping stool.

They take steps out of their way to point you in the wrong direction.

They are the unreliable narrator; they are the antagonists of Serendipity.

They can’t hear you over the crowd in their head. All in their Fanclub look the same.
They can’t see you in their reflection.

They seek beauty in resemblances; they do not see the artistry in the anomaly.

They make the marinade of maliciousness you soak up, you are tenderized by lies.

They will never stop trying to make you stop trying.
They won't admit they'd wish you'd quit.

Image of painting by Edvard Munch [Public domain], 1907-Jealousy via Wikimedia Commons.

Oct-1-en-3-one (The smell of blood)

You know the taste of your own blood-
You remember you are made mortal-
You reminisce, ruminate in your recipe-
Notes you only know.................................
Those little letters in a vial;
coded coagulation's in combinations
of more than A O B and sometimes Y,
negatives and positives make a clot...........
...a conspiracy of hematology....................
the platelets are empty and white say
Editors of assemblage, connoisseurs of flow...
-Professors of Anatomy-
Who stick it to you, bleed you out, dry to the bone,
just as they always have, herding en mass-
Ewe, the sacrificial lamb.................................

Blood banks built on quicksand
distributing to the needy.

Even today, the cast off sprays the same;
luminol illuminating outcasts-
no doubt, not good enough
to save a life, strategic
in a pinch, a gash gushing................................
anemia, academia-
non-hemocyanin, un-blue-
contaminated, un-oxygenated, discarded
in the slush pile.................................................
There will always be more
able bodies, anti-bodies, veins to tap,
an aortic (Au(ction) gold mine..........................
We are blood letting machines-
We give and take life in sips-
We can taste (Fe(ar) our iron-
Will drained-
We work up to sap-
slowly................................................................
only to give it away for free
Keeping the leeches alive.

Most pungent when fresh, bread and newspapers drop in value proportional to their scent of newness.

Image By No 1 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Chetwyn (Sgt) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Hear I am

You who hear
                   here
Are special
            dangerous
You know
           hide
Hidden messages
                 uncoded
It is a gift
          a curse
You have learned
                   caught
Don't ask
            don't tell
Why you
                 or me
Our purpose
                  here
                         unclear
                                     unfolds
grows with tempered age
                                    we wane
                                                away
Time waits for none-no time
left alone
                   with you
I'll never be
All the secret words
I write
                   for you.


Image of painting By Val Prinsep [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, Cinderella, c. 1880.

An artistic alliance, long ago, in a land far away...

nostalgic for the days I don't remember

way back when
poets and painters blended and mixed their mediums

mingling their reds and blacks blood brothers on white

walls paper words that made the colors stand up, shout out, jump and dance
in the aesthetic lyceum 

lit up by the spotlight of your gaze
tracing the illuminated lyrical lines
longing for your lips

that fuse, melt, and ooze from one dimension to all, in all

in alchemical attraction

of painters and poets, pictures smeared with words,

sounds like music,
sharing shapes in space

is art made anew

(reenvisioned)

(commissioned)

(juxtapositioned)

I never see

this artistic endeavor

together today, so sad to say

evermore I miss those olden days

that I've only felt in poems or paintings

when the love of artistry

met eye to I...

Once upon a time

partners in poetic crime.

Image By Władysław Roguski 1890-1940 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.