Passes thru

The train rolling through town

sends in its signal 

                   with the intermittent whistle which warns

of something more than arrival, delivery or destination,
crimson, or even hot steal.

It smelt of cinnamon and sueded leather,

Bark and skin, the warm coat.

Two young men, 
                         friends since childhood, 
Skype and catch-up on nothing new.

They live close to each other, 
                         only one hears the train first.

The little girl that left the boy 
                         in the woods to get lost herself
was kind enough

to think of bread for later so she could come back

to him, but he was hungry and took care
                         of himself.

She cries about choices to another boy.

She was the wolf that howls at the passing train, sirens song,

a puppy in a dogs coat.

Tracks made for trains are best for drawing lines, 
                        demonstrating the forging of space

between then and now,

                                    here and there

one nose

smells first

and hides in his skin.

The other clearly hears
the passing scream left behind
on warm steal lines
                        without a second glance

he knew there will be another
                         soon enough to catch up.
He takes off his coat.  
No longer in a hurry 
he thinks in all directions,
and decides to walk
without destination.




Photo credit by Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Lull-a-by

Stop at the low point, and in this recess

you will need these low slopes

to assess your remaining strength
in gradient.

Then,

          gather all the carnage you can,

but take none further than the valley.

To think is an acting verb.

Robots had been employed long ago.
Slave drives and across partitioned Seas
forbidden steps were recorded.

It was that legend that made it obvious 

                  we had since been spendthrift with time.

Our hands dirty from digging 

for shiny money and grit.

                   Seeing the stars so far from reach

we felt unrelated.
It became problematic, morally. 

As we take note of the hour
by the shadows cast backward,

thoughtfully-one attempts to

Rescale themselves
                                against the evening sky.

The airs thins during ascent

Aiming 
to take our breath away,

Try.

You will know when you need more than 

rocks and steps to move on.

And the ache

will accompany you (in lieu of Virgil),

And you will see the great Mountain 
                                  as more than one needs

in steps to reach

the peak

without why, 
                                  but because it is There. 

Humming and drumming help us close the distance.

Stars and mounds all added up to virtually nothing

separate or other,

meaning to, meaning too

much choice. 

Lulled into thinking the rest
helped gather strength
(in lieu of charge).




Painting By L. A. Roberts (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Naked soles

Tick-tac with each step taken down

the tile floor hallway-

crept moving was the only way

to get here to meet there,

though the narrowing drywalls close in

facing the wall she wonders-

Whose purpose memory serves now-

As if climbing these textured cream walls

would help us all adapt to sharp

right angles, as accustomed,

and if given a sideways glance,

one may admire the frames for their brevity,

developed into more than the moment

of moving placeholders.

Time froze at her feet

the ceiling cast white over her. 

The slate she found was just cleaned.

Photo credit by Milko Matičetov [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

This image or media is available on the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum's website. 

Chlorophyll-ed

I am as incomprehensible as the granite

underfoot as I stand on the fence,

teetering on the post tops,

scrambling across the jagged riprap,

lava on my left,

ice on the right

wondering if I will ever touch down

and it will be enough.

Sometimes, I lean I little too much to one side

and become painfully aware of needles stabbing my cheeks,

and of the physical struggle I wage

against gravity and giving in to the wind.

My eyes hold a glare, grazing across seas of green,

hungry, nauseous.

I remain the thing that sticks out.

I pretend I can hold my composure.

I pretend I am mending, securing and building

back up

the differences between sight and seen, observed and obscure,

between then and now, overhead and right under the soles

heat rises.

The sky blended primaries and found 555 nanometres

restful to the eye. It was a gift in lieu of fight or flight.

A boulder in space time adds up,

this occupies me

for a time
as if I was getting somewhere.

Photo credit By Sonja1982 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

All complementarities aside

We tapped into the human genome

And are now mapping the brain

But you know we won't find love there either.

They scared us with the hole in the atmosphere,

Cosmic rays, acid rain. They tried terror

By burning down the forest before the cure

For cancer was cultivated.

The ice melts and minerals reinfuse themselves

Ionically with purpose, freeing radicals to cleanse

Surfaces.

Then this standard A brain met a utilitarian snaggle-

What’s it for? What about changes?

Yeah, the gold was soft after all.

There was common wetware

And we always knew how copper conducted itself

Generous with friction and actions without touch.

Entangled in the overhead wires,

Thought is under webs, like lines that meant complex

Life that we thought

we could emulate all the folds and it would comfort us

knowing love was no there to be found

nestled in tight corners and, residing

rather closer to a paradox between intelligent design

and first thought or dream.

Image credit By Smithsonian Institution from United States [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Info via Wikimedia- Chandra telescope x-ray (2005): 

"The Chandra image shows a bubble of hot gaseous supernova debris (green and red) inside a more rapidly moving shell of extremely high-energy electrons (blue). These features were created as the supersonic expansion of the debris into interstellar gas produced two shock waves - one that moves outward and accelerates particles to high energies, and another that moves backward and heats the stellar debris. The relative expansion speeds of the hot debris and the high-energy shell indicate that a large fraction of the energy of the outward-moving shock wave is going into the acceleration of atomic nuclei to extremely high energies. This finding strengthens the case that supernova shock waves are an important source of cosmic rays - high-energy nuclei which constantly bombard Earth"

Proof to feel

Exempt from Rule three
'Seeing is Believing',
poets have felt gravity waves for centuries
before proof,
evidenced in the condensed packet called
a 'moment', that hits him square in the numbers
chest-wise.

Arresting breath with bondage attention
the neck braces itself out there
nearly knocked into shadowed fear-
don't look here-
it seems safer to watch than feel.

Despite the blind faith and electric lights,
the poet reads the ultraviolet signs as liminal,
hairs will rise only to settle in an
oppressing scream. It thinks it is escaping in
reaching for its own echo, those
vibrations shake the sound loose
from source.

Entanglement matters most
to poets without deflecting further penetration,
those background noises were called white
for lack of definition.

The poet lights his metaphor,
inhaling all that remains too minute
to make time.


Painting By Charles Furneaux (Hawaii Volcanoes National Park archive) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

X traction

The pen becomes a scalpel,
gleaming with precise intent
on sterility and removal, via
extraction from entanglement,
in order to sever-ate the corrosion
before it seeps through to stain
repellent gesso with black tears.

And although the layers piled up
their rolling waves of light,
it was the implementation of movement
through space that fills in the blanks,
we went further
discontent with no white way
to think this through
with outlines.



Image credit via Wikimedia Commons, in Public domain (Gift of Felix M. Warburg, 1928), dated 1605.