Lucid Lines (Tanka)

soft edges dream state

pretending you are the star

behind the curtains

your understudies perform

the lead in reality

Image of painting by Edgar Degas, Four Ballerinas on stage (c.1885-90) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

After All Art (Tanka)

Make haste with your art
Make it say what you cannot
utter, honestly
hurry-I worry we won't
make it-we won't, after all.













Image of painting by József Borsos,The Dissatisfied Painter (Crisis in the Life of a Painter), 1852 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Was that always there?

Nobody notices

nor should they

focus on other

space in this

case by case

generations go on

with or out of 

resemblance

can't compare

whats yours 

alone and shown

to no one

but those 

who notice.

Image of painting Pietro Rotari [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Tying rainbows on Mt. Moody

Up there-
rolling in cumulus
open fields,
tumbling down with
empyrean echoes-
they sniffled
there
and heaved a last great sigh
before resting
as simply shaded shapes
or hanging
thunder clouds.
Where
they lay
their puffy heads atop
the solemn iron mountains,
they reflect
your steely glance in silver volumes
of sharp light.
And slice right through
grey matter
with gentle insistence
by ninth degrees.
Up there
the birds begin to
propose,
always asking
hopefully...
They then spun
a soothing song
across beryled acoustics
waving conductive wands.

That is where
the avians weave bows
in the rain,
seeking to tame
those tangled tresses
inherently
cast over cold
granite shoulders
where shale shawls
lie stoic
dark and morose
under the mercurial masonry,
They are
always adding color,
muffled and soft
unflappably
making rainbows
with nothing but stone and air
up there.

"I try to think about rainbows when it gets bad,  

You have to think about something to keep from going mad." 

-Gwen Stefani (In My Head, No Doubt)

Image of Mount Rainer in Washington state, US, By US National Park Service (http://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery.htm) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

DNA (strands)

No end to end

words cannot be said to you

just every non-thing.

Image of painting by Carl Larsson [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Do you have a light?

Carrying a torch
I suspect, like the rest of us-
Firestarters.
Literal ignitors.
Incinerate is also one of my favorite
injections.
Annihilate also,
an equally affectionate term
of endearment; intrinsically, me.
Who'd like to
Obliterate the words into invisible
strands of silken smithereens
that contrail traces of sulphuric smoldering
acid rain and combust blood as dry rust
when mixed with ink.
I think
I am betwixt.

I trust truth
shot from the canons lip
as if it would help
the self-destruction, vis-a-vis
reconstruction along
To start a pyre and burn it all up
before any further corruption
acting like battery acid
leaks out, infuses or incites
one of those pesky muses,
Andromeda forbid.
Albeit-
if you can read this
I remain,
sparkless.



Image of painting by Eero Järnefelt (1893) Burning the brushwood [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Gene-us species

If the majority of people
you meet
misspell your name,
are you required to assume
that alias as yours (truly)
and claim it thusly-in spite
of the misnomer moniker it may be?

If I discovered post facto,
or say, hypothetically, a friend like me
learned their own last name,
denoting origin,
the one they thought was (a) given-
had ex-ante been but taken
for granted as a
charitable donation
and was in-factually, inherently,
a miss-ambiguation,
how can one conclude
where I,
I mean they, are coming from?

And then in the murky middle
floats a little note
of a single syllabic stress
to appease
simp-lee
the soundest
advice-
Yes.
Free to choose
any one that suits, so
call me what you will,
I will be namely unknown.



Image of painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 1621[Public domain], the Village Lawyer, via Wikimedia Commons.