Gathering

flock of rounded songbirds fluttering against the lilac sky

become pixels that dance across the plane,

form-u-late, and swirl past

my subdued evening eyes

pulled up

and perusing across the orderly canopies,

whereby I try re-rasterizing cliques, filtering

And see those three floating dots, wee wrens

on the low sagging line-

they are people watching

while the one on the fence

sates himself to one side

where the beetles are bigger

And slower

in the sideways amber light that lays low

And even across the suburban grasses.

I am charmed by the snake that is swallowing its tail

in the blackberry bushes by the blushing day moon.

These two hands begin again. 



Image By D. Dibenski (images.fws.gov ([1])) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ear worms (Annelida aural)

A rare blue stillness awaits me at three
electric sleep and low idle
hums

This scissored presence moves
closed and blunt
under roof, between walls,
muffled in cotton

picking
up soft words, I sort them,
line up and accumulate these
in stacked strips

with varying lengths-All
leaning against the left
alone

to translate for the birds
already practicing
their mock speeches and weighing the scales

like me, less
to say, we both prepare to navigate

afloat on the surface
cast in the floodlight of suns rays
songs again
tend to dissipate.

Illustration for Dante's Purgatorio 09
by Gustave Doré

First image By Shibata Zeshin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The wind was long

If I wrote 'Now' one thousand times-
Now, Now, Now-
am I not lying? Redundantly (pro)posing nothing new
on the page-

Now, Gertrude may say
the same,
Now
there is no such thing like the thing itself,
repetition of point...
like Moore's Law-only holds so many holes
before disappearing
all together.

In soundness, over and over
is a slingshot past Here-

reason being no longer
enunciates itself
as individual
thingness and parsimony

it seems to me we should have
been focused on the duplicates

observing patterns of double talk
scholars without abjection to empty words,
placeholders or so called meta-
or merely masters by degrees

From this angle
Now was never
the center
errant signals disconnect
the radii from the thing.




Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Félix Vallotton (1907) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

balancing books

The Undo is the indecide, I choose 
never to go there.

I make, instead,

no excuses.

Shortcuts were his favorite for efficiency 

                                           and displaying his mastery.

I liked the long drawn hand kind 

                                           subject to blur and bruise.

(only delete

favorite button, hot or not
spaceback neverwas 

I may erase even you
neverwhere) -white out-

This is the Upside.

Black blends in.

The downside-

no middle ground

                              or bridge

connecting view between the two

of i to I.

Look (t)here, 

describe what you (would like to) see

outside of inside, it comes 

mismatched but attached-

I pick up the left-overs 

this phenomenon called an ex-

ample of symbiosis.

We refill empty with each other

to persist we insist 

on forget.

As the zero is to one,

nothing (t)here without

love
in redshift.

Painting by Jacob Jordaens [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Habitat

At first,

I was discriminatory about it;

ripping out only the ground

cover and displaced Kentucky Bluegrass,

careful not to yank the horsetails.

Yet the rake only brushed these down-

these (knot supposed to grow there)

“weeds”.

Well, it may have been irrational, 

but I

grabbed the hoe

and took heaving jabs 

at just the top layers.

This explains the piles of dirt

just outside the front door.

Besides
all the beetles and spiders,

webs and trash, a penny here, some tinsel there,

a brake light piece, first impressions 

and never agains, all elements were there

for a dirty job.

Then,

I went in the very back
at the base of the green wall.

The bamboo reeds sway brezzily,
tall tips tangled within the canopy of

avocado trees-whose roots really reside
next door,

these dying spears bow down
over the pergola top,

stiff brown leaves like old fingers play

the poled roof as the xylophone,

and to those-
I take the “loppers”.

The green waste bin overflows before nine am.

Saturday,

an April in Spring.

The house still in sleep, the birds pass

playing with airwaves, lilting songs and

dramatic swooping screams, 

while I sweat, arch back

my back in the strong early sun
bearing down over my shoulder.

This dirty yellow hair
clings matted to my clenched jaw.

When he wakes, he says,
it was from my earth moving-

then looks around at the vast 

open spaces, an overhaul, my latest work-

a blending of dirt brown and sky blue,

I offer him a toothless smile, and some
black coffee wearily.

Admiring the pruning skills of an elephant,

he offers-“Couldn’t write?”

“I think I will go back to sweeping

the driveway,” I say.

Painting by János Thorma (1920) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Framed

♦

There was red on her neck-

He tried to strangle her-

There were blue prints on her right forearm-

He grabbed her too hard-

She had been painting mountains

And sky

They dropped a bomb, I mean “we”-

Tactfully, with precision, they said.

How is that done?

Never mind-

♦

She could see crazy coming back for her

Granite, he was her rock.

Assumption over blends shades of grey-

Let the colors come out

In every crack of Spring

Primavera,

The last step taken

Toward a conclusion

Hot or miss

The point;

 ♦

Of impact, of view, of no return, of intersection, of convergence or divergence, of terminal velocity, of it All, (in time)

It was all Artwork. 

Painting by Francesco Hayez [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Edit(her)

Today
I pray
all the words fray
ravel away...

Whole words
                    carry too much

-much less, defenseless against
strung out sentences, slabs
posed in parallelographic paragraphs,
cover pages and such strata and likewise its
generous detritus

stacks up,
burying A brain within its grooves-
meaning between
pro-fessional and con-fessional
moves too fast to hold,
the rope burns
and I feel smolder.

Sleep did not bother
to muffle the pillow words,
vowels easily pass
through cotton screens.

Threads that vibrate not enough separation.
Too clear to hear, semi-permeable is
the peace underneath, the bubbles inside lips
of white foamed waves.

Those hard consonants could not be avoided.
Sound becomes
a wall between being and story,
bricks and dreams.

Mist always settles.

Black
is the language
when there are more words
than matter.



Painting by Jacob Vrel (fl. 1654–1662) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.