Mann kind

“The diaries of opium-eaters record how, during the brief period of ecstasy, the drugged person’s dreams have a temporal scope of ten, thirty, sometimes sixty years or even surpass all limits of man’s ability to experience time-dreams, that is, with images thronging past so swiftly that, as one hashish-smoker puts it, the intoxicated user’s brain seems “to have had something removed, like the mainspring from a watch.”

-Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)

Should I have sweat through those provocative dreams

Since time is running out

And shall I have watched, disturbed and overcome with infatuation,

Pleasure, intent on the scene, all its folded lines hung out,

The mosaic scene, the spackled tiles of moments to keep

Float over the surface of settled matters.

Transience penetrates us to move on and on.

This minuscule thought that writhes its way under

Eyelids-between us, selves. We are

Something small, private, intrusive, edgy and loose.

The Splinter severed from the smooth grain

Pierces its way deeper into our softness, 
past the seventh gate, writhing in quicksand

Only to break off the relationship,

Leaving a white fleshy hole with dead skin
light floods inside singing delicate motors

Before it can draw an arc, or a

furrow atop the brow with vapor and sweat
and feel the tickle from

blood running down wrists and pouring out nostrils.

Resilience needs rest and a sense, a little air and darkness,
solitude in a moment to hold on despite the vertiginous spin
We are in this together, that you remember 

That this horrific nightmare

Has occurred to me before, many times, before

I woke. 



Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, 'Pushkin at Ai-Petri during sunrise' 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The results are in(side)

As much as we can
plan, prepare, project,
anticipate and speculate,

none of these internal actions
guarantee consistent results,
busyness does not guarantee business,

and if these formulae were applied
to physics, they would be rejected,
expelled from the multi-verse
for lack of proof.

Then again,
on second thought,
coincidence, chance, luck, and odds
are signs, symbols we play

while pretending to know the words,
pretending our sounds can sway
life
a little more our way.

We all have just one chance,
with many potential outcomes.
Any way
we aim our intent, cast our gaze,
manipulate, edit and re-calculate our theories,

the many verses when sung all together
touch notes, tickle fancies, connect
dark matter making the inconceivable,
tangible, the noise, harmonious,
and the future full of space.


Image By NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team (WISE), Rho Ophiuchi [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Moot

They expected me to say something wise,

Profound, say, an illuminating discovery.

I honed opinions, made my share

of mistakes-

What can we know about the limits of others

Patience, heft, and resilience? 

No way. Hence,

Nothing could be said.

Too late is not better than never,

since never never was reason

enough

to stop

Here.

Photo credit: Imogen Cuningham,'My mother peeling apples' taken in 1910 (Public Domain) via Wikimedia Commons. 

The mouth heals fast

Tongue is too fat
to speak-
not because I bit it,
when I should have
known thy musclar
self-well-enough-
when I should have
known well enough
to shut up.
It is still swelling-
pride protrudes itself,
a warning-

NEVER
put that in a poem.

And Do Not Step on the grass
while seeds sit on top, germinating
like a poem. Too much
disruption
dislodges
any potential root
formation.

It is best not to flex with words
or assign metaphor more meaning
than conceivable
or suffer the stretch.

Here the open gash pushes
the inside out-
hypersensitive to air, this is where
salt heals,
and the best solution
showed its work,
long-hand,
ones carried
over the columned
poem.


Painting by Jules Breton [Public domain], 'The wounded Seagull' 1878 via Wikimedia Commons.

Tender are the soles

The body whines inaudibly
running organs with life's
friction or electrically charged
circles, as if one organism
could be fulfilled.

Cash can be exchanged for dignity,
pennies and thoughts are donated
in parking lots and churches
liberally, naked feet are sensitive
where there are rocks worn down
to pebbles by caloussed souls
heaving their weight in grains
of sand.

A mile more
to go
with these legs, feebled and folded
they foretell the weight of what we carry,
with the shoulders pinned to the sky
the strings held us up, dancing and frayed,
until the puppeteer, robotics engineer, and fear
take over,

it was all for the show,
since there was nothing the human could tell
about soles moving on
light as can be
like water
we cannot breathe.


Painting by Ford Madox Brown [Public domain], 'Jesus washing Peter's feet' c. 1852-56 via Wikimedia Commons.

Collection bin

Dust
has been built up
atop the grout, between every square tile,
darkening into mounds along the top of the base
boards, hair, tissue, lint, a leaf and pink peony petals
sneezes, boxes stacked like artillery, mortar, bricks and
explosives set just so-goodwill gathered in standard black trash
bags, a segregation of sorts, some have labels, tape, names, places
congratulations ribbons, important and fragile balance atop
the denser matters,
the walls leaning in on the things consume
all space never room for more than what has been collected in
between the seams, along the borders, under the foundation and
                                                                          hanging on the edge.


Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain], 'abandoned gas station in Selma, Alabama 2006 via Wikimedia Commons.

Does a body good

I was not born a child.

Strange. I was allergic to all milk.
I was openly resented for this
Growing up.
My bones are stronger for this.
Never broken one.
I don’t drink it.

I was raised as an orphan in my family.

I was taken in, hosted, taunted and cast out.
I was not like any other. I was an only child,
a broken mold.

Bearing no resemblance. A reassurance,
that nothing contagious was mixed in the kool-aid.

I was ugly, I was sexy, I was young, I was powerful,
I was smarter than most, I was curious and sensitive
I was giving and giving and gave it all away.

I lied. I faked it. I made and lost it.

I was nothing until I redeemed what
I was worth and after taxes,
it was not equitable to fulfilled.

Half-full and half-cocked.

This fair skin is not thin.
I have grown vicious through exposure
and ferment my sugars.

I have soured and forgotten too often
before I remember, I am

Lactose intolerant and hormone infected.

(But as far as childhood dreams go-
I do like the new milk commercial on TV).



Painting by Harold Gilman, 1918 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.