Succulents

The jade saves its bloom
for the drought, reason enough
to live with little

Writing it right while the house was quiet

The duplex dreamt and the tenant typed

The reader was making a book; and not

Unlike emulation, was editing generously.

The building in the barrio with a tiny yellow light.

Worlds were created in near silence,

and destroyed even quieter still. The writer wrestles,

with choices and stalled situations, corners 

and trap doors until stuck no more, after all was imaginary.

The darkness provided the right light.

The writer made galaxies with aether.

Contrast and focus, like noise easier to see

when the dimness has long nestled in.

And the scrivener muffles scribbles, while snores and strokes 

of keys alleviate worries, working while the rest slept.

The word wizard cast spells, swept up by sunrise. 

The writer reads what the reader rights, a better ending after all.

*This poem was inspired by the famous Wallace Stevens poem, The House was quiet and the world was calm, featured (also a recorded reading) on the Poetry Foundation website.

Painting by Rembrandt [Public domain], 'A Hermit Reading (c. 1630) via Wikimedia Commons.

Progress Report on Humanity 2016

Progress Report on Humanity 2016

While working on wisdom and other such noble pursuits such as:

charting the last unknown seas of our brain,

decrypting the genetic combination codes,

lighting up dark matter, 

untwisting gravity loops, 

splitting hairs, creating charts, giving away lectures, taking no

foreign concepts as native, naturally

making machines for man to perform his manual machinations-and then some-play

(for fun), making Progress-just almost

and our work is never done...

(As though this provided some security,

it should not.)

Humble has no home here anymore.
Humane roots et al, such as humility, we have learned resulted in
futility.
We are too close for guns. 

*CONFIDENTIAL & UNENCRYPTED*

While busy upstairs in the attic, poison entered the kitchen.

In our genius haste we added this, liberally 

mistaken for a miraculous superfood.

Recalled flavor of the weak. 

Minor matters of consideration include; Moderation of matter

in patterns of fractal parsimony. & Distractions: a surplus of these.

Save some love for later. 
(Should this be encoded)

Meanwhile, we all thought our bodies as interruptions, 
 breaks in concentration and bones, 

and this partly makes us human.

Essentially. To know

and not say a word. 

Why some seem surprised when silence is broken, 

lack of line rehearsal.

An(other) Act

Comedy and Tragedy: Cattle Call!

All of us 

equally adept 

at playing either role. 

Look up, there is none. Technically, 

as the horizon, clear is only relative. 

Look out- better advice. Lucidity. 

The Big picture, we will never know

in a tiny lifetime gathering only so many pieces

allowed 

to fit in our psalms.

Look in. 

How do you feel?

And this doesn't settle well...

Fathoms deep we have wondered

-was it something I ate?

Toxic. But too late. 

Hate made us human. 

All the forces like electromagnetism, hydrothermal convection, 

and preoccupations like autotrophs adapting to gravity and love 

all liked best to Fall at our feet.

Footprints and fractals, all rewritable. 

Conclusion in Abstract Terms:

We are working on it. It may take a couple more weeks, considering the weather and the way the vowels 
(or opportunities) 
line up. 

Painting By Lavery, John (Sir) (RA) (RSA) c. 1918 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sticks and stones spell...

That name I was given was a tool
to taunt my grandfather-
I was not told-
how to use.
He loved me best, more than his own.
And I have wrestled with its odd shape
and sharp turns on my tongue.

Walked on past when people stumble over it
and twist it to suit their native mouths
translation is just a place to hold things,
this placeholder for me is only temporary...

Life's a bloom until you become part of the potpourri,
which is why the dry blooms last longer.
I would be of the waxflower variety,
piney and if this name a color
it must be yellow-although it sounds more like
an oboe, not a cello.

If you could only touch me, I'd be satin-
sometimes
velvet.
My name would grow like a city, Odessa
with more steps.
This misshapen label matches me
even though I know contradictory;
looks like summer, feels like snow.
And so not the tool I thought I wanted
yet when fashioned to fit precisely
the only one that could work on me.

I now know this tool was used

to pry my grandfathers' irritation open

every time he picked it up

and held it tight.

He loved me best.

Its protrusions also make my mouth bleed.

And I have casually passed by when others

grimace and contort it by twisting

their own cherry knot tying tongue.

It is just a name,

to hold me 

in his passing voice 

temporarily

It fits.

Photo by Ohannes Kurkdjian [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Scratching heads, Sniffing tails

Do you remember how it was 

before we found zero?

Everything had value

and volume

that occupied more than space.

Would it be a lie to reminisce 

about the days before we found fire?

Why

it was black and

white Then powerfully portable

to ashen grey 

as it smolders to day.

This is why they burnt everything they

wrote.

Nostradamus was nervous,

rightly so, paranoia will destroy 

any weak one in its path.

Have you considered what was 

eerie to Einstein should stay 

Unknown, no?

Theoretically,

the words slept green and furious

and letters 

stopped coming...

There was nothing before-

Us, the Big Bang, the Virgin Mary,

a flaring forth, why 

is the sky blue-again?

Truth be told,

matters only

in youth. 

And then the missing link

before Us.

The radiant sun, 

lights the night and moon

in twirling moods, the pi spinning

itself in dark matters,

starlight never seemed

so bright and worth while...

Painting by Jan Mandijn (circa 1500–circa 1560) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sleepy head, dream your own dream

Something said Sleep, and she did.
Someone said she should Wake-Up, she did not hear.
Some people thought she should give up, quit it-she didn't...
Somebody believed her dream, somebody didn't believe in her, she didn't know whom to believe.
Some thought she could choose, some thought Bad Choices, she dared to try, to lose-she must.
So few knew-
she woke up.


Painting by Johannes Vermeer, A Woman asleep at table (1657) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A good poem is vertigo

(A good poem is vertigo)

                -As if I know. No-

not by my own leaky pen,

though

                 there are a soaring few

alphabetical alchemists

that throw in

words that are known to explode next 

                                     to each other;

elsewhere

you find fissions and contraries may agree

lilting toward lyricality and

honing in on homonymic epidemics.

True, virtues are silent. 

You cannot walk these off.

And even then, some braver explorers 

                  pillage the nether regions-

savages and murky poetry readers

mineralized and ossified, fumbling and 

                  kneading to make meaning of it all

softer.

Those insatiable prose readers, of us

cannibal wordsmiths savorers 

of acids and sugar

                                 find balance

together.

Neutralized, sodium syllables 

grounded us, home again.

The top spun itself 
                   out and ungathered threads

that make any thing, 
                           more

True-

when the poem finds its own end.

                 


Painting by Elihu Vedder [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.