On the cusp

Setting one's sails
toward a life
and geography

we have long sought
becomes legacy

Maybe on Mondays
the horizon is too far away
to project any other color
but grey.

Anchoring ourselves
against the skylight
to the hours of shrinking shadows
where we are finding
bending light
a production
there was stillness to be
stolen, every now and then
dangling

the arc of our residence
may only be seen from great distances

and the greatest home
feels like there is nowhere else
to go.




Painting by Elioth Gruner, 'Fristy Sunrise', c. 1917 [Public domain].

Time will never Tell

With these hands
I have cradled the past.
With these hands
I have buried memories.
With these hands,
still-lined with life,
callused by death,
I grasp air in my palm
and feel it trapped there
squirming in a fist.

With these hands
I held my babies-once, long ago-
now forbidden to touch
With the same such tender care.

With these hands
I sealed my ancestors in dirt
now sealed away from all five senses.

With these hands,
I make words
that lose their matter while gaining typeface.
I multiply my meaning only to divide
by the given definition of what it is
To pen or poem.

With these hands,
I scratch the wet shoreline,
I was here
With these hands.
I open my palms
erasing my place

just in Time.


Image by By DashaVZ (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mists without a Gist

What was that mist
that frost kissed
air where you touch
the exo-soul
and hairs rose
up to hold
indiscernible
pin droplets
that stab without
penetrating
any depth
in essence
or presence

that obscure eminence
amorphous atmosphere
vials of voluminous
sound, found abstruse
as your own voice
seeing you project
yourself from
somewhere else
ambiguous as
the mist that
never touches

ground.

Image By Fabio Cipolla (1854-1924), The Maidens in the Mist [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Currency

If taking time
or stealing a moment away
is a luxury
interest grows only with age
invested in decadence
a mass
of intangible
wealth...

There is always more work
to be done,
and not being done
is a better way-
let us never finish
before we have spent
our Time
as if it were all we had
with Us.
Image credit info: Snyder, Frank R. Flickr: Miami U. Libraries - Digital Collections [Public domain].

Asylum

Two-too
Clean and sterile-
eyes-
cataract and contract,
sting with bitter solutions.

Brain washed, scrubbed free
of build-up, calcification of old deposits-
there grows lye.

In the right conditions,
isolation is cleansing
by promise of reward,
acidic seconds feel like
first wounds and kisses.

In doctrinated, what grows
in sand and silt,
by narrow slit or gill
does any thing survive?

I listen as hard as I can strain
the tiny hairs,
metal and maddening stone,
there is no voice or moan outside.

Whispers cannot be made
out or in complete
thoughts shift weight,
in a pendulum.
Hearts of palms, beastly as apes
beat their fanned fronds
in the autumn air.

An oasis sits and steams
with life, preserved in pits
outside these pillowed walls

pane-less as this space is.



Artwork by Austin Osman Spare [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

The hanging of a self-portrait

The man tells the same story,
since it is all he can do.
Demanding to be the center of attention,
he hordes the space under the illumination
of a sole recessed light.

Tells the same stories over and over
to all passing faces and yet
always forgets some very fine lines-

Contrasts come out, where
he smirks slightly,
unbothered by the crackling
of sky overhead, he only looks a-
Head.

Robed in velvet red,
a coat he swore he never wore,
he has positioned his
arms for the ideal pose to portray
of strength and endurance.

The distant family gazes at the portrait
Through centuries and canvases
but sees nothing captivating or similar.
The same (his)stories,
making his image stretched
and one sided.

A life made good-
despite the gilt and frame
that flaunts its ornate opinion
of self.
He was once
a handsome man,
despite the way he looked

at them.

Painting by Albrecht Dürer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

D-cision (times)

When a person says “hanging by a thread”
Do they feel where the tether is connected?

Mostly suspended and trying to reconcile
Borrowed time,
Time itself stood firmly in front of me

While I was waiting to be told
how and where to move,
pretending I did not care.

How long each second seems when counting days…
I anticipated,
Am anticipating, I await a yellow box. Maybe today.
Already sent. To be
Here soon. Some of us can picture it
In transit.

I wonder if Schrodinger’s box can change colors,
Mid-ship-ment-
inside the dark mail bin-
People were praying,
And I did not know the words, so I thought
About the power of thoughts and how we change
Across our journeys
Those new destinations dangle the
Yellow fleece
But still, here we are,
Standing atop pins and needles
remaining tied to a place.

Painting by John Singer Sargent, 'Marionettes, Behind the curtain' c. 1903 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.