Sans compunction

No point. No point at the end.

How do you know you are there-

Where?

At the end, I don’t.

(In)³-8

And is it Close or Close? Close.

As meta for unraveling also ravels.

Breathe. I forgot what inspired me.

If used, it still possesses zero dimensions:

Does it matter if there

Or here, or Not? I appreciate the white

                                               Space(s) left by you...

As in, moving targets that spin

seem still, hazy-but fuzzy was her favorite.

How do you know when it is done,

Or the piece is a settled preposition?

Just to suppose, juxtapose those positions,

what if feathers deny making a Pound

is the Emperor Penguin still Dressed (Up)?

They were all thought experiments. I thought they were poems.

A poet cannot leave re-normalization-alone.

I came pre-traumatized, I sat subserviently

and listened for the equi-valence on this side,

punctuated by give and take.

The man said most don't know. As a physicist, he fishes.

His curiosity overflowing banks and boxed cats

and asks the layman to believe in nothing proven safe for consumption.

The stomach still drops in

conceptual elevators

labeled Science and Art

                                   "Going Down"

                                    (rabbit holes).

This poem was composed of notes I took while at an event hosted by the Arthur C. Clark Center for Imagination featuring Rae Armantrout and her condensed chapbook titled "Entanglements" (pub.d by Wesleyan) on April 13th, 2017 (also her birthday). 

chiaroscuro in chalk

The thinnest limn of luna
fights her way through forests
of shadowed beings

Dimly disappearing cusp,
the darkness drinks its last sips
of amber

Spheres spinning so fast none saw
the movement, as vertigo, camouflage
in dancing shadows, the coins spin

The same two choices,
flashing rims and eye lids
make vertigo

Below bodies levitate between
the same two choices
quintessence finds the balance

between particle and wave,
reflecting accord on a fulcrum
or where to draw the line

between light and dark spaces.








Artwork by John Bauer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Fruit bearing

When you peal back all the exterior layers that have built up
around the original seed
of conflict-which stems not from the picking of,
nor the eating of the lowest hanging fruit
or thereby sharing its ripe pungent juices
with another needing nourishment-
generosity doubles its pleasures
and we are both guilty-expelled-and angry at
the circumstance.

The great divergence actually occurred
when it was Found.
Of course, she saw it first, so she is the gatherer,
but inevitably, it is his Discovery.

Her gaze may have given it away,
yet, let it be known, consumption was never her goal,
it was a thirst she learned to live with
his hunger scared the birds.

With his long arm, and extensive reach,
He provided
for himself
bittersweet meats, her nectar, her basket,
the load she carried, the bodies he dragged,
the plates she cleaned, the fires he stoked

he becomes sated with his accomplishments,
being the first to find,
everything a man could ever need or want
and will defend his property
to the end-

He cocks his sharp weapon,
its poison dipped tip enough to take a life
hostage, something stirs, scares him, he aims
while she is busy gathering her bearings and things,
biting her lip and drinking the blood

They divided the chores
between conquer and conquest, bleeding and bled
out.
She seeks
comfort, security,
he finds
himself lost without her
basket.




Painting by Emmanuel Benner the Younger, 'Hunters in wait' 1879 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A Gentle Hand

Not speaking for other species,
a human being shall not deny
the power of touch, tact-tility.
As in a word, requires the
relinquishing of an invasion of space
for a sense of felicity, in kind

where seeming accidental, more so
gently, intentional, affixed upon
shoulder or thigh, put so adverbial or
propositional, it is
in earnest, rightly so,
it feels heavier than
the application of pressure
or happenstance.

This need to reach out
and grasp toward
this living moment,
or clutch the vibration
that is life, date-stamped
within our fleshy fingertips.
It is compulsatory

that we soon become
etched or embossed with entitlement,
as in adept for survival and
toward those celebrating this.
It was a touching thing it was said,
to feel mankind
using his hands wisely, for once
in this way.





Painting by John William Godward [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ellipsis

.

The point was never to be asked

as to why or where

for it was only an aim

as if trying may turn

chance into favor.

..

We looked together

at the same art on the same page,

seeing two very different

images

before us in this self-portrait and

agreed only how much it resembled 

us, individually. 

...

Another reason to dig deeper

and to not avoid the back-breaking 

work or big fear,

is discovering 

that the work worked perfectly

for making castles with dirt

or other temporary shelters for our

homeliness. 

Painting by Colin Campbell Cooper, 1921 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Quicksand in the hourglass

Turned overnight into the shadow,
an ominous space easily overlooked-

devoid of light in this dire dilemma
of grasping at grains, starlit seeds of time,

accepting these days that display
traces of altered spin-
and small places
for sin.

Take out the woven-store the sheer.
Year after year, resort
the bookshelves
by ilk
and most pointed dagger,

Titles,
those names mean nothing
-Placeholders-
arm your selves
about the fire and ice, in these
extremities, inside and isolated,
the glass steams up,
the walls smolder around the skins,

and the colder they get,
the deeper they sink
into the thickest of thoughts.

Tucked in this virtuous blackness,
the rest had no peace,

and the sand moved slowly
towards what could only be hours.



Painting by Sebastiano Ricci, c. 1706 in [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Direction

The pod pulls past

super slow

And in one way

the future is seen

in a second

Under notions of nightsky temerity

when moon rises and shines

and stars fall and flame out

The past twinkles

inset overhead

A fine line

between the living

and the dying

dissipates

when we look too long...

Image credit By C.R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.