Tune

i.

if sound were a chamber, walls with windows,

(like the inside of my head)

the sounds my mind makes would be

more crisp than yowl

more staccato than inflammatory

an incisive moment of all-sound

cacaphonic not symphonic

i don't know where to carry the boombox of me to

where to play the music that is me, that my thinking

produces. it feels like there's no where

in the freeway and mower hum a day world

airplane guzzlebuzz

for me, perhaps the faroff noon birdsong

is closer, better than clocktick

maybe i sound

more like apple blossoms, less like garbage truck

more rockshine, less garlic press

more chimetone, less crow caw

more magnolia flower spires and azalea blasts, less truck roar and brakegash

ii.

mother dying in a hospital bed

dying more quickly than you or i

at the asymptotic almost-null point

where time expands outward

bridging monstrous chasms

this is when all sound falls away

when time opens up like the ruddy giddy

shutter-stop caesura

between standing up

and finding yourself passed out on the floor

five nurses clucking

iii.

may time always carry us so,

some times a bridge, some time is a gurney

comes to a close, pushes us through the pinprick

(needleprick)

into something more spacious than this, something

fabulous, more like flying carpets, less like hospital gowns

iv.

when my mind, the sound chamber

of me, recomposes itself

after this rattleblast hospital trauma

(only a moment of witnessing the endless trauma that is her daily ken)

settles, how will this have changed my whistle?

what will the acoustics be like

in my headstrong head?

i pray for choral tuning, bell-like, amphoric

so that is my word, my one word, my fe-fye-fo

TUNE TUNE TUNE TUNE

blow across the lid of me

wind of making

tune me whole

This Week's Prompt: Approaching the One syllable - Containing Infinity

Words like Om (Aum) - represent single syllable sounds encompassing many sounds within them.

Yowl. Craw. Plume. Swee. Gong. Chuff. Flum.

What single-syllable sound would you choose for your epiphany? And what poem would express and context that sound?

A potentially fruitful tangent:

(A poet's rendering:) Asymptotes in math represent that the closer you get to a point, the more infinite the space remaining.

Related lyrics for a riff:

Slip slidin' away

Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

How can a sound be a chamber for sounds within it?

Labels: yowl, poem, poet's moniker

Graphic credit - Wikimedia - Asymptote - in context

No crisis

Beside and beneath the rows of wheels,
the crow moves her crumb with a sound like “mine!”

At last, I’m in short sleeves again, a Hawaiian print
that attracts bees. The neglected sidewalk back
to my desk, cars pass above and beside me.
This is Marin and the world. Summer promises
a tiredness, the urge to unplug while deadlines
turn brittle; anyway, I’d just as soon get fired,

drop to sand as warm as wintertime flannel or
into grass to become the tomato in the salad,
to penetrate the backyard, treasure map in hand,
and stop there by the broken statue, twining
cobwebs around my pinkie. Setting out to rake
the leaves from the library of last autumn,
I stay to the shaded stacks, then let the piles sit.
They could melt away while I rest on a stucco wall,

using the stillness to try to unknot this feeling,
this urgency, this incessant incessantness
that something must be done, now and always,
faster, more efficiently, for the good, for me,
for you, to make everything worthwhile.

Such is the knot. Such is the shady spot.
The smell of jasmine will move me
when we are ready. There is no energy crisis.

Poetry weeds

On
Man blackened
manless hill
Yellow pollen
blazes sun warmed fertility.
Poetry weeds
f*ck in air
Earth’s self cure.

creation (how poetry can save the earth): the musical, concept treatment 1

Sounds:
percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

oboes and flutes: high ethereal long slow sounds

clarinet: low slow sounds, pulsing alternating with the oboes and flutes

(Direction: oboe, flute, and clarinet weave around behind the narration, except for the noted percussion pulses)

Narrator, lecture-style, part 1:

in the jam, in the boot of the car, in the boot of the year, near 2012
when all around with arms upraised the mad scramble
clickety split of the roaring furnace of a warming planet
makes us think we've gone to hell in a handbasket,
poetry reminds us that there is all the time in the world

