Insufferable

Poems do not feel
anything
Yet they are something that says
with words feel me
If only
there was another poetic way
to speak
to emotion
(in order)
to capture, to convey
What was meant
to be left unsaid
                           Silence
                           is full of
                                  This
                           pulsation
                           felt as a compulsion
                           to give way
                           to gravity
For no sound
reason.



Painting by Wada Eisaku, c. 1926 in the Pola Museum of Art [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Timethrift

How do we squander our breath
by counting to ten
or three?

I noticed a boys crown
his head was down
facing his lap, holding a short pencil.
Clearly, he was not writing,
By the way the pencil moved
in random places across the page;
middle, top right, bottom center.

Of course, everyone wanted to see,
even the old lady sitting next to him
who kept adjusting her hair,
her blouse, her scarf
acting uninterested.
He could smell her short
breath, I could see
her check the time.

A waste of time.
Drawing straws.
I was reading,
there was nothing to show
not a figure or shape to be seen
from the words I inhaled,
no crumbs from my feast,
no incensed smoke crept out
of sealed chambers.

I was high-hovering, as clouds do.
I never noticed
how many pages had turned,
how close I was to the end
nor had I kept record
of the miles traveled along
the lines it took
to get in between
here and now.

Painting by Charles Joseph Grips, 'Waiting for a Loved One' c. 1894 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Financial Sense Ability

Accountants and Universities
all too often
                     forget             
that they provide a service

apart
         from guarding the gold
the service would be of no use
had not the need to know

arose
          and smelled like a rat.




Painting by Thomas Eakins, 'Professor Benjamin Howard' c. 1874 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

(In)different

Her heavy greedy breaths

no longer pull air

from our shared spaces.

Her restless body,

laden in sleep, no longer flings

appendages against shared walls.

His voice, 

after all tese years

is distant and muffled,

a life spent

with his intonations 

and likenesses 

filling the quiet spots

of time

and privates places 

like memory.

I find myself

in new places,

quiet, desolate, 

unable to move

and different

than I thought.

Most sensibly,

and quite inevitably,

my own shallow gasps

leave no consideration 

or room for the limbs

to dance 

or provide sound
a body
to absorb.



Painting by Ford Madox Brown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Out of sight, out of mind

There was no homeless problem in our town.
The sprinklers had fixed that
one troubling grassy spot.

Sure there were a couple,
but it wasn't an epidemic.
The city wouldn't stand
(for it) (up to it)
a chance
against a larger economic problem.
Oh yes, the wealthier town next door,
they had never seen one.

Recent studies have shown
the middle parts, the guts,
are all without glories and good bacteria.
The classless class as a whole
is one deducted paycheck away
from being homeless.
Who knew it was that easy to give up
debt
or not have what we never needed?

At the shopping center on Tuesday,
a decently dressed man sat on an iron bench.
He did not smell bad. His eyes were not red.
His shoes were not worn thin.
He had no holes. He had no major injuries
that could be seen.
His hairs had all been trimmed
his frame hung
loosely folded
staring at nothing.
As if any more could happen by 10am,
he seemed spent,
and resigned
that the show must go on
without him.

He was chainsmoking
and every in between
cigarettes, he would stand up
for himself,
violently punching the air,
wordless and weaving punches
with his whole body
at invisible villains.
He had money for cigarettes.

The shopping center security had been called
by the elderly woman in the bakery
who only drank one cup of coffee
and complained
about its lack of strength
every day.
The restaurant manager
next door
kept his head down
not saying a word
until his meds kicked in,
until he had a stiff drink.

It was crazy, they all said,
watching the man,
boxing the air.
Clearly,
he does not care what they think,
it was lunatic
the way one could live
like that,
angry at nothing.


Painting by László Mednyánszky [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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).