America the Insoluble

Family members, Party members, Americans and 

American'ts: There will be no favors!

Some were lovable, some detestable

at best

loving and despising felt passionate.

In the city, at the hearth, families are

making and breaking ties

and promises. 

Some of which, solidify under stress,

Some are just now breaking down,

None with ease,

All with intention.

The residue of a last name, 

hangs like an apostrophe, drops like the 'e',

and is only detectable in the darkest matters,

where love is made, despite the conditions.

Life-like, we all play

our parts, ruin our roles,

and forget our lines

showing our age.

When a kiss is blown

from seven generations away 

and lands on the cheek of resemblance

it all matters more than a passing breeze

to shoot at.

Collectively, granite, like

Love makes mountains, and

flecks of abhoration make ashes 

fly elsewhere. Never to rest

peacefully. 

Blue was expanding.

Touching us all

leaves two hands stained

with family history.

The stars remain
cornered.

Photo of The Atwater Family in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Women liberated

Every woman becomes Medusa,

and learns how to become grotesque 

and malign with the glaring intention
to harm every fellow femme or fowl.

All the manly men demanding 

subservience, much more gratitude 

and adoration for being a Hero to 

Humanity.

Mind the Gap, they kindly warn us

of the space wedged between

World and Human-as if we could easily 

misstep
or fall in.

When an atom was split, 

when the uneaten apples fell,

we made matters worse

by being casual observers.

When women went to work,

when women drove-

when they chose-

the family would decay.

The women wanted,
the men desired,
the pairs all 
spun
out. 

"Translation is the art of failure"

Umberto Eco famously noted.

"Metaphor is ritual sacrifice, it kills the look-a-like" 

suggested  Rae Armantrout.

Between two 
worlds

the Space 
keeps us Safe. 




Painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 'Women of Amphissa' c. 1887 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Systematic

That

Nothing can be in balance

never maintain harmony-

All is; push and pull,

give and take,

more or less.

That

Life itself, in order

To Be,

swings

back and forth,

like Galileo’s cathedral lamp

from chaos to entropy-

you again. 

Rest and wake are processes

of changing states.

Death doesn't change.

Life is never the same.

That

even though two far-flung

pendulums find synchronicity,

two clocks seek divergence.

Both are counting 

on each other.

That

Truth is not always true,

what is left lying there

awaiting our grand

Discovery?

That 

it may be easier

To be

savages, cold-blooded

toward each other, 

hot under our collars, getting

callous without tools-raw, blistered

and running behind and away from

the greater risk of being

alone and afraid to touch

each other.

That 

This

Homeostasis must not be bliss

to the civilized, passionate man

That

Balances

Truth with Justice

ending up with a loss

for words.

Photo credit by Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Grand Canyon (Arizona, USA), South Rim nahe Tusayan -- 2012 -- 5893” / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Cool-Aid™

The president watches too much TV
They tell us.
We all do. True
TV keeps us
company,
in a community property kind of way,
like a park-
My cat, ask any dog, they would all agree,
likely
TV is showing something for every one of
Us
Right-

Now,
social media, via the lower channels,
seem more real than virtual-
to many.
Too many
say, there is
something, someone, somewhere,
for every body there too.
And there too
it was always
only you and you.

Then,
TV and the like
asked what We liked-
and we shrugged our stringed shoulders,
some said-I dunno,
You tell Us,
and they did.

Now, the president has found
company,
and there too,
two stringed shoulders
shrug,
I dunno.


Image credit By DonkeyHotey (Donald Trump - Caricature) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Masonic

Not angelic, nor demonic,
it was likeness to life,
in a liberated angel
hiding her alabaster feathers
in columns of strata.
A marvelous made thing
it became, a mass to marvel,
an icon only outlined to invoke awe
from the stony faces, whose eyes hollow
pink granite and glisten in
a miraculous crust
that makes a life
out of our dust.



Photo By Smithsonian Institution from United States of Betty Richard, American sculptor B. 1916 [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Golden hour

Bathed in sepia lamplight,
the skin tingled,
the spirit sighed in its sheath,
all was glimmering and gilded,
and the branched bars became
too much to bear,
when stacked so high.

Under their long skeleton boughs,
shadows shrunk and lost
their cool blue,
leaving exposed all the sheltered bodies
that dissipate through the hours, only dissolving
in the company of leaves,

until all gathered-close
in purple pools of night,
fanged beasts,
like dead languages,
creep out through the white pages,
now folded, and saved. A place
keep our warmth inside.



Painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Stone's throw

When the words dislodged
and came hailing down,
as an avalanche seeking the comforting
earth below
in free fall, the lege, a paragraph
or precipice gives itself away,

all the dense granite words,
could never be shale, not fall apart
nor could any illumination find light
after the full weight suddenly shifted,
to be mined. It was only words that the
mountains rose to meet at
The End.




Painting by Carl Schuch [Public domain], 'Mountain stream with boulders' (c.1888) via Wikimedia Commons.