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

poems dilate time, create nests of leisure and spaciousness
creativity, as in the expansive moments of our most recent expansion
BIG BANG where change happened in milli-jilli-nanoseconds
creativity also can slow us down, into the breath whisper silent
stillness between eye blinks

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

poems bring us back to our hearts, where we connect
with the infernal heat of all creation
including the guidance from other star peoples
that we are held in cycles beyond our ken
nestled in the nest of earth, woven of feathers and fluff,
a preciousness pervades

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

by awakening love,
poetry can save the earth
by resuscitating our capacity to care, our earth empathy
poetry can save the earth
by reminding us of what we share,
poetry saves us, to be whole and present, right here,
right now right here right now
[Direction: "right here, right now" continues and threads through percussive interlude]

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

Because I am a molecule, a cell in the body of Gaia
and poems are like ribbons of DNA, a code of guidance
in how we can proceed to thrive,
poems are part of the earth,
can save the earth, aché!

percussion backbeat, in a pulse - this time with oboes and clarinets also, also with echoes of the last two stanzas, a culminating flash of furling fires of creativity: "right now right here right now" and the words of the last stanza:
ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick
ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

Scooter Cascadia 5-3-11 12:19pm

The Prompt Now: Can Poetry Save the Earth?

In a time with a perception of energy scarcity, how can poetry help change climate change? How can poetry help us plug into a gejillion watt source of energy, everywhere available: human creativity?

What if we were able to solve the energy crisis by plugging into our creativity, directly? What would the world look like?

Take a flight of fancy and imagine, for better or for worse, literally or metaphorically (or metaphysically)... How can poetry save the Earth?

If you're interested in this topic, check out this recent book: John Felstiner's Can Poetry Save the Earth? (2009)

Keywords: poem, energy, [poet's tagline nickname]

Cleopatra - beloved by her father

Behold. Cleopatra.
The richest woman in the world holds a deadly asp
to her bare nipple.
Ouch! Touche!
She had searched the Egyptian dynasty for the
perfect poison to give Anthony - the Playboy.
She used subjugated subjects for her trials.
Some lived, some died . like you and me.
So Cleopatra came to milk the asp for its venom
that would be Anthony's last
She stood atop a block of petrified wood
outside of Ephesus where she and Anthony after they wed
honeymooned in the past.
as
Paul spoke in the amphitheatre
of
other worldly things
instead of
the asp that then struck Cleopatra dead.

Falling Swan

“Falling Swan”

The river bucks its bed, rising erect

upon its flowing fork. What is a swan

that’s not a river? Rocks, flows, plucks, drops, drifts

all wriggling in in the temporal delight

of gravity defiance. Strings take flight!

As when waves break into misty insects,

the whole seems to split suddenly and fall

back into a familiar bed, but then,

the reclined body hovers, suspended,

beyond angelic midair river swan.

[This is based on a still from a video clip, viewable here:
http://www.openingceremony.us/entry.asp?pid=3238&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Very%20Short%20List%20-%20Daily&utm_campaign=VSL]

blue boy

the painter gave me my brother's face
i was always running in the woods
scruffian mudflap
knee scowl tree tromp



why they gussied me up
and the painter stole sky for my cloth
i'll never know



i was a force of nature
not this delicate aristocrat
they stole my unborn brother's face
shined me beyond recognition
and made me into a boy
stole the sky and moved all the dirt to the back
what kind of picture is that?

This week's prompt: Ekphrasis (4/18-4/24)

Ekphrasis is the dramatic description
of a visual artwork in the medium of words.

This week, choose a work of art as a starting point. Then write a poem
to respond, describe, deepen, reflect, explore, react, explain, transcend...

If possible, post the image with your poem (using the insert image function—
the button in the toolbar that looks like a tiny landscape painting), or post a link to the image
in your comments or as part of your post.

The work pictured here is by Donald Tarahonich.

