Kafkas Bee Stings

To go out on a limb
I dare test the weight
when I say, I understand Kafka this way;
It is not crazy to say there are Samsa's even today.

When I stand below 30 foot blades of grass,
called reeds,
when I brace the arch of my foot upon the burl
at the base of a redwood tree,
when I lean into the onshore wind, steady at 20 plus
while the ocean surges, spilling its seams

it does not unravel me

To know how small we may be
here and now, this and that
as is
can change
will
be-
come

When I see bricks and iron
trying to scrape the sky
I smile wide, and laugh
at our grand endeavors
so easily eroded
back into the dust of us
that never leaves
but collects and dulls,
and lingers in the light.

Now, to an insect, a mote may be a mountain,
and ant hill, the Andes;
one of those places we look up
and are showered in our deluge of naivete.
An innocence that washes away, sheds, refuses
its state, affixed with distorted perceptions
of name, place, size and domain, to roam and dwell.
While it is unnatural, deplorable to many,
to conceptualize that our taxonomy
doesn't belong with the birds.
None of us evolve as eminent as these.

That's what I believe Franz says
when he means, Gregor wakes from his dream,
hating honeyed honesty, preferring analogy
through entomology, so it would most simply seem
when explaining such reproductive things.




Image By Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), Metamorphosis XXIII, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

You take the Wagon, I'll Walk

Call it a compulsion, some do.
A dependence, that's a little strong
for a need that's called a want.
Can't help it, I'm not in control,
something takes over me,
its always right there-I could...
and all these have me consumed.
Obsessed, I don't see it that way,
but others do, see signs, like theirs-
the jaw gives it away.

The blame game is fun too,
it must be that the jeans are too tight.
Sometimes breathing is the hardest thing to do.
If you try to quit, I know desperation, infatuation,
give you a raise you can't refuse.

Stimuli, it is called physiological.
Personality, is embedded, biological, maybe...
and might there be other habituals and rituals
toxic but not intoxicating-tolerance is discouraged.

I don't deny my own flesh and blood
has been sacrificed for my own cause.
It's my body, self-satisfaction and
distractions from your dutiful employment
as a clean-coming human whose sobriety
is always a right when given a choice of
life with poetry, its pain and withdrawal
or an existence without the possibility of significance.

Since its all in my head,
any-which-way,
and there's no shortage of excuses-
I will wrestle with these wily words,
wanting more, needing a fix, hating myself,
hiding and using, manipulating and placating
going broke, being ostracized and advised
until there is no more poetry left anywhere-
or I'll likely overdose on what I've said.





Image of painting by Arthur Nikutowski, The broken wagon, 1852 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Vestigial Flexing

With these tiny words
trickling over my skin,
these pithy lines I draw and scratch,
in my head from tucked deep in bed,
in broad strokes that spasm and spark-
streaking in wisps that leave light trails,
I am comforted and swaddled
by my brittle skin that knows these
are the strands that connect my spirit
to its terminal boundaries.
This is how I speak to me.
I say to hear, I think to find
the same self, tucked in amid
its ways of saying untranslatable
and delectable daunting poetry.

The heavy blanket protects me from
exposure- you cannot see more
than the shape of naked, the outline
is enough for some, sameness...
There is That, This is I, There, There.
I've found just
in another beating heart
that echoes
Thou art That-
Art Thou That?

I wonder, I think
it is warm around you too...
I must be closer to your world in words
or I am sleeping tight inside definitions
sweet dreams, where these words want me
passionately and privately
for their own subversive desires...
I listen intensely and densely rapt-
catching any waves of sound
that may keep me afloat, on the
shiny surface of sonorous daylight
hours, too conscious to care
any more to day.




Image of painting by Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov, Sleeping Girl, 1840 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A lone danger

The more I am
alone
the more time
I am alone,
alone, a-lone
a lone
one
I am
late, so late, elated, and finally full,
joyful, full of over-brimming bliss
an energy to explore, a desire to dive down
deeper and intimately drown in my senses,
swallowing all self whole.
I smile at leaving a gaping hole
where the eye
is spotted, leaving it beheaded and indebted
for the fruitful loss of self, rare in its abundance
we never say we like me this way today...
We re-cognitize, recognize our righteousness
doesn't come without cue
We have been wrong
pre-occupied
so long, a good bye, even now
I tremble,
still
a lone
euphoric
one,
only, once-ly
lately
lonely
wanting more
of less.



Image of painting by Paolo Veronese, Muse with a Lyre (c.1561), [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Re-gifting: Oh, that old thing (I think I've had that)

When we do things
absent, mindlessly,

sometimes our former selves

sneak out, like this one, 

in this way;

when yesterday, I was wrapping presents

folding and creasing, pressing 

Scotch™ tape on the folds, I noticed
my own grandmother's hands

there-doing all the work,

while I just watched.

Bewildered. Behind.

This happens at the strangest

times...you may find yourself

triggered by a word

or the way we say-

that thing, that way, that

fires memory cannonballs...

And at certain times its a-scent,

an agreement of essence,

we remember thick as a waft.

Namely, a single note that carries a key

and pulls levers of attention coupled with

spinning axles, smooth and in place.

Our brain goes on, rolling with the ripples,

uninterrupted-until going nowhere in places

seeing both others past-you-go-and comes-and

brings you back here

not knowing how
it got there...

It is a gift of now, knowing.

Lost was the life

that went unnoticed by motion memory.

The set was changed, moved around

by your own history. Draped in black,
this mourning-

which is why we cannot deny we trip

over moved memories

that enclose the past

in my presents

while I am not looking,

sometimes I see

my forgotten family.

The order of things

Firsts and Lasts don't make

good companions, They don't know

Who goes, First or Last?

Image By The U.S. Army (Waiting to board, 11/2008) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Was Wishing & Wondering

Knowing you could lie

whenever

wherever you are

what would you say

which way

would you go

if I asked if you think

of me

ever

when away

which is always

when you know

I'm elsewhere too

I think of you

wondering, pondering,

thinking and sinking

stones in a well

sigh, oh well

I cannot tell

what it means on purpose

if I could taste

a stone from your land

would it taste like your cheek

on a warm-blooded day

since we share the sun

wherever

would you lie

with me?

Image By Agriculture And Stock Department, Publicity Branch [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.