Relief Map

Maps help
with plot lines
direction and depth-
if the spacing is accurate-
to scale, even the unknowns
should be measured accordingly.

A guide
shows the popular points
of interest to some obscuring
the curvature of the surface to
others topography via metonymy
giving a greater gist of breadth with
markers that scratch the surface

As smells
are anything but incidental
like streams too insignificant to note
but make dead ends and detours
from the way it was
to the way we get to Be
finding from A point

You are Here
and Now
you know
Where you've been
topographically alleviated
From
lost in place.




Image By Batholith, Mt. Fuji (Wikimedia Commons) Batholith (Wikipedia) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mary Poppins (my balloon)

Do you ever wake up with a smile already waiting
behind your mask,
it feels and looks like
No worries,
it's all good,
my pleasure,
and all are true
and on that day
for some strong sensational vibe
that moves in rolling waves
that nothing can pierce your levitated mood
or drag down your magic carpet
-that without any specific reason or cause-
every-single-thing
makes perfect
sense,
it all adds up
it all works perfectly the way
it should, the right answer,
poetic justice, (re:)solutions and serendipity
and
it's all real?

Not really?
Me neither.



Image detail: Hot air balloon from poster "Le Ballon, bulletin trimestriel de toutes les ascensions; 6me année Janvier, Février, Mars 1883. Un numéro: 75 centimes. Pour tous les états compris dans l'Union Générale des Postes. Rédaction et bureaux A. Brissonnet, Propriétaire Gérant, 127, Bd. Sébastopol, Paris. Advertising for the French aeronautical journal "Le Ballon" shows a balloon carrying two passengers flying in the clouds Chromolithograph by E. Pichot, imprimeur, Paris, 1883.

The Earth in equipoise

Home,
the word hums
and soothes in smooth repose,
perpetually proves, be-
longing, to know hospitable
conditions are predictable.

We hold these truths
in suspension,
taut in timely tension,
grounded in granite,
equating gravity
with magnanimous motive.

She spins out
like a top
to a point
where sound and light
are white
in stasis
harm-ony
equate-or
aligned in orbital
epi-phany.
Home.


Image taken By NASA/Scott Kelly from ISS 7/19/2015, Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Earth [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dated 1432

Dated 1432
and here I am
looking...
                       If the artist
                       could only look back
                       too,
me admiring...
Transfixed.
And amongst
a lavish soiree
a veritas bouquet
                       death and life
displayed        and splayed
out-
                       hung crucified-
                       elaborated suffering, of the antiquity.

The lives
in the stills.
The (pro)posed lives
in the pastorals.
The captured chrysalis,
by stroke.
                        In wealthy company of all this
excessive impression
is-tic motif-
                        the money felt misplaced,
so it said subjectively.

And those people holding place
in the Portraiture room
                        -No Photographs-
needed.
                        the encounter is etched,
                        with abrasive stares-
over time.

On the walls
                        the writing of fates
                        in gilt frames
                        of a frozen time
                        of a minds eye
that was never there
but now,
                       while I am looking back
and there.





Image of painting by Cornelis Bisschop  (not the one referenced in this poem) Allegory on the Raid at Chatham dated 1667 [Public domain, Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Teaching us (poetry)

Her teacher told her a telling tale
of typical teenage turmoil
her own tale
and it was all true.

Learn from me, don't do as I did,
learn the lesson the easy way,
as tutors typically say.

Touched and teary
by the story
she thought she might
want to write a poem
with all the emotional vividry...

She mused on this
as the class continued.
But then,
the teacher yawned
and apologized
for her dreary demeanor
that day, distracting her
another way.

The teacher then explained
how her little baby boy,
had nightmares the night before
keeping her awake until 4,
it was about dinosaurs
inside his pillowcase.

She scribbled all this frantically,
the poem coming faster than she
could write.
She missed the end of the lecture,
but got the point,
she learned a lesson
she will never forget,
poetry is taught in many ways.




Image of painting by Franz Nölken [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dumb Smart Phones

Unplugged used to mean,
it is not plugged into the socket.
Unplugged on MTV
meant acoustic music, once.
Unplug-to Oprah
means meditation.

Off the grid means-
off the grid.
Where is the grid again?
Everywhere there is signal.
Off the grid is no signal.
No signal means no bars
no bars means off the grid.

No signal means no dial tone,
no signal means no sign of life,
no sign of life means it is dead.

My teen daughters phone died.
She is mourning
her loss of
social life.
She is off the grid
but fully charged
and still getting signals, stronger now
and coming back to (nonvirtual) life.





 Photo taken By Ashraf Siddiqui [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Gusty or gutsy

If the wind would stop
for a moment, I would know
better to be still.



Image of painting by Winslow Homer [Public domain], The Dinner Horn (1870)via Wikimedia Commons.