Keywords: poem, ekphrasis, your name.

ethical lacunae: worldwish

i.
in the phone conversation
she speaks of liking silences
[when the person we're supposed to be helping
and haven't
is flummoxed to find euphemisms
for their disappointment]

"liking" here means
savoring someone's discomfiture--
which is something
that is ethically co
m
promising

ii.
last night i watched the new star trek
on hd - first time watching on that type of machine -
and i knew i was lost forever to the bright
deep beauty
on the other side of the wall
where it is still possible to be gallant, just,
and make a difference

i will walk through, doubtless

iii.
is this better than liking terse walls of silences,
to prefer
escape?

iv.
the deeper worldwish
in the heart of me
is for right-here-breath,
staying-with,
abiding

the notsilent silence of tidal windtreebreathing
the notsilent peace of skin-in-earth

Plan 2 - a short story in progress

Plan 2 – a short story in progress

Plan 2 heard its rice burn whine just before the motorcycle pulled up near where he sat. The operator was a guy wearing a blue neck kerchief and a helmet with blue and red x-rays on either side. He was mustacheless with a blond goatee. His blond hair came out from behind his gray helmet. He was wearing red high tops with green laces. The bike was an imported Panda VI chrome and red. The guy backed the bike into the curb. Plan 2 came over and got on back.

“Where to?” the guy asked

“Santa Cruz dude”.

“That’s in California man.”

“I know. Let’s stop at Tulane first”.

“Who ya gonna call” read the banner flying from a wooden two-story Tulane student apartment building. Across the street from it an answer on another white banner with black dripping oily ink

. 1-800-BLOWOUT Their toll-free number provides a clue

As the cycle slowed then stopped Plan 2 hopped off and went around the back of the blowout banner building. The wooden steps to the second floor were red-paint flecked and slippery from too hot sun. At the top there was no one visible through the glass window of the door. Plan 2 felt the door knob turn under his hand and he strode in. He went down the hall to number 23 and did a light three rap knock. Tuh tuh pause tuhng. A blond girl wearing après ski boots with fake fur over blue jeans and a levi blouse tied at the waist answered. She smiled and said “That was fast”. Plan 2 reached in his pocket and handed her a white envelope. She reached into her jean’s pocket and pulled out a silver money clip and counted off 3 twenties. Plan 2 looked up from her bare belly button took the cash and said “ See ya”.

II

Plan 2 dialed on his phone that 1-800 BLOWOUT number and was directed to a menu where he pressed 2 for Clean-up opportunities. It reminded him of the options courts gave for weekend service. One time he even got credit for volunteering time at an art center doing screen printing. He had liked that. There had been women and paints and cool machinery. Now he got another 504 area code number to follow up through. He called and finally got a live person who said he had to complete a phone interview to proceed any further. Cool. He said he was ready.

1-800 Blowout Survey

“Can you fish?”

“Can you operate a portable P.C.?”

“Are you allergic to any chemicals?”

“Can you swim?”

“Do you have a car?”

“Do you have a driver’s license?”

& that was it. Leave your cell phone number & an email address.

Plan 2 tugged his hat down low dialed his cell again & punched Lisa’s #.

“Man, I just did the 1-800-Blowout survey.”

“And?”

“They want to know if you can fish.”

“And?”

“Anyone can fish.”

“I can’t.”

“I told them I can.”

“You better watch out. They will send you to clean up one of the alligator swamps.”

“They might. Well, wish me luck Lisa.”

“Good luck.”

“See you later.”

“After a while.”

