The View from Cold Mountain

We lay our own traps,
pay handsomely for the privilege,
borrow, in fact, more than we’ve ever had
just to slip our necks inside the noose.

Yep, we cook our own goose,
fry up golden eggs while we’re at it
and invite our friends to dine
as if it’s a joyous occasion.

We buy objects that no one needs, in bulk,
unpack them into cabinets, cavernous,
and lovingly recycle the plastic bags
by tying them tightly around our necks.

We shop so carefully for our poison,
hire experts to help us estimate
exactly how much to consume each month
so we can die alongside the neighbors,
lawns as perfect as cemetery plots.

We buy our chains. We buy our locks.
We save our pennies in a box,
fretting about where it’s cached
while dreaming of a larger box.

A mortgage is literally a pledge to death
for each and every debt is less
a measure of pleasure in present tense
than memory of a past defense
against that which awaits each of us
regardless of interest or last address.

heart lantern

come
bring your candles
bring the lantern of your heart
and strike the flame high
we are beloved friends, so long
warming each others' homes

come I will kindle the coals of you
and you will flare the fire of me, my life, my heart
lantern


this is the truest gift, vibrant, brighter
than spring air or bloom—
in the middle of cloud lid and winter's promise
of silence, of grey quiet,
we break out in lanterning, in frolic

this is why they call it housewarming.
friend the gift of your presence is a lantern
whose light will stay with me,
heart gladdening,
ever resuscitating, alive,
a beacon in memory and
kindling the skin, the fiber of me
my heart and health,
a full moon smiling, then wax and waning,
ever replenishing, visit and visit again,
brighter than bright and wholeness creating,

bright and beaconing again,
infinite and warm.

providing guidance, surefooted, dancing.
ever replenishing, visit and visit again,
brighter than bright and wholeness creating,
bright and beaconing,
infinite and warm.

excerpt, r2

engaged in this

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

what comes is what brings itself to this

what rests there and what moves on

these are both a part of the same stuff

the stuff of emergingrecedingpausing

bring your feeling sense to what I am

pointing to if you will, if you feel to

there is an ‘empty’ state or open, spacious,

receiving, nothing being grasped for or at

that pervades the formerly preoccupied

ground such that ground becomes being

being breathes just as awareness is quietly

cascadingshoweringbathing itself ever anew

things get done yet no doing ~ on and on

spontaneously refreshing, involuntarily,

with and without innocence both

nothing you can or need to do about it

but be in and as the receiving,

the flowering of this, engaged in this

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Freeform homage

If I were you,
I could snap open the moment,
an impatiens seed pod ejecting dozens of tiny eyes
into the corners of this personal sensation
sitting here
as it happens now

one eye to watch a sky so inviting
through blinds beneath the eave,
an aching toward sunshine and the way breezes
open the throat to drink,
and colors rise in my face

one eye to fly up, to see the rolling surface
of land and sea, two to sink
into the depths,
drift from eddies to roots
to sky again,
dancing between terrestrial chambers
like blood through the heart's mansion and

the hallways between moments,
the causeways that plant you in plains,
and bog me in the marsh for now,
and roll us all up again
into one skypod

and the longing, the longing
the impossible
throat longing as though
to emerge burstingly
having burst,
to what?

to sky beyond sky,
to your seeing
and to seeing beyond you,
to the reverse of shutting,
to swallow, to stare
stretch and plode

proto-birth verb spasms
plosion
puls
pel



...

One Way of Looking at a Blackboard

Amontilado twenty-fourno snub mountain ash,
Theo onomastic moving picture thingamabob
Wash theo eyeball ofay theo blackboard.

[This poem was composed by taking each word from the first stanza of Wallace Stevens' "Twenty Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and replacing it with the very next word in the dictionary.

"Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird."]

Thanksgiving Week Prompt: Poem After Poem

IMUNURIans, for this week of gratitude, let's explore our connection with other poets and our poems' connection to other poems. 

Choose a poet or a poem and write a new poem in response, homage, reply, rebuttal, compassion, echo, revision, update, addition, multiplication, highlight, shadow, unbridlement, connection, personalization, recasting, bronze, merlot, counterpoint, synergy, elevation, elephants, cinnabar, scouring pads.... what was I saying?

Please indicate the poet or poem you are referencing as part of your post or as a self-comment.

Explore the connections and shared energies among all poeming. You might pick a poem by another IMUNURI poet and offer a harmony part. You might take an ancient poem from another language and translate/update it. You could make a solemn or a playful nod to the entire body of work by a poet who has influenced you. Or Google "poem," find some random sample and delve into what you find there. There are as many possibilities as there are poems, or maybe more.

Thank you!

Labels:  response, poem