Two a.m.

I wake up early-
earlier than usual.
And I assume it must have been the moon
disturbing my sleep, with its intrusive and
garish moonlight on high
and the ghoulish nightmares
all rising to the surface.

When it finally rains, I am comforted
by the cloud cover,
which will luckily tuck me in tonight
and I should sleep tighter, making for more
muted sleeping conditions
with this welcome addition of white noise
atop clean white sheets.

It pours. It hails. It is dark.
And I wake-too early-
still-wondering
why this sinking icy feeling holds me here,
alert and anchored.
Awake. A constant pull, resistance and an
uprising washes over me, cold chains snap
forcing me violently to the surface,
gasping for air.

My two eyes try to adjust
to the bright white light,
where windows make mirrors
dark pupils shrink in the glare.
And I see, plainly,
it is too early to tell...



Painting by Johan Jongkind c. 1872 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Treasures of a culture

Fire and glass reflected as smoke in mirrors.

A fork in the road, litter, like this wrapper, bottle, vessel, hand tools.

Artisan: colored ink, in part cursive curls, heartfelt loops, and snares,

we wrapped, and rapped, enrapt and bound ourselves.

Every opening begins with Roman squares, agoras, and edges

worn blurry and thin by so many eyes through ages, brittle

print-finger smudges to be dusted and all the while,

porous rocks erode into grainy pixel flashes, storage

boxes stack up, clouds let go, and by marrow

calcification holds together

bricks of pressed clay
                                     -for shelter is always a wall.

Supporting para-graphs, columns, and beams-by

lighted button codes:
green, go, yellow, slow, red, blood, blue screen of death,

only to touch here, like plucked strings
of stereocilia stimulating

goosebumps in sound waves that wash over us in wet streams.

Eye contact, nerve endings, radiant warmth from a mortal smile,
laser focus, photography un-posed, unprepared, ad-libbing and adding

depth of perception, this is us-

Totaled and broken down to the smallest things

in order to count the time more accurately

in minute fractions of eternity,

Well, this is why we bury things. 




Photo credit By Max Peronius (1907-1946), Tankavaara c. 1934 in[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Thor's day

Lightning likes it when we reach up to touch the sky.

And, grounded as we are

lucky in keeping our electricity contained 

and kept a safe distance from the epicenter or eye

It is miraculous we survive, sometimes, like a flash-

in the way that it is so unexpected, sudden

and unbelievable-until it occurs to you. 

Miraculum, as in the object of wonder.

It happened to me on a Thursday in February, 

just past the noon hour.

I was punched in the chest-

windswept out with words-choking on this

wonder-full revelation.

Desperately I tried to grasp my breath 

midair and stuff it back in where it stings 

and has been so hollow

and in wrestling with this 

it may have sounded like crying or rain.

But the dam lids overflowed 

and I struggled to compose a normal sound

while my son grabs a beverage from the fridge behind me, 

I exhale-steadily

as if blowing out a wish.

It was a video I was supposed to watch, assigned, as in destiny.

The woman spoke of her life, nothing like mine. 

Then she spoke of suicide and asked why, why, why-

she was not asking for forgiveness.

She traded her story with a Buddhist, 

the words he chose to frame her parable were:

"You chose Them", I coughed, she repeated, “you Chose them.”

The accusation blinding, hence the tears we blinked back.

It changes Here.

Where things are twisted 

around & 

you break the descending karmic chain
and begin Free fall.

This is when my heart plummeted like lead into my pelvis,

my rib cage closed, and I gasped one last deep breath

before being born once again

on a Thursday in February.

“This is the miracle that happens every tie to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.” 

-Rainer Maria Rilke

         “Everybody holds the possibility of a miracle.” 

-Elizabeth David 

 “I’ve never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.” 

-Michel de Maontaigne

Painting by Mårten Eskil Winge (1825-1896), 'Thor's Battle' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Diurnal disbursements

Two night
terrors in a row
and one begins to feel the mixed reality
of day-dreams, what seems
light,
the photosphere,
assembles into bands of time
where body temperature correlates to color
and we are confined to a range,
endlessly scanning.

It seems the sensual burdens never cease,
perpetually sentenced to fixed perception
without the proper nouns, one feels
naked and utterly unequipped to resist
wishes and wherewithals,
comfort zones and one peace of mind.
In our comas, we can only succumb
to this and that-all
that we tell ourselves about infinities.

One often feels a strong momentum,
as if taken
on this ride around the clock, resigned to
eternally count our blessings.
All the nearby ember bodies are following us
and one feels curses, radiant heat, distinctly
a gravitation toward the bonfire sun
where horrors have no dark bodies
in which to hide.

Although, it is never the same as being awake.




Artwork (drawing and watercolor) by Odilon Redon, c. 1903 in[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Currency calculator

I worry when we need milk 

and wonder where the daily bread will come from.

Too many survive famine. 