Plan 2 snapped his cell shut like it was an alligator’s jaws.

query

What is your true nature, it asks me,
Part lover, part Zen teacher,
slapping the back of my hand
Til I awaken
You want mountain? Easy--
Sling me across the landscape
like the body of a voluptuous
sleeping grandmother
yes,
a voluptuous, sleeping
grandmother,
or a river
calling one fickle moment after next--
go on, just try to step into me twice

I could claim my calm pool and my drop
rapids and my many many eddies
But that’s too easy
because really what lies at the bottom
of each breath

is the line of ants doing the bunny-hop
along the edge of my bathtub,
and you know what we are all asking,
what you are already thinking—

Why do ants carry their dead?

this tiny army of pumped-up amazons
hoist their fallen sisters onto their backs
and carry this mystery with each body,
as they spill into the hole at the edge of the caulking

..they carry them back and devour them to absorb their memories

...they are delivered to the great ant graveyard
and laid to rest where their sisters,
like weeping elephants, will visit
season after season, to graze their antennae
against the beloved and hollow exoskeletons

..that when they tap each other as they pass
on opposite commutes, they’re playing
an endless game of telephone,
so when the deceased are dismantled
like old motherboards
the punchline data is finally retrieved,
the fruit of a million messages
passed a million times.

I sit for 20 days in silence,
every moment a wrestling match
with god, and a hope
to emerge with my life purpose,
or at least a better sense of humor.
Instead, I emerge from the cave
with only this:
Ants..carry…dead…why?
and the oracle I consult
heaves up a thousand pages of Darwin
and a thousand more, asking the same question

I know the answer is there, but I prefer,
I think, to end my days not knowing,
but imagining,

because
every time I ask, that long line
of the humble and mighty sisters
carries me back to the colony
where everything,
sublime and grotesque,
is happening at once

This Week's Prompt: Playing Telephone

During this time of Mercury retrograde, this week's prompt relates to the telephone. Write a poem where the lines play telephone with each other, or where the poem is sparked by a line from a telephone conversation. Modern riff: text or tweet sparks the verse.

Alternately, on a Star Trek riff, how can poetry be like telephone conversations with the past or future, or with some other part of ourselves? What would you want your Star Trek communicator to look like and function as? -- Or what would your character's signature line be, rather than "Beam me up, Scotty"?

Bonus: a Star Trek Communicator sound - this one with music

Post keyword labels: telephone, poem, [poet's moniker]

every question

only north facing shadow pockets still cradle snow now
hope's eager trembling made flesh
looks like daffodils plump emerald leaves
only 2 inches high when it snowed again
and again
now at 4 inches they have decided to make a run for it
their elongated swelling explains how
crumpled yellow satin, bunched and morphing,
is gathering everything it has to fling itself
(how opening is like a leap and a freefall)
and uncurl into this decidedly uncertain world.
it is the answer, the same answer everywhere
to almost every question i ask.
the river, slamming our april fools snow down into the valley,
agrees.
guttural cooing to and fro,
the tree hidden bard owls repeat it.
teenagers strut in sudden april tee shirts,
they know too.
spring hopes eternal.
and the world answers every question i pose
straight from the senses of babes
now now now now now.

Drum Solo - My Icon

box harp

rattletrap luster of the box
from penney's, sunrise peach, bent-ended
with the rubber bands arrayed
in longwise plinths

i am in the strumming fingers
of this gimcrack lyre
the music rising as air castles
from this fount of pling



2 april '2011

Squeezebox Sonnet

This Week's Prompt: Ukelele Voice/What is Your Music?

What if we are each musical instruments? For you or someone you know or imagine, name your instrument. Describe the sound, quality, timbre, look. What is your music?

Are they organ-ic or do they harp? Do you strum or pluck? Is your sound shrill or do you soothe? Do you play well with others?

If you were evangelizing your instrument, what would you do to espouse it? The Ukelele Society of Connecticut wants to recruit 1 million ukelele players and encourages libraries to have free ukeleles for checkout!

Feel welcome to interpret this broadly or riff on this theme. The ukelele's the limit...

