Emanation of red (Hi-Q)

Could you try to tell
the scent of a redwood tree?
All together- Earth.

Photo credit By National Park Service Digital Image Archives [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Homelessness

It is an ordinary thing:
a baby looking over the shoulder,
a child transfixed,
because they sense mother-ness or homeliness
I guess.

Then the cats,
the felines that follow
nearly silently,
like the prowling puma in the wilderness
they all watch back from the bush-
paw prints have proven this-
And then the ways skittish strays
locate
remembering how to purr...

Nary a soul sees the magic in these,
except
the extraordinary poet
who thinks one blink, and it could all
change.



Photo Credit © CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / ,via Wikimedia Commons at (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bangkok_Thailand_Stray-cat-in-Wat-Hua-Lamphong-01.jpg)

Obfuscation

You never asked-
but I like the cool honesty
that the steel blue fractured light
throws against the walls of an empty room.

Your preference of warmth
makes me flush,
a bit hot
and rash.

As you know,
astrophysicists and amateur astronomers
use both spectrums
to learn about light
and discover new worlds
neither real blue nor red.

Me-I liked to walk in the woods in the dark
just to see or feel
my way.

I also rested in my closed
toy chest, inside the closet
with the bones and Barbie heads,
with my eyes closed tight-
yet could still see red.

You see,
I find
the absence of light briskly
more welcoming to me,
but it is just tepid white to you
I thought.

Painting By Abbott Handerson Thayer (Princeton University Art Museum) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Weightlifting words

There is not enough silence
or white in the world.

There seems to be enough water,
when you look around
the circumference of the globe-
                 have you noticed
how long
we have been wrong
about power and drainage-

As magnets naturally defy resistance
or make magic with retrograde,
nothing else matters
but shine...

                   And distraction, interruption, and
compulsion
become utilized and oxidized
to fill in the surrounding blanks
with loud, explosive air
we refer to this as
                  white noise
and we are sinking in.




Sketch by Lorenz Frølich [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Scanned by Haukur from a reprint in the illustrated 2002 Prose Edda edition by Gudrun. Originally published in Gjøgleriet i Utgard (1872).

Dendrite doors

We learned they would come after midnight.
At least, I learned this on my own.
The neighbors all knew where those footsteps led. 
The lights had been killed before...and it was a signal still.
The horror was trapped in the suspense.
They never knocked. That was the true terror.

I never lived this way. I learned how.
Why have doors, they would all conclude,
since all else had been stripped away?
When we strip wood, it's raw hide-
stripped skin shows through.
We all know the smell.
And screens are illusions like musty hospital curtains.
Did you know that there is no word for Privacy in Russia-
just keep this to yourself.

I knew an American woman 
that imported 14-foot tall exotic hardwood doors from Indonesia.
She had them installed or erected
in a financed rehab mansion in Southern California;
they divided the living from the sitting room 
and the doors were always open.
It took two to move them.
When she was evicted from the retreat she tried to steal them. 
She went to prison. Not just for the doors.
She'd tried to escape to Mexico.

And although before my time,
I liked Jim Morrison's poetry 
back when I was just little and more morose.
Now his poetry seems hollow, soft in spots.

I was petrified to eventually find 
purple heart in deep prose,
and blocks of solid Bolivian Rose by Burmese blackwood 
so fresh it bleeds,
still...life with leaves and family trees fall
and knots make it all stronger.

We learned about the grind and carpentry,
sand smoothes stone and wood. 
Don't cut against the grains. Leave room to breathe.
I tend leave my doors ajar, 
and query why we each have so many 
inside.
I like my peephole. 
That was a solid design.
Unlike suspension bridges which transfer tension
and tend to be fire retardant. 

Now how can we move on,
without looking back. Locks break.
We cannot ignore these partitions anymore.
Divide and Conquer, knock on wood, 
for your own good and I should warn you-
I am not decent but have found a match. 

Photograph (by 'not given') of the massive old wooden doors of Mission San Gabriel which withstood the attacks of the Indians, ca.1908. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Arts and crafts

Poets are stars
as many as the naked eye can make out
or point to
and mean precisely
nowhere specific.
Dr. Suess and crafts,
black construction paper and a poker,
make poetry for kids.
Now hold the holy black sheet
up to the light,
and see-
starry night
Today, and
as many poets as the paper will hold holes.
We cannot focus on the ones that fell,
but they do catch your eye
in real time.
It is no wonder no new ones
have ever been found.


Painting (oil on canvas) by Edwin Blashfield, 1927 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Oh-Neg

Leeching was done to draw out the bad blood.
And miraculously, we could be
drained nearly completely
while still
denying death
with the proper tools.

In precise implements like these;
pens and needles,
probe and penetrate
the surface, thus
it is most succinctly the human touch
that feels
a pulsing flow of ink
throbbing at the tips, and a
rush and steady flow
that gushes, drips and runs on
to remind
the patient
how to heal a hemorrhaging
or from a tainted transfusion of bad blood.




Image by Abraham Janssens [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.