Pulp

Oh bare soul

                    Ink stains

On white sheets

                 hinting impressions of what

came before

                    Without a dark mark made

Leaving no footprints or

                             creases and whatnot

Simply sinking in

                            a breeze shuffles

across the surfaces, 

                                      Lost in the sheaf

reams of lives, 

trembling forests,

                                     all are ashes too...

In the tree outside

the bedroom window

                                     Atop the tallest branch

A mockingbird gives an Aria

Jumping up in bursts, 

Flapping,

                Landing, bleating again

Relentlessly

                   it seems to me

that if a free spirit were

truly so

                     No one would ever know

The full story of a tree...

does one begin with roots-

                                 the buried seeds

nay, so I draw 

a delicate leaf

                                   Hanging mid-air

and am fixated

                        noticing the fallen

Bark below, scratches, and scars

That healed long before

                                       Now sloughed off

and suddenly I erupt 

                        laugh aloud

Along the same avian pitch

                                    Mocking my own

disbelief in the resilience

of composition

                           finding forms

of Liberty.

Erasing all I have done

In the air, irrigated charcoal

           a trace, a gentle summer 

Rain is coming

           so I jump up and go for a run

In the nearby woods

Blood pumping

                       through limbs

Pounding the soft earth

                      I carve a secret Path

instead 

of writing this poem.

Image Title: Bob; the story of our mocking-bird

Year: 1899 (1890s)

Authors: Lanier, Sidney, 1842-1881; Lanier, Charles Day. (from old catalog); Dugmore, Arthur Radclyffe, 1870- (from old catalog) illus

Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons

Contributing Library: The Library of Congress

Credit via Wikimdia Commons in Public Domain

Reciprocity

Both rules and laws can be broken

So what is the cause

And effect, re-

action to the action of say words like

Karma, luck, Fate,

and due course or so

It should follow, anywhichway

eyes for eyes and

Crossed Tees

The beginning, middle and

End of give and take

Or not thin lines like justice

Is it transactional

Back scratching and barter

What is fair trade when values

Are bendable

What can never be dependable

As a cause caused by

A butterfly swooping some

where when why was what

Made meaning.

TITLE: Friendship love and truth

CALL NUMBER: PGA - Currier & Ives--Friendship love and truth (A size) [P&P]

REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZC2-2373 (color film copy slide)

MEDIUM: 1 print : lithograph, hand-colored.

CREATED/PUBLISHED: New York : Published by Currier & Ives, c1874.

CREATOR: Currier & Ives.Source Wikimedia Commons, in Public Domain. 

Topophilia

It was the Place

I fell madly in love with

Not him, not the time.

It was always

That Place, all the time,

Lips raw from kissing her

Broad-shouldered salty shorelines

Lapping up

Barbeque sun and metallic rain storms

Alike.

The tourist ebb and flow,

Hats, cameras, new sandals,

coconut oil and seaweed

Wet sandstone and dripping agave

Too numerous to name such

Stimuli.

Looking back

Only hurts my neck

Nothing is the same

The tower crumbled

Bright as the days that were

Electric storms that were not

Sunshine and Roses

As most memories

Belie

Buried in the sand

Toes and shells, glass and seaweed

Never and forever

There.

Photo by me, 'Monsters house from goon' taken 11/12/2016.

Or deal

Memories are

Pick a card, any card,

except you do not choose

Well

we all carry a card or two

up a sleeve, lain

on the table

hence playing with

A full deck 

is rare

52 weeks

shuffle like thrown-up

cards, now the 

Five of clubs

Demands your decision.

Go fish for 

another

Hand read them

like palm lines

to call or stay

this time around

Krazy 8's and wild

Jokers interrupt as 

I shuffle through

these days,

Solitaire and surprised

at the random nature 

making a game

Of dealing with it.

Painting by Juan_Gris, 'Damier et cartes à jouer'  (Checkerboard and playing cards) c. 1915, Google Art Project in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Morsels of moments

We can't go back, pick up, pieces

Anymore

Than we can jump ahead 

To when we

Were nowhere

Together.

It was just right

After I left

A landing, a ledge

Caught me 

You fell past me

In a dream

Blood-stained hands

Grasping.

There was a river.

The sound conjures the divide

How it carries those times

And places

Elsewhere.

You got carried away

I took another way

Anyone's guess

To the sea, 

ultimately

Never again

One 

and the same.

Painting by David Cox -' On the Conway River, North Wales' - Google Art Project, date unknown in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. .

(Bone pile)

My lips are sealed with 

The caulk of deaf ears.

Born for this.

Lessons to be learned as chapters

Turned 

Over, like how to read our bodies

Instructions, building muscle

Memories such as

Tools we must learn how to use

Who speaks and who listens

Goes on and off 

As breath and tides, rhythm and

Numbers like thoughts sequence

And past tense

Lie in a moment

Between notes.

Painting by Wassily :Kandinsky - 'Silent, 1926' in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Before four

Must be some-one

Wakes me pre-dawn 

At 3

Mind a maze

Organs ablaze

Quiet cacophony

Stirring the still waters

Must be some-thing

Which must be known or

Revealed to the euphotic zone

Poetry and ghosts arise

And mingle, my solidity heavy

Disruptive to the lucid dream

Must have

Second thoughts

Choruses drone, stuck

So it seems, 

telling, reminding

Of lighter times 

Than the chasm and coffin can

Offer an anxious creature

Of habit and habitation,

A disheveled dwelling 

And the slumber until

The next hour

Or

Finding what I must be

Looking for. 

Painting by Edvard Munch - Sleepless Night. Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil c. 1920- MM.M.00076 - Munch Museum in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.