Keyword labels: poem, ukelele, [poet's moniker]

Image Credits: Angel with Ukelele - Painting by Chet Saur of Darien, Connecticut; Blue Painted Ukelele by Mr. Christoph Mueller

when i am old and the wind asks me

as if taking advice
from the movement of greening willow branch,

chartreuse sproutly proudness flex and flocking,

i learn to follow the wind
all in one directly:
full, deep bough-breaths of strands-in-wind.

so when i love you,
let it be like kelp in ocean all moving leeward then land
ward let me pulse
and not pause in staccato ratio-(bana)nality

keeping on moving sliding gliding glowing
flowing fluffing flighting alighting sipping flipping
kiting spriting lefting righting
not one but only one of a thrillion shimmering
butterflies on a monarching tree
in warming climes, climbing northwards
as the sun moves, toward the sun

flowing-fluff and tilting
with the wind and flowing-moving-
toward the warmth

when i am old and the wind asks me
if i have stayed true to the flowing sunward basking
she will have to keep going
to touch me, for i will be faithful
and being both one-with-cloud riding the bareback
of her, wind, i will also be just ahead there
near where the moon (the night sun) is rising, skate-breath-surfing
on the limn where day is turning
flowing
into night
night
night

she will never catch me to ask
what i have become


27 mars 42011

Nature's Answer - Downstream my pain collects

Downstream my pain collects


Downstream my pain collects
Nightly neglect
Lame tree limbed talk
Til dawn lying in wait walk
Seeps into hearts delay
Meets wet bottom today
Downstream my pain collects
Red & white regrets
Shame clung on a clock
Still my body hugs rock
Green water non-stop
Leaps over me top
Keeps coming & going away
& leaves spray
Soaked hair
Not afraid to let go there

"March"

Why do we keep changing our minds, March sky?
When does spring start? (Others are asking, too.)
I feel you, March, your confusion of whys,
your cross tides of opaque gray and clear blue.
Sunshine unhats our bald domes while on high,

a cloud skyline builds in all gray-scale moods.
Wishes and circumstances mix to gray.
We worry our daughter has more than flu—
asthma, we fear, from this commercial bay.
Daydream: we relocate to Hawaii—

except it’s pricey with no jobs, they say.
Our decisions are so multilayered—
our minds change when moths flap in Malaysia.
As life unfolds, we drop what we preferred.
The order is: march. May I march with you?

The last step was proved by what we weathered.
Your next cloudburst catches me unsheltered.

This Week's Prompt: Nature's Answer

William Stafford wrote this poem:

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

—William Stafford

Respond to this poem or write a similar one. What in nature would you want to answer a question about the mistakes you have made? If not this question, what question would you have someone ask, and how would nature (lightning, beehive, trout brook, etc.) relate a response?

keywords: poem, answer, [poet's tagging nickname]

Randomize too - Hurt's Scent

Hurt’s Scent

A random rattling from the wall sink
may have announced more than noisy pipes
(maybe)
colored Pi amusements
Patching smiles onto children’s chaos
or
Fog dream bursts
substituting cerise survival notes
of
Wet white apple blossoms
for
Hurt’s scent not missed

Better than Imagined

I sought out the darkness, savored it,
listened to the sirens
who begged to be kicked from the cliffs.
I took their breath away
literally, sensually, consensually.

They asked for direction and I made them kneel.
They asked for relief and I made them sob.
They asked for ecstasy and I left bruises.
They asked and I gave and it was good.

I walked into dreams, into mine, into others’.
I stole fistfuls of silent desires
and left them shrieking in public places.
I went beyond the borders of this world.

I went willingly and came back bloody.
Stumbling numb, I arrived
a stranger at my own table.
It was worth it. It was the only way through.

Do not listen to the fundamentalists.
Hear me speak, an evangelist of your imagination.
You must feed the appetites to sate them…
but only if you’re willing to fill yourself so full of beauty
that you may end up retching on your own identity.

I walked in the darkness because it was necessary.
Now I awaken at the horizon, my heart blazing.
It is blinding. It is beautiful. I delight in it. The light.
And here you are, pure and perfect, waiting for me to emerge.

