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Exhale

This, my 9th trisect poem, is inspired by my experience of learning to play the bansuri flute. I have a long way to go still, but people no longer run for the hills when I play, which I hope means I’m getting better.

Segment one depicts the bansuri flute itself, by way of its origin and construction. Segment two depicts breath, without which the bansuri is just a piece of wood. Segment three depicts my process of learning to play.

      Exhale

            Reed

            Shoots reach forth and crack the earth
      with nodes that telescope into the air
until green blades dance out and sway against the sky

            A column falls before the saw
      drifting like a feather through its peers
    which lean and separate with rustle whisk and clack
until the parted clone lies cradled lightly in their midst

            Hollow sections lose their green
      hardened by the touch of open flame
until the thin walls cure to caramel colored hues

            Blemishes are smoothed away
      a plug is set with delicate precision
    bores probe and burn with care an empty space inside
until the slightest sigh sends echoes coursing through the wood
 

            Motion

            Ribs expand like gaping jaws
      and current rushes through a maze of tubes
to fuse with membranes hidden deep within the shell

            Rivers churn within their walls
      cycled through an all pervasive flow
    from channels of aeration through rapids fraught with force
to many-fingered deltas strewn across half-charted planes

            Bones contract a casual grip
      and moisture dissipates into the air
to mingle with a stream of circumscribing winds

            rained in far-flung alpine lakes
      absorbed by rolling seas of desert sand
    and perspired from the leaves of oaks and conifers
to drizzle dew on blades of grass half a world away
 

            Ambience

            Fingers dance on shades of brown
      as whispers vibrate down a narrow shaft
in waves that slowly learn their resonance and form

            Night after night uncertain sounds
      gather confidence beneath the moon
    phasing with the silhouettes of cherry trees
in movements half remembered from a long forgotten age

            Expression gradually finds its way
      to sagebrush valleys ponderosa peaks
in subtle overtones that grow in strength until

            timbres weave through redwood trees
      like whale song steeped in oceanic gloom
    resounding off sheer outcrops covered thick with moss
in undertones that settle like a mist among the ferns

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beads

I found myself writing this in response to a blog post someone made at MySpace, back when I had a MySpace account. She was one of two girls who used to make it a point to sit at my table when they saw me at Denny’s or one of the local coffee houses. I never understood why. When they did, they would strike up completely random conversation. I just entertained them like a good host since I didn’t see the harm.

At some point they found my MySpace account and sent me friend requests, which I accepted. The younger one, while intelligent and intriguing in her own right, had an unusually strong negative streak which she would spill into her blog like an acid.

beads

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

After responding to her bitter tirade with this poem, she and her friend soon lost interest in me. Kind of strange since I was under the impression that they were curious about me because I would sit in the coffee houses or at Denny’s working on poems, which they would ask about. Ah well.

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Little Bastards

As I walked with a friend through Low Gap Park yesterday, I felt a sudden, sharp pain on my left hand. And I looked down to note a yellow jacket biting and stinging all at once, just trying with all it’s infinitesimal might to take down the colossal human.

I snapped my wrist once, and it was still latched on tight. I felt the stinger pierce deeper. I snapped it a few frantic times in succession and managed to shake it loose, probably flinging it hard to the ground and knocking it woozy.

These little demons need no provocation. My hand still hurts. My whole left arm has been itching as if from poison oak, though that’s beginning to dissipate. What motivates these creatures???

Little Bastards

Black and yellow
  like hazard signs
    or street-side urgings
  they whiz past a
    compressed package of
      flying road rage

They masquerade as
  relatively gentle bees
    but instead of nectar
  they work at flesh
    armored scavengers
      of rotting meat

They fill their wings with
  wild sounds of wrath
    every sidewound motion
  a burst of vitriol
    twisted little words intent
      on intimidation

And when you fail to
  flail dance and run
    they find a quiet spot
  grip with six stout legs
    and send their hateful venom
      throughout your veins

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Grace

However you may idealize the human form, there is one reality that wins out in the end—It will moulder and rot and decay back to the dust. There is nothing we can hold onto. Everything must go, even our most cherished fancies.

Grace

take your long lithe figure
your bright ruby smile
and take your pliant stride
filled with suggestion

take your smooth soft skin
carved from lily petals
and your slender toned belly
set in round swaying hips

and take your gentle cheeks
your life-altering glance
fixed like glimmering jewels in
Athenian curves

take it all off
to the charnel grounds
and meditate awhile
amid the waste

fill your porcelain nostrils with
the stench of what’s to come
and fill your deep brown eyes with
the reality of your perfection

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influence

Sometimes I wonder how different I would be today if I never chanced upon the poetry of authors such as Robert Service, Julia Dorr, Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Campbell, and others during my youth. My early teens were fraught with fear and confusion, and not much made it through that haze. But the poetry of such authors—always structured poetry—was able to cut through the haze and give me something to focus and meditate upon. Without that, I have to wonder if I would have even survived my youth.

influence

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
Posted on by EAT

unperched

Some people seem to think of relationships—intimate, platonic, or professional—simply as a means of subjugating others to their will through emotional and/or financial dependency. Such people will encourage you to become emotionally and/or financially dependent upon them so that they can then use this as as leverage.

