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To Write a Poem

For most people, the most difficult part of writing a poem is to allow it to just exist on its own, without succumbing to the compulsion to infuse it with every last possible ounce of personal ego. To my mind, poetry is above all the art of verbal depiction. To depict is to let the image describe itself, to let a scene show itself, to let an idea present itself—To let the subject of the poem make itself known without any intervention from the person writing the poem. As soon as “I feel”, “I think”, “I believe”, “I am”, I this, I that, I A-B-C and X-Y-Z come into the picture, the potential depictive poem becomes probable expository prose. So…

To Write a Poem

Remove your self
  from the scene

        Let the snowflake
      slip between high wires
    slide past bony twigs
  and loop through the air
  to meld with a stainless pole

          Let the bold red sign
        slice the long cold wind
      with cutlass whispers
    and the faintest tremble
    of uncertainty

            Let its white rim rest
          against the calloused grip
        of a puffed brown robin
      dark beak twitching
      to thoughts of spring

              Let its bright song seep
            through small gray cracks
          and creep from the alleyways
        to finger glazed reflections
        faces creased with care

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Lapse

My 10th trisect poem. The first segment depicts our sun, the second our galaxy, and the third the process (or principle rather) of acceleration.

There are some prosodic curiosities played with in this poem, like the juxtaposition of primary alliteration in the middle two lines of each quatrain. This proved to be more difficult than I expected, but also a good exercise I think.

Lapse

Entity

Clouds of gas and seas of dust
whirl in layers round a turbid well
which gathers density and force.

Concealed inside a cyclone spun through darkness,
hidden meaning flares flush against compression
and opens like an eye, wide with burning gaze,
its heavy lids thrown back against the void.

For aeons faint reflections cycle round
this fluid presence held haloed in the night,
concentrating dreams deep into the light,
into a stillness wrapped in fusion storms.

In time the fires dissipate
to vapors, glowing like a distant jewel,
which fades into the emptiness.
 

Colony

Vapors glow amid the gloom,
phantoms waiting to return to life
or fade forever from perception.

Splashed across an easel framed from absence,
a hidden brush portrays rays in random molds,
dispersed as tracts of foam frothed beneath the moon
to bulge about the heart of mystery.

Potential blooms like tufts of baby’s breath
with scattered silhouettes wound throughout the fields
where waves of motion spread spectrums far through time
to ripple in the skies of countless worlds.

A hundred billion modes of thought
glimmer like a liquid fused with light,
spiraled round a well of doubt.
 

Balance

Suspended like an ornament,
the master clock wheels slowly through the void,
seconds passed in fluid count.

Cogs and coils gyrate, stretch, and snap,
countless turning gears gripped by gravity,
which sends the broad machine churning through the dark,
momentum bound to arcs across the deep.

Throughout the ages systems come and go,
little flecks of light lit for stellar moments
like after-image flares fading from the mind,
half remembered from a distant past.

In time the random orbits dim
and yellow like a blurry cataract
across the burning eye of god.

Publication History:

Tales of the Talisman — Winter 2007

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Fizzle

This is something along the lines of impressionist poetry.

Fizzle

I’ll grant you dreams
  which fold the beams
    of light until
      your shadow gleams

I’ll grant you shame
  to bless your name
    with blissful guilt
      and narrow fame

I’ll grant you tears
  a moment’s fears
    a glimpse of joy
      the span of years

I’ll grant you pain
  the crushing reign
    of silence forced
      across your vane

I’ll grant you space
  to briefly trace
    the edges of
      your aging face

I’ll grant you breath
  filled brim with wrath
    a glass of wine
      to drink your death