Road sign Immigrant Leaf hope

Fear, the faultline of near misses

bleeding a churlish stain on the lee side of sure

can’t ever leave the cantilever

on the road to remote

immigrant passes blanched like clean sheets

peeling green-bean-strings into fiddle-head soup

leaves a twang on your tongue

if you sip it right

passing

hunkering under a larch
-more a lurch-
but shaded from rain anyway and its signature wet
plummet from ambiguous clouds to committed earth,

we trade smokes
crouched in ditches more sane
than war trenches,
defenseless, in fact,
from falling potato-sized drops
hurtling from the farm fields of heaven.

we are past sarcasms and wit,
so sodden the sudden breaks of blue -
soft and roiling crescents of sky -
are like music, or a promise from summer:
we lean on these.

we prefer polka to
international waltzes,
but in this cold relentless spring
time passes like bricks laid on walls that run across the horizon like
Great Walls of sunset.
we cannot dance yet,
feet screwed to muddirtearth
becoming one with the churnedsplatmurk
night coming
and the cold advances

we thank the stars we cannot see
that we are only hunkered here
sacrificing comforts
to see moonrise, and not
to shoot an unknown enemy

Nein One One

[The random words I used for this poem are in bold type]

I was a shy and guarded young bank exec
burning out my esophagus on breath mints and Marlboros
with little reverence for those not upwardly bound.

Each morning I downed two scrambled eggs,

three tabs of Concerta with high octane Starbucks

to keep distraction at bay,

commuted to work absorbed in audio books

on motivation, risk, and investment,

trusting fully in the omniscience

of finance gurus

and their high-stakes investment advice

until that cold morning when two wild geese

crashed into my office tower

and the resulting explosions that did not occur

reminded me of my unfinished life

and the irreversible damage i might not inflict

upon the precious and fragile world.

Teddy’s Grave

Under the repetitious tap of an indecisive rain,
a child’s first favorite toy turns to pulp.
Can it be saved? Her life is turning away
in a new shower of sparks, in her new beliefs
with their chemical base, in a craniosacral stew
boiled since her birthday.

This toy’s tinsel that charmed her
before she could speak mixes uneasily
into the ancient soil. Everything comes
to get what it will have. I don’t know
what I mean, here, finding the old thing,
smiling at what I can’t say. I sniff
through the rain and put that back,
right there, back to its decay.

Randomize -A Sliver of a Lie

A Sliver of a Lie

I have boiled tinsel
to turn water silver
I have had a craniosacral tap
to save my liver
I sniff repetition & sneeze
slam drunks
Tap Tap Tap
A random rattling rap
Thoughts per minute past
A random rattling rap
contains the sliver of
My lie last
So small so little
like me
only 5 ft 3

Sunrise Crumbs Sticky Raincoat

I wake up in the rocking chair at sunrise,
the front of my raincoat sticky with crumbs.

My head throbs like a bass amp, suggesting
I’ll soon be receiving another message
in the form of a microbe.

I search for caffeine with the cold focus of a shark,
but we’ve already blown this week’s wages
on a few sticks of firewood and some buttered pasta.

Nights in this flat are so frigid I suspect
we’ll survive only by setting our hair ablaze
as broken moths batter the panes in hopeless prayer.

This is our garden. In need of weeding.

This is the flabby patrimony passed to us
by fathers who slid out the door when no one was watching.

So despite mama’s precautions,
here we are — the knights of Haight —
swearing oaths facedown in the dirt.

We wager cigarettes we don’t have over hands of euchre.

I bet my crutches on a sure thing — and lost —
as if you could vacuum a diamond out of this filthy carpet
or pan up gold in the open tank of our noisome toilet.

There’s no one watching over us now (except the crows)
and if you plan to stay, brother, trust me:
just keep your jacket on at all hours.

It's warmer that way, and you never know
when we'll have to make a swift exit.

This Week's Prompt: Randomize

http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx
http://creativitygames.net/random-word-generator
http://www.wordconstructor.com/
http://coyotecult.com/tools/randomwordgenerator.php

Each of these links will take you to a Random Word Generator. Some return real words, and some generate new words. Some allow you to determine the number or type of word you generate.

Try a couple.

Then generate some random words for yourself to use in a poem. You can include your word list in your post or put in the comments section.

