the gazing tree

Words are my mirror.
In one frame, there Is
an accuracy and simultaneous
Alienation,
projecting from This compact structure,
such as a singular dimension,
as in Ego,
ergo sum
perception.

I pointed
my gaze
out-
side-
this Home
provides no shelter.

I wanted to pick the words,
like weeds,
carefully including the root,
which is a sure sign
of eradication, or hope
of never returning.

So my eyes and hands scan
scan the sky
but only a breeze
could find meaning
There.

What does remain
Solid
after trying to convey
an idea, to prose?
Must be made with
origination,
in other words,
something like; a black box, a red wheelbarrow,
13 blackbirds
and a parched poet
scratching tan paper under an old oak tree.


Photograph by Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Senden, Venner Moor -- 2013 -- 2305” / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Clear as mud

Enveloped, as I had been
         folded
into the dark mournings,
one after the next stroke of
grey palette,

And when standing
         upright
among the five foot stalks
of daisies and poppies
where painted ladies
couple up twisting aloft

precipitation,
and what precedes,
a worm, a cloud, a momentary
          levitation
inconsistencies become solid

Silver change strewn across
the steel
sea,
sense
              the bottom
of the well, whereby my feet
have sunk
in.

Artwork by Umberto Boccioni, c. 1902 [CC0] in Public Domain.

He-line

Like a cat

tame or otherwise-

A man

will attack if touched

where he is most tender.

Artwork by Gwen John [Public domain].

Roar

Solid beads bounce off my body,
each of their masses colliding with my shell
and I am sore, sensitive from the pelting,
gasping with my gills barely open
a slit.

Upwards I face and solid streams form rolling
down my brow and bridges.
I feel drowning is the same enveloping
as the light or darkness inside
my pores.

Buoyancy is all I have
left to show
I am still
occupying
space.

Stalactites reach for the mineral world
they once had.
Days went and came
passing thru me
like water.

There was nothing new
to sea here,
save
the rumbling and reforming
beneath the surface.



Photograph credited by 'Oregon Sea Lion Cave' Ljmajer [Public domain].

Wait and see

That is how things collapse,
you know how it goes,
all at once.

From experience,
there was no other way.

I survived a major earthquake,
yet none jolt the nerves like those
fault lines
connected to the heart.

So, it is never
really one thing-at a time,
rather what we choose to do or see
about it,
like finding a moldy blueberry
and leaving it with the rest.

It makes one turn to meat,
foregoing the fruit.

There is a dotted line between
poison and penicillin.

There is more to throw away
than keep.

Rebuilding is going to require
everything,
except
accepting to live in the rubble
of what once stood
up to/against.



Image credited by Nyttend in [Public domain].

dead end

Like Darwin's finches,
would we know why our beaks are shaped this way?

Poetry, like mathematical sentences,
cage the pigeon, momentarily truth can be contained
in theorem.

History was written to expel,
revise, adapt and to forget the way it happened
in order to make story from time with a line.

A plot never seems to develop
or hold
what was expected.

I do repeat myself,
I say things I often don't recognize
as mine, I smell fear in my atmosphere
and wish flight was my choice.


Artist Jacques Callot (1592-1635) 'Traveler' early 17th century, in Public Domain. 

De-hydration

There was I,
sitting atop the toilet seat after dark,
clutching the stemless wineglass with ice,
melting and prickling my fingertips with cold
beads expelled in an attempt at temperature
regulation.

My heart stomps and fills my ear
with an exasperated scream
about how hard it is to move
all this blood
to and from.

I do not drink wine,
my drink is called Karma,
its supposed to aid
digestion, I digress,
waiting in the mid-night
beads roll down my temple
and I shatter atop the frozen tiles

Waiting

as my Karma becomes diluted.


Painting by Sebastian Stoskopff [Public domain].