If you start to act or think too independently of what they like then they’ll distance themselves from you or suddenly become stingy as punishment. And if you persist with such independent behavior, they will eventually sever all ties and bid adieu, convinced to the core that they have just destroyed your life in retribution for not subjugating yourself entirely to their will. But, the reality is that people are more complex than this and, generally, the will to survive and move on is very strong.

unperched

perhaps you forgot that
    birds have wings

perhaps you failed to realize
    clipped feathers regrow

the downy breast will fight
    the storm for freedom

clawed feet will grip a cold
    wet branch for shelter

the beak by night will fold
    in its own soft shield

and by day peck out
    its hard won forage

but never will it probe again
    the ruins of its nest

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Confounded

Before starting this poem, I spent several days reading up on various subjects that I felt pertained in some way to tensions and circumstances that not only led to the demise of my marriage, but my choice in women and the types of relationships I get into in general. Subjects included attachment theory and related disorders in adults and children, including some of the methods employed to help children and adults overcome their “attachment disorders”. Along with this I read up on human bonding, age disparity theory, and even read a little about the limbic system, amongst other things—Just things I wanted to know about.

This lead me to reflecting on the nature of play in relation to my early and mid childhood “attachment traumas” and realizing that I’ve never experienced what’s referred to in attachment theory as a healthy “secure attachment”. Secure attachment is what allows a child to feel safe exploring and playing in ways that are constructive and developmentally sound. If there’s some problem with the child’s attachment system, then play becomes more reactionary than natural due to the lack of a secure attachment base to return to. A lot of this stuff made sense to me and jives nicely with my own reflections.

Looking back, I was able to remember enough to realize that one of the first casualties of my childhood was play and playfulness. I was a very serious child, and I tended to use play to express my general state of anxiety, distrust, and ambivalence, destroying my toys and those things I would make with them—with building blocks and Lincoln logs for example—rather than letting them stand awhile, and then tearing them down for the sake of building something else. I didn’t build things for the sake of seeing and enjoying the creative fruits of my labors; I built them for the sake of their destruction.

This was a mode of expression, an enactment of my inner state—reactive play rather than constructive natural play. So, I meditated on this and then wrote my 20th hybridanelle.

Confounded

The stones that should have formed a stable base
  were shifted out beneath your primal needs;
    the wood that should have framed your living place
        splintered from the weight of bitterness and hate
            and left you wailing naked in the wind,
                  ambivalent at best and doubting every trust.

Tremors filled your soul with rolling dreads,
  so that your own creations, wrought with care,
    were shifted out beneath your primal needs,
        reduced to disarray in manifest dismay
            as wooden joists and girders in your mind
                  splintered from the weight of bitterness and hate.

And as you grew, you found yourself unsure;
  you stacked your Lincoln logs and building blocks
    so that your own creations, wrought with care,
        were never meant to last and fell to every blast
            that leveled self respect and left you stunned,
                  ambivalent at best and doubting every trust.

You strove to transfer fundamental shocks
  throughout your play; depicting fell effects,
    you stacked your Lincoln logs and building blocks
        and with profound expression smashed at your discretion,
            every symbol housing hope destroyed,
                  splintered from the weight of bitterness and hate.

Those first potentials of your intellect
  were swept away by rage and disregard;
    throughout your play, depicting fell effects,
        your structures each collapsed as inspiration lapsed
            until you grieved the wreckage of your hand,
                  ambivalent at best and doubting every trust.

And now you limp through life disabled, scarred;
  the stones that should have formed a stable base
    were swept away by rage and disregard;
      the wood that should have framed your living place
          rotted from neglect and left you derelict,
              dwelling in the ruins left behind—
                  splintered from the weight of bitterness and hate—
                        ambivalent at best and doubting every trust.

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mausoleum

Yesterday I had an extremely vivid dream, which involved sleep paralysis, that has really stayed with me.

    mausoleum

        i felt you calling
through the wide dark space
            and i crossed the cavern
    to your resting place

        where you were wrapped in
folds of cold gray stone
            which smelled of long
    decay and rotting bones

        the air was dripping
echoes through the dark
            lit only by the
    sense’s psychic spark

        mosaic patterns
stretched across your grave
            dreamtime symbols
    etched in beveled grooves

        i brushed them lightly
with my fingertips
            and lay across
    the stony cover strip

        and here i rested
waiting for your touch
            in meditation
    then i felt your clutch

        as one would clutch
who drowns in waters deep
            to any flotsam
    drifting near the reach

        you grasped my psyche
held with panicked might
            and locked my body
    in the realms of night

        and now i felt your
onyx grip of fear
            send through my senses
    manifold despair

        i let you thrust up
through my chest to speak
            an urgent message
    stressed fatigued and weak

        “he-elp… me…”
came your feeble plea
            through lips half frozen
    petrified by sleep

        and as you heard my
voice relay your words
            you strove the more to
    make your anguish heard

        and with the strength of
added empathy
            i let you ring your
    cavern walls with pleas

        until the motions
stirred me from the dream
            and i awoke to
    echoes of your screams

Upon waking up, it really felt as if I had connected with some spirit or entity that tried with all its might to communicate something to or through me. Or maybe it was some long buried part of my own mind.