Labels: poem, random, your tag

Song, I am

I am late,

again,

but worth waiting for

I be the god in the glottal stop

that can stop traffic,

put out streetlights in my sleep.

I am the cello-waisted

baritone under your breath,

makes the knees of bees

quiver in their hives,

Honey

I am the haze in Monet’s gaze,

a cat purring on your

sacred sacrum

while you dream

of roots reaching down to trace

the fractal weave of leaves,

the bloom of your lungs, singing,

bringing the be to becoming,

thrumming

the strings of all those lost pianos

in Iowa fields, humming

a sea of middle-C’s

I am the sea change and return

I am the conclusion, foregone,

the forlorn beginning

of beginning again,

and again, a wren

wriggling the first worm

under her gibbous moon

the gibbon grinning

with the inside joke of every punch-

line

saying,

not so bad, baby,

not too late:

you
were worth
waiting for

Sing yourself - On track

On track

“On track”

Side track

Side rail

Discarded rail

Train tracks may be crossed in many places

Mind no anatomical heed

Turn off your magnetic attraction before approaching this powerful thorough way

of the iron breed

Leave no penny leave no traces

Stations

Slow moving yards

“All aboard”

a few haikus revealing self

this moment right now
is all i really know well
so please don't miss it.

*****************
hardscrabble farm kid
my blood runs thick with forests
that never get felled.

*****************
song of me wild flung
also soft in the shower
even mice can hear.

Better off wild / better off quiet

There is no beauty greater than I, sitting soundlessly on the ground until the time I rise.

I could jump in the lake or run down the hill keeping warm on adrenaline and zany abandon.

In dreams, Dr. Seuss trades drawings with me. Mick Jagger feels I’m a freath of bresh air.

Using mnemonic devices, I manage to check off items on the to do lists in my dreams.

A hundred poems a day and a novel get lost in the wind between my mind and the writing.

Empires treat my blood like gold. The violence is not my fault, but sometimes troubles me.

My body upon waking is the heaviest thing in the house. Elephants could not move me.

Any of my motes, acting alone, can heat the air in a room, but to cool it all must act in concert.

Top to bottom, the business world (gratefully) grinds to a standstill the days I play hooky.

The ocean will make me a fine bed where I will be able to roll all night and never fall out.

Sloppy Harvest

I'm trying to catch up on several prompts I missed in recent weeks, and what better way to get started than with the challenge to run a race and write a poem in 75 seconds or less. Here's what happened when I took that dare, in the order these things came out of me. I've only left a couple of takes on the editing-room floor, and I tried not to tinker too much with what was on the page. I think I ended up with the lyrics to fourteen B-sides. Anyway, let's unleash the doggerel...

A greyhound flies down the line.
“Spinach, tonight?” says the man with the cigar.
“No, no, no. Place or show. Otherwise, I’m not eating at all,”
she replies, showing him the ticket in her hand.
And that’s how it went in those days,
when we were young and selling ourselves for Caesar.

**

Hit me. I’ll take another.
I’ll buy a vowel.
I’ll take a train to the other side of the oyster.
I’m riding what you’re hiding
and dying for the dream.

Hit me. I’ll take another.
I’m on fire.
I’ll retire.
I’m drowning my sorrows in water.
Firewater really oughta solve something.

Right? A solvent.

**

Scrubbing the backs of our minds we find the time that we were in Syria and went to the seaside only to find everything sliding off the edge of the earth into an afternoon of asteroids and that’s annoying when it’s not really what you planned for an outing with the kids. What’s a guy to do?

**

Another attempt. The bell and off we go.
It’s almost like swinging, desperately for your life,
against the fists of some other sick animal
thrown in the ring with you and trying to prove
its self-worth through vicious metaphors and wicked verbs
against the jaw, the ear, the kidney, the eyes.
It hurts to rip it up and lay it on the page. It hurts.

**

Too strict? I’m much too strict with myself.
Give me the rules and I play by the rules.
That’s the kind of fool I am.
Too strict? I’m much too strict with myself.
Tell me how it’s done and I’ll do it.
Kind? I’m much too kind with my hands.
My mind is another matter entirely,
judging, jeering, jangling at all hours.
Strict, and on the other hand too kind.

