The child contemplating comets

What color do you see?
The child asks her mother,
after reflecting-
The blue eyes take care of the oceans,
the green ones tend to grow everything
the brown, found all around,
those brown eyed bodies built the mountains
by blinking.
The child wonders what exactly
the sky sees.
Her mother mentions the birds in a vee,
points to the bees and
Honey-
The child sees no kindred spirit afloat,
she is grounded and feels pressure.
She scours around the ground
in search of relatives, by proximity,
puts them in a pencil box
after making them shiny,
and then she names them.
The child collects her rocks and hounds her mother
about the origins or babies
of granite and geode
and likes the lineage, the idea
of the clouds trapped in crystals
and how close purple seems to black.
How did the rocks, and
the sand the water get born-
She asks with her eyes squinting out at the night sky.
Were all stars once planets?
She asks that moonless night,
and feels sorry about the answer.
It will be back, her mother explains phases
and patience.
The child misses no more
and wonders what container would be good for keeping
stars. Look around, says her mother,
all that you are
is Here, touching her heart,
let the stars fall where they may...
Is that why my eyes are grey?
She remembers
as though it were as close as yesterday.


Painting by Edward Lear, The Marble Rocks (1882) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Quantity Quotient

None of it was good.
Others say it must be good enough
and I wrestled with it, tried to full nelson the
blue bloody life out of it
before I quit the last time.

You would think these simple words
which everyone uses every day in all
derivations of misappropriating ways,
would be something quite simple to me
whose word world
never stops flooding
the floorboards.

And I keep flailing around trying to see what will float
but the best words confound me, sunken.
And I cannot begin
to make them make something
to line up and make something.
There is no reaction.

There is no sense to this cold
natural selection, just rejection.
And it need not be the most profound, I most simply
meant to convey complexity in a novel way, some semblance
of chaos in a nutshell, since what sells is
simplicity as it offers beauty for the masses.
There is no madness in ramblings
when there is no place to get lost, and curiosity is what keeps
the clock ticking and nothing is done with
black and white shapes on white paper,
sitting there and undone
from completion
for good reason.

Twenty-four short little stories
abandoned,
seven attempts at a novel,
three keepers, one in no hurry to make it to the end,
or progress, I digress,
I guess it will all make sense later.

After eight hundred and eighty-eighty lousy poems
one word should be worth keeping
the baby in the bathwater.



By UnknownHerkulaneischer Meister, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Discovered in 1760, is one of the most famous and beloved paintings, commonly called Sappho. Actually portrays a high-society Pompeian girl, richly dressed with gold-threaded hair and large gold earrings, bringing the stylus to the mouth and holding the wax tablets, notoriously accounting documents which therefore have nothing to do with poetry and even less with the famous Greek writer.

What is thine is divine and is feline

How sweet it is!
He chose me, he did.
Lucky to be
There then
when he wanted on his wild whimsy.
A seven-year itch, though it may be.
You see, it is quite easy to
cherish thee more every day
feeling more spiritually on air
by him just being there
by choice. His voice
calls and beckons for little me
whose heart feels about to burst forth
and spill thy weaknesses all over
with emulsified energy,
found the warmth we each seek
From the sun
this is how he follows thy heat
day by day.
That is all we can do, soak it up,
sound would only muffle the space.
So we should hold silence gently
and stay in this moment, you noticed me
waiting to be saved. You made me
meet you more than half way.
And now, this is we,
joined in verse where eternity is
guaranteed and easily granted
permission to feel what is happy.
We should
be happy, now,
with our own two eyes
and keep holding on to each other
for as long as little life will keep
holding us back.

What’s mine is mine, and it is HUGE

The old 
wrinkle their brows,

raise their jiggling arms and shout about

Treason-the youth are corrupt-and abruptly adding accusations

-they all cheated!
Blame like a sneeze

spreads its tiny germ spray every which way-

They, the old, 
say, the way it was in the old days,

I remember walking to school uphill both ways in the snow. 
You don’t know

about hard work.

those blooming golden years, we feared our elders.

The old ones 
tell the youth not to speak until spoken to,

and a hard days work is good for you.

The old tell tales of poverty, the great depression of souls, the cookie cutter worker.

The old warn the youth 
to learn from their calluses.

And not act so callous or abrasive,

and then something about the bees, 
being sweet and golden, sonny or honey and save your money
where your mouth is.

The young are working smarter, these days.

More progress means more pleasure in so many ways.

The youth 
do as they are told,

attend institutions that guarantee debt and teach less interest.

The youth 
learn about the old.

The youth owe the old. 
The youth have it made.

The youth are innovators. 
The young are not industrialists or enslavers, nor fans of manual hard labor.

