Scissor Sprinter

This poem is dedicated to Shaun White, who won his third Olympic gold medal in the Men's Half-pipe snowboarding competition February (12) 13, 2018.


While everyone watched frozen under flat light,
the announcers named the tricks as if they had
a secret menu with special combination numbers;
"Double McTwist twelve-sixty, front-side double cork
fourteen-forty, backside one-eighty" and on and off
from -helicopter height, the windows were rolling up,
and up and- they kept saying, it's like
"Running with Scissors",
"Running with Scissors"-

And on the rails,
the blades were dicing ice cubes into flakes
and carving deep lines no body falling
under Newton's law should follow.

As if the white backdrop was not ghastly enough,
the fretted intensity was only further
ratcheted around by the foot-pound, experience
is no receipt and injuries, grand slams, more curdling visions of
gore galore, with winces and
careening through the barrel came this dominant figure
with a thundering force of Nowness
and such intense Presence-
the crowd sensed this-
and like tea-kettles gathering steam the people
whined while he calmly rocks, they all speculate, he breathes
the wind screams, GO-
Now
outside of this high-pitched rapture-
white noise-froth and heartbeat-
he hurls himself aloft into the thin mountain air.
An Olympian finds himself folding and
forged with steel will, armed against all avalanches
gathering doubt,
gravity does not all ways
get her way.
Not today.

He insists his mortal self against the elements,
in hot white floods of force and musculature
tightened to the verge of splintering and fraying
at every fibrous ending,
without terminus, such as manifest dreams
repeat victories, underdogs and hometown hero's-
ending up, and up- upon frozen water afloat
and mindful of sharp edges,

-Suspended-
in the plane

gliding

victorious and humbled,
the competitor maintains his position
needing more blank space to trace his lines,
he finds reams of paper to shred,
and this Scissor Sprinter salivates
gathering the gauze of this paper plane pulp
to soak up the blood of mistake with stars and stripes.

So Sochi seems like destiny.
Challenge accepted.
Regret is erased with White.

Sweeter, this time, his sheer act of execution
in this balancing craft of the one versus self,
trenches a pipe-line between seeing
and being seen, striking gold
and going for gold,
performance and performance,
tomatoes being thrown at you
or being known
as the thrown one
at eighteen, twenty-two and thirty-one.

Overcome,
he has raised the gold bar.

[The Olympian brings waves of joy to quiet homes
on a Tuesday evening in the seaside town of Carlsbad.
The residents run to get the Wednesday paper
whereby, 
front and center, the Golden Boy
brings home the rarest thing of all-
(Real) Good News from Korea!]



Photograph By Sarkavagyan (Own work), 'Winter in Armenia' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

One and done

A singular point pierces the edifice of air,
a stone ruffles the feathered water in strands
where the wind was whispering aloud
and bodies bending above were
leeched into the one minuscule slit.
Pulses race under this repulsive pulling force,
heat escapes by each breath projecting into liquidity
and bulging beams charge forth in banded arrays
fractured from nothing, All
excited by this culmination
we found ourselves somewhere in there
catching glimpses with eyelids
necks lace this track, our spine compresses,
humidity falls, beads babble over boulders in
broken brooks under black light or water and space
pulled from the mountains sleeve
pinches time, a shroud of silken sky
glistens with age, a blink of life, a volume of light,
reaches its diurnal destination,
recycling motes in elliptical orbits.





Photo By Ingolfson (Self-photographed) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Minute Beans

Your time is money.
This account-Your Life, Net Worth
spent counting minutes

Until it never
earned any interest-ing
ways to get rich quick.

Capitalism
liquid mold, carbon copies
mint makers go broke

count on your changes
to add value. Return Re-
ceipt not required.

The storm has come to pass

We didn't have any pictures, she told me.
My mother said the only thing we had from him
was the toy chest he made that we kept inside my closet,
the one I used to climb in.

I'd hide in the darkness, inside the closet, inside the chest-
and I tried to believe, maybe it was all about him.

My mother has many pictures from when I was little
of my step-father's rock-and-roll band. He played guitar.
And in those old photos, there in the middle of the bass drum,
where the pillow for practice goes,
you see there is a little curled up body,

unmistakably my own.
Even long after I've long outgrown these small spaces,
I can remember feeling this heartbeat
like my own-

And I recognized, it was not about him either.
There were pictures.
She lied-plain and simply-I found-
I liked to hide
myself too.

And I can still distinctly recall feeling the floods
of darkness and thunder washing over me,
but there were no pictures of this I could find.

My mother would remind me,
not of myself.

Blonde and radiant, back then
she was more like the sun,
and likewise, one learns
too much exposure can lead to cancer.

It is the smell of rain that takes me back, the storm
that delivers these dank reminiscences,
dropping memory all over me
wet and vivid, here and now.

And under this heavily cloaked night, the sky hangs
starless and preoccupied with pushing clouds around,
building up pressure and waving flags,
whereby I cannot help but find that I share
a stark resemblance
to thin air.




Photo By Adolf Zika (Adolf Zika´s archive) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sea minor

The day you were born
It would never be the same
as it ever was.

This day, at that time
started this life
                       from lives past-
Passed through you to you
creating something
from some things that were before
you arrived as you.

This time and time again

many things came first
many more things will come to pass
none have counted you
in years
             -as the last

-pushing through, pulling you-

The only time you
were you,
we met
            through others
matters were made

any day now we will change
-back-
into strangers, fate carried vessels
pulling our chords,
                              the other way.



Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Puzzling poet

The last line was laid and this tied it all together,
Success!

Yet in the excitement of the assembled vivid scene,

the poet dropped his masterpiece onto the tile floor,

Whereby words shattered and scattered about

Everywhere.

Dejected and deterred, he could only kneel down

and try to pick up the pieces flung in far off places,

watchful for synonymous edges 

and similar shades

and of course, he paid particular attention
to the edges.

It had been done before, 

he told himself to start over,

it would be easier this time,

never imagining a different picture

put together,

he caught himself still glued to the finished image

of the new poem before him-
Stunning!

From out of Nowhere

its edges disappeared,

he saw it would never be finished,
so he took it apart and put it away.




Artwork by Harry Willson Watrous [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Terminal Velocity

My toes point to that familiar path
over which I tread the same very way
without thought, after days, after days
ground-soft
                               only it doesn't end.
The terminus dissipates before me
the exit escapes
itself

fracturing new matter,
atoms posing in new positions,
the frames along the long hall
                                        rattle and
all fall, shattering into
collage.

I have moved on and on
and recognize how the light changes
just enough to see
this
step
through and parallel time
at equal velocities and thus
all must be still-

transported. This is how
I can be carried along
in this metropolitan body,
incentivized, yet
                    infested with crime,
corrupt with ego, more so
hiding in skin
I was entrusted to always protect-
                                        but don't.

Animal eyes see me
burrow in my bi-pedestal body
and hear my heart beat itself and
echo through my unshod feet-
yet I do not run,
                                   I carry on,
erect, by these same narrow walls
plastered shells, caves or caverns
alternating distances passed
by vision and memory
                                        alone,
                                   barefoot,
weary but walking on and on
this way
toward the vanishing point.

Photograph By PCR Services Corporation, creator [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.