Saturday, July 16, 2016

Mars 20/20


In collaboration with private and public agencies
-contingencies aside-
a head of schedule was announced
slating the date
for merely five years a way-not (be) four
(hundred million miles)
We are ready, and some of us will be
by twenty-twenty
what will we see
that we have not conceived
on earth
since the birth of humanity?



Photo credit By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, Mars by Mars Observer.

Go figure


3 years
52 classes
787 poems
11 unfinished stories
2 books being written
a half a million words
51 friends
1 family
36 no's
5 yeses
umpteen guesses
2 cats, 2 libraries
900 pigeon
3,000 circles
0 dollars earned
30 IQ points gained
some total
always carry the one
before
the sentence ends.



Image By Yoichi R. (Yoichi Robert) Okamoto, 1915-, Photographer (NARA record: 2987665) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.THE PHYSICS AND MATH LIBRARY OF THE RUDER BOSKOVIC INSTITUTE.

Back-up luck


Writers are superstitious-so are baseball players and tight rope walkers-
I'm not sure about astronauts or politicians...
Dreams are more important to writers than waiters-who are waiting to live their dream.
In reality most dreams are forgotten upon waking.
In the wake of a bad dream, I had a premonition all my poems
were gone, like eggs-hatchlings left in one coop
and really-this has happened to me twice before yet this dream disturbed me more.
I said something about it aloud-if you are superstitious you know this is not allowed.
Forced to act, I reacted in duplicate, making copies, I saved, re-visited and barely recognized
them as all mine.
When I had the thousand stacked up by grandiose
subject and sorted by type-
humanity looms tall over the rest,
space, time, love, humor, in proper tributary, in reaction and reflection-
the poets of yesteryears would have stacked up much differently.
Most poets, historically consumed by cult are exhumed for love and above all
to reclimb the Fall over towering babble
and the wild will of the west, toppled progress and drowning in duties.
This humanity trods heavily, the paper rises, trees topple
and as if in a dream the poems scream of dying desire,
the death of discovery, the final resource, of course a corpse of work, ashes to dust, toil and rubble without troubling to wake for the passing of people that speak in poetry, or the writers that were right all along these same lines.




Image By Henning Söderhjelm [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Photograph of the Finnish writer Lenning Söderhjelm (1888–1967).

curiosity can


curiosity can go either way
wonder travels in all directions
faster than a photon
ideas originate outside ourselves
glimmers are reflections
through privacy glass
we would never want
knowing more is growing
anyway-
We, curious creatures
risk all to know some
more.


Photo By National Library of Ireland on The Commons (The Curious Alsatian) [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Opposing forces


Stopping is an ongoing resistance
as is suppression in constant suspension
which needs us more than keeping the flow
with a little observance gains new speed
relative to the distance from the object of desire.
I admire this tenacity
I'll come around the other side
and you will know I've let go.

Image (rendering) By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, magnetic field of Earth. 

All you can eat


All the pieces have been rationed out
and crumbs sustain me.

I remain seated after all are done,
awaiting my excuse.

The lights have long dimmed
and all voices echo over themselves.

A faint trace of repast and laundry
hangs atop the resting air.

The candle flame belly dances lasciviously
low and full.

In jest, the world smelt a silver platter,
lining up and leaving a generous tip.

I count cents,
I keep my change
ingesting the feastful rest.

Painting by Monogrammist Hb. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Left field of vision


It is in the lower left quadrant
between six and nine
there is nothing to see...

There are some occurrences
that demand no specific attention
ceramic crackles
just as our fault lines do
blur, widen and fall.

Most people fill in the blank spaces-
I always assume half empty is totally open
(this leaves room for more)...




Image Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas [CC BY-SA 3.0 or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Tres (trace)

Water Today, warm raindrops glass blurs, the blurry glassy, sharp sparkles sugar. Behind Evening, it was good. Leaves all turned into shadow...