Because it is better now. 
The old made it so.

How do we know?
They promised

more mines will open, and more minds will close. 
And due our diligence,

they make the youth pay to clear cut seas of trees, 

frack up, suck out, spill in, roll up our fit-bits and toil all over

Again.

The old learn mistakes.
The old American Dream was just a defunct memory 
of manufacturing

*Happiness*
the old way. 

The youth capitalize on these readymades.

                        A.I. doesn’t cost overtime, or demand PTO.

Robots reject bonuses and all bribes or benefits, 

vacations are not upgrades, but memory dumps
feel good at any age. 

The youth all know, 
long florescent office hours, kill creative powers.

The old said, dagnabbit, you youth with your lazy habits

and liberal use of Free Time-You’re Fired!

The youth had already quit

listening.

The old finally retired,

near blind and deaf, nearly senseless,

by thin hair and poking chin, struggled to keep up

and it made them flaming angry

about their own fragile mortality.

The youth became immune and inspired

to change old ways,

retrofit America to Be

Come Great

for the First time 
in the making of History,

truly tiny

by popularity vote.

Painting by Jan Steen (1625/1626–1679) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. "As the old sing, so twitter the young", c. b/w 1663-1665.

Shrinking Heads

They used to call them shrinks in slang.

This was a term when I was little.
And couch time or psycho-
analysis, psyche-ologists, undoctors with talk shows
was all the rage this term, shrink, 
made me think of voodoo, a secret serum from
head doctors. But nowadays we have BRAIN,
and the human genome project, AI and h-3

And thankfully,
someone just told me
something is happening to the frontal cortex,
of the human being-being busy;
because busyness wrecks
real concentration.

It could be fake news, you choose.

Once upon a time,
I remember memorizing phone numbers.
I remember every license plate
on every vehicle in my name,
but those were just a labels

like shovel and couch, doctor or woman
and I dug in deeper and found it is true. All of it.
It is frightening.
This cannot be happening, it must be only temporary.
What does it matter if we forget-
this too shall pass as short term.

I don't know anymore.
Always being right
tends to make one go in tiny circles.

Fear was all the rage.
And instead of screaming Fire, or Liar,
the roof began to crumble under
the weight of the clodded up canvasing
sky gathering clumps in furious spouts
of dirty watercolor,
meant to stir us.

Iron bars,
lashing at the trees and they scream.
It Is
eerie, some never heard it coming

or understood what it said.
(SH, RBTL, SITD?)
Terminal. The terminal. Terminus.
Communication was the key.
And oration from alabaster towers of babble flow,
throwbacks, boomerangs and borrowed times,
did not fit all skeletons.
It is a combination lock anyway.

Radical is bad, gay is not happy, no mo FOMO,
do NOT wear a hoodie or hijab,
protest and appoint, Act Now, undemocratically,
incivility as seen on TV versus Reality,

no need to worry.
Temporary occupations are hiring the easily entertained
or unemployed tools, oft utilized by
tightening nuts down to nationalism,
and their infallible dependence.


I forgot why I came in here, I forgot these are all names.
I forgot all the names. I forgot my name. I forgot this was the same.
I forgot to go. I forgot my place.
Then it came to me,
only temporarily.

It should be powered down, rebooted, then defragged
down to one, for focus. Ahead, and swollen baubles or egos,
ergo,
what does it mean to grow smaller
over time, we cannot even wrap our head around
astronomical units, lightning years.
or by electro-therapy injections we become
shorter, shorting out, shrinking from commitment
to deep time.

Slang was just another name
for small.
All the time
shrinking.



Image By Paul François Arnold Cardon, Photograph of the French psychologist Pierre Janet (1859–1947) by Paul François Arnold Cardon a.k.a. Dornac (1858–1941).

Come again? (Hi-Q/Haiku)

You know noise is more

(sound disturbance wave signal)

than you need to know?

Photo By Scan by NYPL [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Duel-ality

Make me.

                You’ll see.

Better than

                 what you had not fantasy

or yummy treats for Pavlov’s complacent puppy.

I will sit 

             and stay-for you-master-full.

Why-I want to make you happy-

                                                     all over

ecstatic insanity. Conversely, this is pretty

good for nothing worth trading

souls, 

          never do I say.

To be

          told you I won’t, you don’t,

I can’t help it always

feeling this way, 

                          abraded when edges

won't fit, 

                   the smooth cliff beckons

my plunge.

We were

               not trying to hold on

to each others exposed roots,

loosening further what has eroded

off the bark, 

                    exposed

sap dries the heart-

                              wood.

More about

together, alone.

We could be both those

Some days plays well

                                    w/ others &

always wins 

                     by cheating.

I let him. 

Artwork credit By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.