Smith, Black

Forged into the metallic morning horizon
Arose churning sediments
forming monoliths,
Silhouettes of possibilities 
stood starkly
As bodies take shapes
And outline the impenetrable yet 
more immovable.

Composed as we come
with letters into elementary symbols
or the other way around,
it dawns
upon us
this light shall dissipate our dreams

Awash in rust
with our veins of copper 
which could not compare 
to the sand that we use to measure 
Time
all that 
sharply resembled
a blade of grass
nourished only with melted dew. 




Painting by Winslow Homer, 'Early morning after a storm', c. 1900-03 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Proof

Don't look now
But
it is always inconvenient
to pay full attention.

The mirrors must not be clear.
Of course, there was backing
in this philosophy.

We were indifferent
as I came to discover with age
The wisdom was
quirky and quintessentially
duplicable,
making this extremely
life-like.

In fact,
there were explanations,
motives, charts, statistics and
microscopes as well as mass
spectrometers.
Facts could be made like laws.

Help is belittling, humility is compromise.

Say,
We now know
why women want pickles when pregnant.
Motherhood is mainly mammalian.

Nothing is new or novel.
It could be predicted with nearly ninety
percent accuracy,
Those who would be beaten and abused,
were confined, resigned to their situation,
like all atoms and half-lives.

It was worth looking around
if only to see
how natural it is for us
to reflect and blind,
bend and squint
without ever reaching a definitive conclusion.

This could be conveniently called,
Power
if only it was adopted as knowledge.



Image By Unknown photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Central Cancer Research (Immunology laboratory).

Trace

The difference between a clean slate
                                and a blank one
is a twist of lime-
stone,
made into a helix,
stacked with sedimentary
                            amphibious bones 
& the ligature of
dead words
                    around broken muscles,

like the lines left lingering
and entwined, woven through
resting vessels
                     slack and un-taut
across some surfaces
namely, Others
                              in a hurry to sea
this contrast.

The blackboard could not be red
in such low light.

Anyway,
erasure like evolution was never complete.


Painting (watercolor) by Thomas Girtin [Public domain], (undated) via Wikimedia Commons.

Latently

Just yesterday I noticed
somewhere else
the present moment, and all the past
for that matter,
always held the future
simultaneously
rolling it in palm
and under tongue.

These multiverses,
Baoding balls,
hum like crystal lips
and harmony comes out
making the individual notes
indivisible.

Presently,
today, Wednesday,
all rolls along in a blur,
small talk keeps time
separated from the thing itself
and it can only be tasted or felt
one side at a time
just like listening.

Today,
I read a little poem
about transformation
or metamorphosis,
it seems we have always known
these things take time.

Then again, I half expected it
to move too fast.
Sometimes shapeshifts
were mere projections
of light.




Painting by Nelson A. Primus (1842-1916) 'The Fortune Teller' c. 1898 SCAD Museum of Art [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

They carry no identification

The lost souls could not
have been
                -strayed-
unwillingly taken
from their way,
meaning-intention.

Did I mention
they found Us
in sad shapes too,
(round bodies in square
boxes),
what to do

about maps that don't make a clear path through
tough terrain
& letters that refuse to column, justify, paragraph
or add up to cents?

I swear atop the nameless grave,
I saw the spirits, the others
looking away, must have been
confused by their own disparate
directions toward the destination
all call
'Home'.

There was always more than one way
there and back,
although there never stayed the same.

The tree markers,
bleed and breathe,
resembling each other,
unlike the stone
every body was required
to find
a building for the soul.





Painting by George Elgar Hicks, 'Gypsy girl' c. 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Paleolithics

The professor professes all he knows

The light in the room stretches its narrow rays

between the pews and up the tiered aisles.

His word, Pedagogy, 

saunters through the active scene

where footfalls succumb to silence, 

the thought sits

Outside of the time

it takes to experience

a revelation, commonly mis-

pronounced as Revolution.

The mind drifts while his voice 

rests its laden brow

on grainy monotony and concrete definitions.

Meanwhile,

the insatiable self-seeking creature recites

all he has seen

and heard about phenomena like

boiling water and stunted grass

thereby giving his dark pupils

all the more reason to run

back into the cave.

There can be found familiar

mountainous men, rigid in their routine

for survival, passing time by

holding their profile up against the heavens

in order 

to demonstrate the concept of 

contrasting outlines

and where they meet

without becoming the other. 

Painting by Thomas Eakins, c. 1844 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Obscurities

Dense fog rolls across the chiseled terrace
steps from West to East.
Downtrodden and quite oblivious
of Man's conventions, this mocking
mist, as in a gathering of ground clouds,
shrouds the serial sequence of events,
entrances and exits undefined and occupy
our focus, hazily
we get stuck
when we cannot see
ahead.
Shadowless spaces between,
scoff at the series we expected,
anticipated
of Inventions and Evolutions
and Apocalypse.
We've tried to rise and plunge
gradually
to adapt
in this solid state.

We seem to seek the End as if it were
the top.
Admiring an ascent out of view
despite our narrow window
to appear or seek
escape and opportunity
everywhere but specifically
over there.
Such low lying obscurities like
grey matter gathered in this way
concealed the landing
so we may walk across the clouds
making us feel mist
the most, despite always Being
invisible at certain angles.






Artwork by F. Childe Hassam, 'The Spanish Stairs' c. 1897 in  Los Angeles County Museum of Art [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.