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Fuzzy Time

“Fuzzy time” is a term used where I work to describe the time between about 3:30 and 5:30 AM, when the ghosts seem pretty active, and the psyche more susceptible. Life takes on the surreal hues of dream during this time, sometimes making it a little unclear as to what is real and what is not.

          Fuzzy Time

               a little hand taps
          out circles of doubt
past slower moments
          until the glass cracks
     shattering time

               cold moments pulsate
          through radar temples
deep into memory
          where doorframes sentinel
     long dark halls

               beige walls with plastic
          wood veneer blur
into a long dirty strip
          of brown decay
     half vacuumed

               waking dreams irrupt
          on long still hours
like headlights from the void
          minutes whitewashed
     with faces half remembered

               syncopated snores
          crack the varied drones
of forced industrial air
          muffled boombox beats
     and mental monologues

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Endure

Life can take some unexpected turns, and the path to which we have dedicated ourselves may lead through every kind loss and tragedy. But in the end we must simply endure, for life isn’t always easy or fair, and the potential for discovering new meaning and value lies always just ahead.

      Endure

      The path may wind up slopes of ankle twisting shale,
            and over ridges overwhelmed with loss;
yet each step carries on through triumph and dismay.

            The path may weave through swamps and belching bogs,
through alpine heights where acid springs bleed lethal streams and ponds,
            and over ridges overwhelmed with loss,

      only to drop through valleys baked barren by the sun,
            until it rises up again to lead
through alpine heights where acid springs bleed lethal streams and ponds.

            The path may shrink and seem to disappear
through thickets barbed with venom thorns or leech-filled undergrowth
      until it rises up again to lead

      through places not unlike the sorrows known before
            and on through every emptiness and pain—
through thickets barbed with venom thorns or leech-filled undergrowth.

            Through crackled desolation, blasts of rain,
      the path may wind up slopes of ankle twisting shale
            and on through every emptiness and pain;
yet each step carries on through triumph and dismay.

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Reflexion

So far as the average partying bar-hopping American is concerned, I probably have no life. The bar-hopping flies and turds are of course welcome to this view. Now that my schedule has been changed so that I have Friday and Saturday nights off, I find myself sitting in Denny’s during the night with my laptop watching the bar-flood sog, slurk, slump, stumble, slurp, and slink into Denny’s as the bars close up around two in the morning. In some ways they’re interesting to me. These living ghosts represent a feeble attempt to make the harsh lonely realities of existence more bearable by using alcohol and probably drugs to alter their perspectives manually. And the shackles of healthy inhibition removed, these emotional deadweights swarm each other’s sexual urges like piranhas in a bloodbath.

I watch them fondle one another, compete for attention, get pitted against each other by attention-seeking females, rise up in dimwitted defiance, and fight. Sometimes the tables fly up to avoid the charging bulls, enraged by the double tragedy of their life’s inevitability and the loneliness they face in the cattle-chute.

Once in awhile one of the cows—even pretty ones—looks over and notices me with my books, and smiles suggestively. I smile back, courteous, and quickly avert my gaze before one of the drunken bulls notices, and return to my own process, satisfied completely by my own path—a far cry from the cattle-chutes. In my peripheral vision I’ll sometimes see one of the cows staring at me as I type, read, or think. And I think of that last long look at the pastures as a bull or cow begins to find itself corralled into the slaughterhouse pens, and driven through the chutes toward the mill.

Theirs is not my world. And so this poem manifested as I listened to the gaze of one of them; one who has yet to hit bottom.

Reflexion

yes…
      i am far beyond your reach
     we merely share stale air
    drowned in broken hormones
   slurred jests and wild urges
  surged through pickled brains

    i will stumble only
      from exhaustion fueled by work
        a natural need for rest

your eyes…
      track me to my corner
     then turn with sad forlorn
    to tease a drooping cock
   with spittled absinthe lips
  home to soiled sheets

    my lips are only flecked
      by sober songs flung
        with passion to the stars

tonight…
      your bed will creak with pain
     a quiet hopeless rage
    stilled only for a moment
   in the half lit aftermath
  of sullied expectation

    my sheets will cover only
      stillness found within
        a coffer filled with peace