(Re)voltage

One day
it just happened.
          The tides that rose
could not be denied
by
  terrestrials.

Nobody even discussed it
openly
          how they felt
about it,             genuinely,
how they made
          it Stop.

The help?
Thanks,
             but no thanks.
The directions?
listen, don't
           talk to me, show me
what you sorted out
that I must like.

Enough of the misinterpretation
of
Results.

We can no longer be convinced
you were there to
                            Help us All
or recommend a
                           replacement
hip, knee, mate, job,
car, and family or definition
                       for the word
connections.

Don't be shocked
when all has been sifted through the
screens
and we say-
Let's do it the old-fashioned way.


Photo credited By Rob Croes / Anefo [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Two sol's

There is an ordinary old man,
I'm certain you must have seen him,
he walks the coastline casually
every morning
just before sunrise.
He wears a safari hat
which hangs on his back
in case he runs late
and the sun beats him home.
He seems retired.

There is a scruffy old man,
you must have noticed him
walking along the coast highway
every evening,
just before the sun sets down
the light for the night.
He wears different clothes
but has not groomed himself
in decades. I wonder
if he sleeps
or is grateful for rest.


Painting by Ester Almqvist, 'The Sawmill, December sun' c. 1914 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

cardinal points

Death
   Being
as Natural
    as Life
Why
   we made
murder a Sin
             and Nudity
             a profanity
(poverty a crime
wealth a blessing)
All just
because we are afraid

of Reality
Inevitably
I-denity
we live with
Exposure
               made up
with our raw materials
ore
data
and information
       easily eroded and likely
to give way
someday, in a word
too large to lie
eyes upon,
too precise to name
with exactitude and
                         Finality
just As
finis origine pendet.


Artist unknown, c. 1650, Master of the Vanitas Texts [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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.