Hear me, here me

It is in the way one focuses in with their entire skin

to yammering Twains and muted Cages,

I have been listening, intent on comprehending

which requires presence of mind-a-ware-ness-or

No-thing from me.

I have filled my creased palms gathering

dust others have lain out for me,

 they say, fit me,

Fine.
So it may be.

The young lady with the feather in her hat-

the old lady with a crooked nose

saving face, the youth refuses to come out
behind memory

which is why mirrors won’t work in-side,

over-time.
They have me pegged,

and while wedged, with my arms tucked,

I have taken a moment to look around

and recognize my proximity 
to the precipice,

                                                to others on this plane

as day.

Painting by Winslow Homer, The Red Feather (1864) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

September steams

There were stars too-
and of course, it was clear as crystals
with a full ball of mercury rising up
near ninety degrees,
moon shadows with a blue halogen aura
shrank and shriveled,
well before sunrise
everything hung in place,

every breath was held
and humid from being inside the body
where courage gathers
like a photo collection,
(in single dimension)
that could be assembled in someway,
in chrono-or-logical order like constellations
that slip and slide down time lines,
yet no sense would penetrate
nor make land fall.

There I was, looking for something else,
out there
with me
dropping leaves
like I let go
of every thing
on dawns tip-toes,
through light night
pretending not to notice
the disturbing peace.





Painting by Martin Johnson Heade, Passionflowers and hummingbirds c. 1870-1883 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Venus visits

Lying here

In darkness,

That is never heavy enough,

I lift the leaden pen

Towards tissue paper sheets,

The scratching sometimes helps-

But it doesn’t get to it

There is no focus

Under this solar eclipse.

I mark this occasion,

With singed retinas,

A scar to never forget

The sight-

It was just the words

That found me weak and feebly forgetting

My lines and knots,

Loops and circularity, entanglement and

Coincidence,

Felt as a brush of the lash, a butterfly effect

Of heavenly bodies.


Drawing By From public domain book, Solar eclipse, Corona 1870 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Best wishes

Awoke enraged, not so abnormally early, 

as of lately, over the years.

It was

when the pieces of to-day come 

to-gether, jagged edges

fit like drifting continents

Mean-while 

I feel the Red Sea churning in me,

a chemical nadir or lake-effect

chill, the miasma of yester-day

post-comatose and 

it all seems circumstantial.

To each their own:

Reaction, dreams-re-action, re-sponse

in a more vulnerable way,

most appreciated

On Sundays

with all the

preaching, humility,

and alms, atonements that sound

off, and on

faint echoes-chants of fury flare up

As I smolder

screens and screams of forgiveness

do not alleviate the weight,

some may say, silently changing forms

from matter to steam

was all one should wish for

one another.




Painting by Frank Buchser, 'Portrait of a young woman' 1868 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Choral motes

Doomed to repeat,

Implies inherent circularity,

As if our orbit

Could interrupt

With just knowing the segments

Of hilarity,

Propulsion just doesn’t work that way.

In microcosmic scales

Up and down, within spins

All is held together

By this

Revolution

From cloth to cloud,

White was ideal as open, pure,

And alone

The maker makes more mess,

The observers became obsolete,

And cursed the eternal stream

Of colorists, art and first impressions

And one was moved

Spun around again,

Up and down

Came together

As if they must.


Drawing (lithograph) By Odilon Redon (France, Bordeaux, 1840-1916) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

(Indebtedness)

Do I owe an explanation

For the lack of contribution,

A waning flow to trickle to dry

Of petty profundities performed

with choreographed complexities,

chaos and an absence of exuberance 

exploded in

gesticulations,

not i.

Where my arms dangled limply, 

bulging and blue-tipped,

there was no more holding on

to words like wind and when

yet with

all loses I have gained

a fine-tuned 

moment-hum…

Artwork by Fernand Khnopff, c. 1883 in [Public domain or CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Draining the tank

Forced to shut it down,

I could blame the mind

and its tangents, divergents,

detours and erratic rays-

It was required, however,

silence inside,

the volume became unbearable

under the waiting 

behind healing.

Glances stolen by cocked arrows shot

straight from shoulder blades,

and daggers drawn across the word

arched with pain in glass sand, 

esses like snakes smolder

And some vacancy was needed, 

a clear horizon line-

some bleach, for feelings.

Yes, White-

now

Angels swallow song-

birds, as I sing along sharply

re-citing

the poetry written in the sky.

Artwork By James Yunge-Bateman, c. 1943 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.