We Sea Trees

Caressing her steam from the trunk

Hugging her clouds from her crown

The heart blood is trapped in sap

Awash in the beams, lasers of light
through veins of amber rings

Slice the pillared shadows

Spraying musk that bursts
bark rust forth,
settling for dew
likewise, hanging on
to every loose end.

She breathes you in

as you pass

A sapling too slight

to care whose airs

of mutual aqueous

evanescence is about them

re-membered reaching
and thirsting for the light
to rein down atop our crowns.

Photo of Redwoods By NPS Photo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Whaling the Friendly Seas

When it is clear-
                          ly right or wrong
We say it is-
                          black and white
Which means-
                          not both.

How can we be
                         both friend
and enemy
to our life bearing sea-
at the same time-
                          we are not both
but pretend
there's been no crime
committed
                          revenge goes unrequited.

And without captive breeding allowed anymore-
without cetacean sex-what has he to live for?

He thinks,
hope sinks.

Twenty calves sired
and an erect dorsal was all he ever desired.
At just thirty-five years old
a mere half-way, we're told
he's tired of sharing our air,
letting humans stare,
and dining on dead fish fare.
He's had enough-
living in a bathtub is rough.

Infected lungs with fatal bacterial growth
-we gave him both.
A souvenir
of our mortal fear.

It is black and white,
he has no friends or reason to fight.
Tilikum will die wrongly for our right
to take
and make
slaves of threats
(whales are not pets).
The killing goes both ways
until the last dying blows of Tilikum's days.

Orca playing with an iceball, Photo by Robert L. Pitman [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Top image By Allen Shimada NOAA/NMFS/OST/AMD (NOAA Photolib Library) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

"With a name meaning friend in Chinook, killer whale Tilikum was captured near Iceland in November 1983 at around two years of age. By Martin Evans. 9:41AM GMT 26 Feb 2010. At 22 feet 6 inches long and weighing in at 12,300 pounds he is the largest orca in captivity."Feb 26, 2010

A musical mosaic of lyrical landscapes

If you ask a sound painter

to drawn you a rhyme,

he will enchant you

not by the tone or the line:

but with an audible harmony,

a scenic serendipity,

a symbiosis in the sound

of quietude...

Lost in the paragon of verisimilitude 

With his wand weaves colors that blend 

images that transcend

before your nacreous eyes

here art lies

behind smoke and mirrors

is the image of the looker

You see

all is not fantasy.

You see

if you get a chance 

to harken a glance

you will see 

a song of poetry. 

Image of painting by Christen Købke of the Danish landscape painter Frederik Sødring[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ms.(under) Stood

Stood did not see things from the same angle

Ms.

Stood  saw it skewed,

Ms.

Stood pursued things from another way

Ms.

Stood  knew not how to say

Ms.

Stood  that nothing was not the same

Ms.

Stood  as everything negative was positively

Ms.

Stood  

Ms.

(sides)Be(sides)

Stood  stood out, and despite the overwhelming doubt

Ms.

It turns out,

Stood  was right

Ms.

To: Be

Left

Taken for Luna-see…

Ms.

Image by Félix Vallotton [Public domain], (1903) via Wikimedia Commons.

The most Prolific Poet I know

Prolific is not the same 

entitlement

as being called Profound

And despite how Proud

and Pretentious many P words

(such as these four) sound,

the difference 

is in the detonation.

I propose the pretension

that I am the most 

prolific 

(horrific) terrific

(pretending) poet I know-

yet notably remain unfound.

The prose does not resound

which goes to show-

Err Go

I have not a smatter-

of the latter. 

Image of painting by Umberto Boccioni, (1912) Horizontal volumes [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Finders Keepers

I steal everything.
Every thing I find
interesting I keep.
And I confess,
it is crowded and cluttered
but I am still collecting
all the things I like.
That stuff that was already here
when I got here,
all the stuff
and all the stuff in the stuff
is never enough
I still want more...
For I am warning you
to guard what you show me,
I might (definitely) steal a glance
and there is a more than (likely) chance
that I have stolen all these words-
certainly someone has found them,
used them,
thought them
before me.
Before me, it was all ready there
waiting to be found
and unforgotten
lying around like antique truths
until some one
like me
re-members them,
and re-collects them.
Paraphrased for portability,
praised for poetic quiddity,
too, you know-
nothing you do is new
everything you say
has been said another way
and in brief
I am a thief
but on that note,
don't (Ms.) quote me
with words I never wrote.




Image of painting by Charles Joseph Grips [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, entitled 'Opportunity makes a thief', (1875).

Meet Me (half ray)

De re,

My alias is my radius.
Since we were never given a choice
and were named
thus before we could voice
our pick or preference
to see it if sticks and since
most of us think our given name
carries a ring of lame-
ness
Unless
already entitled to impress,
like Princess Di
why
I'd like to say
I think my name should have regally been
Rey-
I'd sing it all day
and sometimes I would spell it Ray
and other days I'd write it Rae
for a boy or girl, either way,
like a vector connector
a reflector, or deflector
of either
Rae.
I think
I'm a pink
beaming scumble
tumbling toward
another's fame
via
various name games
that all sound the same.
A nom de plume,
a ready-made costume,
whose narrow lines
were all mine,
just a sign
to say
I am Rey
just for today.




Image By NASA, DOE, International Fermi LAT Collaboration [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Description details:Exploring the cosmos at extreme energies, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbits planet Earth every 95 minutes. By design, it rocks to the north and then to the south on alternate orbits in order to survey the sky with its Large Area Telescope (LAT). The spacecraft also rolls so that solar panels are kept pointed at the Sun for power, and the axis of its orbit precesses like a top, making a complete rotation once every 54 days. As a result of these multiple cycles the paths of gamma-ray sources trace out complex patterns from the spacecraft's perspective, like this mesmerizing plot of the path of the Vela Pulsar. Centered on the LAT instrument's field of view, the plot spans 180 degrees and follows Vela's position from August 2008 through August 2010. The concentration near the center shows that Vela was in the sensitive region of the LAT field during much of that period. Born in the death explosion of a massive star within our Milky Waygalaxy, the Vela Pulsar is a neutron star spinning 11 times a second, seen as the brightest persistent source in the gamma-ray sky.