Child support is over a week late. 
The Department holds the money it collects from others,
on behalf of others, extra days, 

in an interest-bearing account.
The Department makes more money
that way, it adds up in
arrears and years that cannot be spent
growing and splitting heirs.

The college decisions are coming in. 

We all wonder where this will take us. 

We need to pick a meal plan. She will not starve,
she hopes-
they better have good coffee. 

While driving to take the truck in for an unknown repair, 

the sky held up its coolest winter blue,
the air was crisp like minted dollars,

and I could not take my eyes off the sky
while riding home.

It said everything.

And utterly cloudless,
when I spy a shuttlecock of white, like a flash, in contrast to the blues,

I watched this meteoric figure against the broad daylight
falling, fading, falling, 
and finally, disappearing into the sky,
it all sunk in.

Like small talk, no granular attention is paid.
Burned up. I am broke anyway. 

Just like today. This week, I am weaker
than gravity.

Lighter with empty pockets and incinerating
into nothing,
but solid air pumping in and out of the chest

like fire and ice,
all the elements are there and it is enough 

for a poem. 

Photo credit By Clivelindsay at English Wikipedia, 'Comet McNaught with moon setting over the sea' [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Raking in the poetry

The record keepers and magnifiers
emphasized the purpose of poetry.
All of them, some that wear glasses,
some enshrined in plastic name clips.
All paper people
pretended
not just poets read poetry
as if listening was another way.

It was the concept, not the thing itself.
Grasping for a metaphor, clutching it like a baby spoon,
mush, mulch, nutrients, marrow, letting the heaviest bits
sink into oblivion as bullion or aether.
Comfort food. Settling.
Essences do not help with sleep and monotony,
pillows don't help with the blows of day
despite the changing positions or points of you
dealing with it and spitting feathers out.

The poet thinks his poems are the sharpest
because he has cleaved them out of his own
family tree and lay claim to uprooted and unfounded
murky concepts dim lit,
he has the callouses to prove it.

We have been warned about our
rites and rules of the word
which make or break a fine line between
make, made, pane and pain.
It always comes out as a color,
expression of tone that matches
the eye, radiant on the pyre
we warm up to the edges
with enough pacing.

Compliments come with a modest reading fee.
Only we poets read poetry, ideally free
from notoriety and ultimately forgotten.
We needed trees more than prose.
The leaf knows about leaves
from watching the Fall.

and greens in envy of the sun.

Poets lied

in the shadows thrown about, whistling

while they wait.


Painting By Ellen Robbins (1828–1905) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Double entendre: 4'33

Your Royal Madame,
Touche
I am a must be madman-I mean mad I am.
This incidence rather a coincidence,
                                           I think not.

It seems to me, it seems to be, and it just seems
an ironic twist of fate-wait-
                                     do I believe in that? Irony? Fate?

This is Shirley Sacrilegious? I’ve said that first name before-

No this is timing. Counting the time with you.
Not in a cage. Not a Cage. Nor Cagian but Timean era,
ergo, time and time again
-reduce-reuse-recycle-
wherein the cycle, rinse, sit and spin.

I met a girl, I met a poem, I meta read a poem
and know-know, know 'em-by heart, by shape,
by sound and better by sin tax, i-ambroken.

It was the eye. The i. Thy.
Universe. No place-like home. 

Always. Life imitates Art. Art imitates Life.
This goes there and that here and this fits and that works
and this is temporary.

And I culled, if that’s the word, took my due 

they said it was-but it sounds so sharp

and severe-the paper reaper is Here!

It is better when the cage is left open,
the books laid down comfortably,
the poems lined up and put to the side,
away, in the marginalia, as if part of the conversation
as if welcome in side,
where silverfish swim
and humans have traveled by sand
in glass hours of solitude.

Well, I just had to tell you-

I had to move the bookshelf in the bedroom.

Not the good one, the one opposite the bathroom.

To access the little door in the wall-not for me-

I think the wall was listening,
Modern Poetry, like water in the walls
falls through the pipes and vocal chords
like metronomes kept me calm.

Scaring sensitive books brittle by neglect,
oh I stirred it up all right! 

Two to six boxes stacked by the front door-

No need to be sad-it means room for more
not so delicious to corrosion.

No, I do not feel the need

to fingerprint them? Plate them. Serve or share them. 
Take something else, copied T's.  

The tribute Retallack retold, paginated for posterity.

The Others-Hah!
Obtuse out of context objects-

subjective-as though there was any other way

but to give those ones away.

The silence set in. Water absorbed. Cage closes in
the dust bunnies-butterflies-not yet-worms with wings.

Yeah, it is poetry answering life, the birds speak

the questions

that Timing is everything,
Those boxed up books are all Free!
Is this irony? Or just population control, Fate of the paper,
vaporous dates with destiny,
I see this not lasting, Dear John.

Art by Charles Emmanuel Biset, Still life with books, letter and tulip (1633–after 1693) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.