Weather Fact or Friction

Thunderstorms can generate wind that is capable of developing additional thunderstorms up to 100 miles away.
Ants carry greater weight upon the fate of the planet than all of the elephants.
There is only one cheetah, genetically. They are all copycats.
All tortoiseshell cats are female.
A tortoise is a turtle, but a turtle is not a tortoise.
All mammals have hair, including marine mammals.
If a butterfly lands on you, like a kiss it has a lingering effect.
Kissing is a form of devouring one another.
Eating your words causes indigestion.
Our narrow color spectrum is a coded labeling system,
nevermind the claims of reds or whites or
fermentation of green and browns,
we eagerly ingest our poisons like medicines. Only death is harmless.
So many are starving but none are taking a place at the table or saying
a word of Grace.
Anyway,
Escape and Utopia are not the equivalents of Apathy and Atlantis.
Artificial Intelligence demonstrates that competence can be performed without comprehension.
When we tried playing God, saving the Earth, selling one-way tickets to Heaven and the Moon,
Time traveling, age rewinding, and portraying ourselves to be all-powerful we found ourselves-weak to resist, irresistible, gullible, and addicted to more than just the levers and
Controls.
Not knowing Best, but collecting alternate facts and delegating the feelings
of incompetence to all Others, we have been told two Truths and a Lie.
Fires spread in the mess-hall, millions of cooks vacated the kitchen, all of their pants aflame,
an acrid vapor left in the wake of Epochs echoing on wax-filled ears.
From the top-down, the ice spreads, plates are stacked and we are still spinning.
The soul never stays in one spot. Heat, like religion, is always seeking converts.
We are all preoccupied, we were born busy and off-balance, running to stay up-
Right.
Our big three-pound brains burn 33o calories per day.
The brain does not recover the same way other muscles do.
Magic is the ten days it takes for a flesh wound to heal. The Big Bang is still happening.
Hindsight is too far behind current, foresight is double vision doubled, the current is always moving, perspective is in every angle, adjective.
It was short and sweet.



Artwork by Edward Penfield (1866-1925), Calendar cover c. 1896 in Public Domain. 

316 million tons: Our weight on the world

Deadweight
Feels heavier
Without a light source

Emitting and casting off more than
Darkness which regenerates
On itself
Like a quiet tumor
Reaching

Look at Atlas,
His flexed muscles
Atop his torso
Showing his amassed
Strength and Dilemmas,
Symbolic

The woman is rounded
Into fetal position
Cradling her empty
Gut, where lead linings
Rust

She must endure
the pulseless womb
Internally,
Empty

He will never feel this weight
Carried
in her pit, shriveling up
Potential
Against will

She will take on more

Despite this moment
Wedged under a
Ticking clock

Like counting down
Our rock planet teeters
Without her brace

It would be wise of man to
Expect the Fall.



Painting by Adolph von Menzel (1815-1905), 'Sister Emily sleeping' c. 1848 in Public Domain. 

Ex-ist

I am
feeling myself,
finally

Sinking
in-
to

This
warm pool of,
light
easily blood or

Life-like.


Painting by John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902), 'Figure in Sunlight' (Artists wife) c. 1890-1900 in [Public domain].

(w)hole sentences

This practice 
does not make perfection
but a percentage
lingers with something special.

There are notes everywhere
like atoms of crumpled 
origami sound making the shape
of scribble.

Misaligned,
a cacophony
anyone can blow or bang, shout and wail,
I am trying to make some music
but I cannot flesh out
the transition.

I was always fondest of shoes,
Like endings.

I wonder, while I look at all the
scattered pieces, 
amble across the landscape
of my desk like deer pathways
is why I cannot seem to finish...


Artwork by Hans Holbein (1497-1543), 'Studies of the hands of Erasmus of Rotterdam' in [Public domain].

Shifts

Today
I will
write
paint, read and make marks
in space
empty of purpose.

Tonight
I may
Sleep
In trust
A soul
Is given another wake.

Painting by Rogier van der Weyden [Public domain], 'Saint Luke drawing the Virgin',  c. 1435 in Public Domain. 

Muerto de la Noche

A solitary soul stirs
this night around
its geared dial.

Icy on the rocks,

all that matters
bends the steel air
sparks subdue any singes

While other carbon bodies
lie in their nests
heaving gentle breaths
through resting rib cages
my feathers fall out
and the kitten chases them
under the couch.

Watching the speed of time
and loaded with momentum,
and anticipation
for the light that breaks

anything it touches,

it dawned over me,
 (after all) an awareness
that all feathers fall
at the same speed coin wishes
sink
under the weight of water-

sometimes out of sight.

The brown widow and I weave
simultaneous gossamer threads
from what we have left
of the night that never
imposes its intimate knowledge

without our consent

and an entwined desire
to witness this place
we seem to not belong
but are required to prey in
for survival.

The kitten purrs in a ball,
the humans snore, fetal in their beds,
while I draw out long lines
the nocturnal pace
themselves
into the unforgivable light.


Artwork by Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), 'Figure reading at a table at night', medium-chalk, c. 1891 in Public Domain.

Counting downward

How many times
         have I worn a watch
(consistently)
         until it stopped
being consistent
         so I stopped wearing it
?

Why try
to rely
            upon such fragile devices
(like butterfly wings)
             that beat on deaf ears
while years
go by
like hours

?

Like most of us
I check the phone
for answers
to more than
Hello?
(without a pulse
that I can count)

How fast was it All
going
by day, by night
             -impossible to tell
ourselves or the others
without a second-hand
account.



Artwork by Winslow Homer, wood engraving, 'Another Year by the old clock' c. 1870 in Public Domain.