**

Running in the three-legged race at that picnic place
and all we know is that when this is over
we’ll really jump in the sack.

**

Off they go. Headlong. Headstrong. Young and nothin’ stops them.
Home they come. Burnt and jaded, blue jeans faded, and nothin’ll be the same.
That’s the story, again and again, the search for glory and the prodigal crash.
And ask yourself, when the pup comes back with its tail between its legs,
what if I tried to fly with these clumsy paws? Who would catch me, sweet?
Who would patch me up?

**

Focus breaks down the second the sound
of the keys in the lock of the internet turn,
keys clicking through the linking of her obsessions,
embarrassed sessions of nothing she’d like to tell.

But everyone knows her well – so no surprise waits inside
for history’s menu. She’ll clear her cache and rewrite it,
she thinks, kidding herself. She’s just a kid
with a much too powerful toy.

**

The editor awakes before you do,
and is already inspecting the way you make breakfast,
the temperature of the shower, the lateness of the hour.
Shouldn’t you have been awake by now, you ask yourself.
Shouldn’t you have been different than you are?
Every minute of every day. Who’s to say
the words would be better if you gave them time?

**

And then he came along,
an ivory-billed woodpecker
with something to prove.
Sat on the bar and told me his tale,
just for the price of a bottle of ale.
And I’m not sure who to believe.
Everyone else said he was nuts,
but the bayou never looked the same
after he explained
the way it all went down.
That’s why I moved to town.
I never looked back.
Packed up my bag and went down the levee.
No, I never looked back.

**

If I was a writer other than the writer I am
I wouldn’t sit and writhe here and wonder
what letters would come out of my pen.
But I’m the writer who’s a survivor
of living in editing hell.
So I’d be a liar if I put down a line here
that wasn’t quite ready to fail.

**

Funny. I’ve been here before.
I think I’ve dug a hole exactly this deep with a different shovel.
I dug three holes just like it, ten feet apart, with three different shovels.
If I recall correctly, the next step is
to clamber out of the hole
and blame someone else.
So let’s get on with it.

**

Just freeze in one place. That’s one way to deal with it.
Back up to see if you can escape. That’s how a cat would react.
Fluff up your feathers to appear as big as possible. Size might help.
Bark as loud as you can. Sometimes that’s the trick.
Strategies. Strategies. We get so stuck on them.

**

The wisdom of the barn, so long from where I live now.
Yet a horse taught me to bow when I walked that path.
May I remember his quiet grace as I kick at my stall today.

My Song, by Elvis Aphrodite

if you want a song where it is like the star spangled banner and everyone has their mouths open and everyone is feeling fervent, that's not my song

am i more like elvis presley belting it out, only elvis is playing an accordion
that is like a red bowling ball, glittery and bright,

only elvis presley is the goddess aphrodite, and also ceres,
offering organic persimmons that are floating out of the red bowling ball colored accordion music

only elvis-aphrodite is also a cosmic nova, and also playing songs
to support uprising farmworkers, who are also protesting the destruction

of old growth forests, and also she-he-they, red and glowing --wait, also
orange like thin sunrise fiestas or how poppies can shout through their
purple fuzzy gullets, fiery pumpkin frothy pompous and swiveling in the wind,

already instantiating by their very presence, a quavering in the air
from shimmy shaking, a reverberating
a new/ancient sounding, something orchestral and galactic
change-making by its very sound, awakening, startling, sonorous
like whale song in the garden, inspiring halle-lus and clapping
coming from that crimson shiny bowling ball accordion

and maybe, maybe, yeah, everyone is also mouths open belting it out,
about spiral revolution, but also peacefully smiling, knowing
it is already made so by the very presence of our synaesthesia,
our knowing, our loving, our cavorting, our crimson shininess,
our fantastic capacity to dance
through portalways of time and place

yes that song that song that song