Tiny terrors

It was jarring the way she hopped so quickly 
from bunnies into horses.  Just innocent

little girl wishes, her histories with a small smile
naively, she shifts her weight with

her eyes nailed to the podium

avoiding eye contact it was hard to tell
she had known danger
intimately. 

“If the rider is nuts,

the horse bolts,” they always say.

Today, she spoke of the long lean

and pressure points.

Her shoulders showed 
she had seen her share of withers shake with warning.

Her baby hairs frizzed out in agitation 
that the truth is-
size may matter.

She had seen the rippling muscles so tense
her voice quivered,

where the equines veins are forced to sit atop

and strain under pulled skin at the nodes.

She had looked into glass ball brown eyes that flash a slit

of white, not watchful but warning.

Square teeth, as green as a homeless herbivore 
human, in flashes likewise with his

ears pinned back-

Hold on or get trampled.

Such is movement

in dreams. 

Afraid of spiders, she added at the end.

When she looks away briefly,

It becomes clear,

the horses have followed her gaze-

she should be afraid.

Rabbits don't hide 

in hats, but they do leave holes

so she can keep her fears 

penned up 

in poetry. 





Painting By Edmund C. Tarbell, 'Schooling the horses' c. 1902 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Bare witness

It was miraculous-

the way life gets to see itself

Change

genetics 1-oh-1

the children brought here

with great struggle

and left to die

without effort

holes on hearts and all

last names

shorter than

last words.




Watercolor by William Blake c. 1794 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Times itself

One may find themselves

screaming

from the inside out

LEAVE ME ALONE

and it becomes about

the other

but it never was.

Anyway we attempt to shrug it off

and shirk the cloak of

personability,

it falls with a heavy

THUD. 

By the way-

you were not your own

To be ALONE with

any more than anyone else here weighted down,

and plodding along, prodded on, and prattling on…

It is this nauseousness that makes

mouths salivate for solitude

amidst the stench of obligation,

shit hits the fan,

demanding more

than

a breezy greeting, acknowledgment in

passing as in aloof or aloft and 

above it, over it, 

all over one

that never was. 





Painting by Charles Sprague Pearce, c. 1889 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Putting poetry to the pasta test

The poems that stick-

are the ones that

when hurled against a wall

make not a sound,

some advise letting them float-

as a way of settling.

The poems that penetrate

and get beneath the skin by

3^rd degree composition, 
tend to scar, pink and raised, 
until another poem

goes deeper.

The poems that sing

are Free

like all the rest

seek harmony, adhesives

and sharp lines

that stick out. 

Painting by William Merritt Chase [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Two ships atop the sea

Far is relative to center

the mid-hole

from which we pivot

against the magnet that repels us.

Hang on-

filaments frayed figure eights,

the vapor traced apparitions

by degrees, the skin tightens.

Drawn toward

warm is closing in on sought,

locating by looking, two palms burn

like wicks awash in golden light.

Where were we? Trajectory fell

plane flat, or rock bottoms held on,

we know what happens

when we touch the spinning Top. 

Painting by Émile Vernon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Juxtapose (in years)

(Re: Blade Runner 2049)

Just suppose:

On an October Monday before noon, 

you sit with your adult child

in a crowded theater to watch a matinee

set in the year 2049.

The others in the dark theater are all Senior

Citizens-

You would think it was 'Discount Day'.

And it may have been.

Then you wonder-

Who will be alive

at the end

of the story? In 2049,

which of us will be there

to hear and see the tiny Finale

and give full credit to the vision

passed on, past, with future tension and

Imaginations fused with Technologies, 

struggling for dominance

each, chasing memories.

Behind those pictures,  

someone remembers them 

as their own. 

What will they take away?

The silence is black.

 It was a dark and stormy night.

There was

Nothing real

about it. 

And then, your adult child asks about his Future

Discounts. 

The Time will come,

you promise. 

Artwork credit By Signed lower L by Gernsback's illustrator, Frank R. Paul [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

We women watching under eye shadows

Seeing is believing.
Done through heavy sooted eye-
shadows.

New, meant come around 
all over 
again.
We noticed,
nothing new.

Women still paint their faces,

but abstain from powdering noses,

            and will travel as far and wide enough

to know a full revolution

            of the hips when she feels the need
to dance,

when hoops slip into too tight of spirals
we feel confined.

Given time

the stains come out

and by reduction to the lowest possible whole drop,

                        some flesh tones become singularities

condensed into specks, spread across any open faces

                        sunk into  black holes that may only escape 
as screams.
There was a trace. 

What progress we felt on our burning skin,

blurs as age rounds off soft female edges,

                        yet the spine protrudes, more

and gums get back up in order

to suck out the ivory scene
leaving a chalk outline.

All life in circles, women come around.

Known for orbit and making

headway

            by the expansion of ego and 

squeezing in equilateral points, the men did
squares and wrecked tangles.

Forward was no direction-

to give 
away.

And finding this Now, Here,

           was terrifying.

There were unseen toxins in the air.

The smog-always Over There.

The disease thrived in another suffocating body.

Would we feel less,

we would ever know

if we were in it

or it was in us.

Knowing not 

why we came or why we remain,

heavy, 
we carry on a stench 
wrapped around our glacial shoulders.

A few were inoculated against such

vertiginous long views, like standing up-
right

where Up was no place

for land lubbers.

Women won't follow 

directions. 

Most felt the calamities rising,

considered the unreasonable temperatures,

and the harshness of storms as personal 
lashings, mis-behaving as
the judged and jurried.

From overhead,

sensed the shifting clime,

and sought sources

                        backward, by untangling those wires,

going on invisible signals.

We find the Current that carries us. 


Painting By Marion Boyd Allen (1862–1941) (http://the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=49019) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.