To Whom this Invocation May Concern

How am little i,
oh wisest one,
to beg, plead, ask of you-
To whom do I direct this to?
i've been patiently holding it in,
awaiting your silent reply,
yet I regret to inform,
i'm grasping
at air-
missing you there,
perhaps...
-will come when you're ready,
pending by suspension,
willing my belief.
Just know,
as anticipating listener,
my tongue is in your hands.
i banish my own banter,
drowning your voice,
gurgling from my inner ear.
No More! Silence!
i remain fixed, devoted
and listening to every
syllable you may say,
chomping at all your
crisp wafer clues
not knowing how to
thank you.
when you come and go
abruptly as you
please
leaving me hanging
dead before the echoes back
because I never caught your name...


Composed 11/6/15

Image of painting by Sophie Gengembre Anderson, Portrait of a Young Girl [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

You're breaking up

Spoken word poet-

try: talking to ones soul a

loud-can you hear It?

Image of painting By Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Eminent Domain

Be cause
we have hands,
we take things with us,
carry our burden bags around
and tote our tiny things
call them tailor-made
and hope they are flattering.

Be cause
this land we said was ours
dirt we move around
while space remains unsettled
humanity as a clod has agreed,
since we cannot yet steal stars
all is all
of ours.

Be cause
eminence is an amalgamation
man-made and molded.
Be cause
domain has been appropriated
not by Volume.
We are empty
and entertained
with things
we thought
were matter.

Be cause
we do not have
nothing.
Be cause
dark matter
expands exponentially
Love is the only thing
light enough
to keep.




Image By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], Light and Life Woman, via Wikimedia Commons.

Lesson 1: Nature and the Soupman

Travel back to your first lesson
taught by Mother Nature.
When you learned
your parents were not the only
nor the best
teachers
about life.

We went camping,
my parents, their friends, Hercules-the dog.
We'd go to the Russian River
where there were no campsites-
you sight your spot and camp-
if you like.

They would drink and fish,
and drink like fish,
and more-it was the eighties.
Their friend, 

a man called Kevin Soupman
was fishing near me
when he caught a rainbow
trout.

He held it across both his hands,
it was shiny, slimy and squirmy-

the things kids like.
Moments later,
he said he had something for me.
He told me to hold out the palm
of my hand.
I did, eagerly.

In it,
he placed a crimson pebble.
It rolled a moment
as I tried to see it more closely
then it settled in the evening sun-
(un)still

throbbing and beating its inner drum.
Thus,

Nature and the Soupman
taught me
all I needed to know
about heartlessness.


Image By Ken Hammond / USDACornischong at lb.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Things were going along swell
rolling back and forth,
forth and back...
All is stimulating, titillating, and conversating
smoothly sailing the syllabic sea,
until suddenly-
I am slapped across the face (!)
with an open backhand,
knuckled under the weight of the word-
As though fired from an ex-husband,
who knows me better than me-
says he. Like a master I've never served,
who insists on digging up old dilemmas
from dank old trunks,
prying through and poking around
for the finest, sharpest, loftiest bone to pick.
Tossing ancient history at me like china darts
through fragile names like
-Racism and Sexism-
pointed accusations
hurled only by
an immaculate him,
who wants to deflect, deter, stall, divert, and exert
his preeminent preferences of him-
self-
less
threats to masculinity.
Never to be
for-
given
for-
peace
sake.



Image of Betty Ford's travel trunk, By n/a (Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Whose in the way of whom

What does it matter

if water may hollow stone,

it also melts ice,

and is able to absorb

its likeness

to become more of itself.

Who can blame the wind 

for putting pressure

on structures we've built

opposing its whims,

where we erect our wants;

which is why we tremble.

Unlike the stone

that is grounded

lays low, erodes slowly

and goes nowhere fast.

Water I care

emote a dust in the wind?

Amidst stone cold silence,

I heard the wind whisper

and the water splattered back.

This poem was inspired by the poem Wind, Water, Stone by Octavio Paz.

Photo credit By Sequeira, Paul, Photographer (NARA record: 8464471) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Description: Homeowners lined a lake beach with cars in order to prevent erosion threatening their dwelling residences. 

Silly Chilly

Write hot?
I think not.
I should be composing in the cool air.
I should be writing in the frigidaire.
I just can't figure out how to fit quite yet-
but I bet
my ideas would last longer
my prose may sound stronger
it would increase my freshness-
although, no one has tested this.

But I have been told
when you work in the cold
it increases the racing speed
of the firing synapses I need.

The icebox stocks
are actually quite empty-
some left-over spaghetti,
some moldy cheese and condiments
some things growing antioxidants...
(ahh, the minimal groceries
of writers salaries)
While it is conceivable,
working in there still doesn't seem feasible.
Does anyone writing from an igloo
know if this is true?



Image By jean-lucien guillaume (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.