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Perfect Moments

My first terza rima. So far as I know, terza rimas aren’t generally divided into parts like this, but the end-line scheme does follow the aba, bcb, …, yzy, zz format. However, I’m using end-line alliteration here instead of end-line rhyme. Is that wrong?

Perfect Moments

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.

Also the lines are all pretty much perfect pentameters. I haven’t cared too much whether or not they started off with a soft foot. So it’s a mix of iambic and trochaic pentameters, strictly speaking.

What inspired this? Well my ex-intimate creature talked of these “perfect moments”, and claimed to have had more of them during her time spent with me than she had known over the course of her life. Well, I liked the idea and wanted to explore it. So I’ve thought back through the time we spent together and tried to figure out where and when she could have had these perfect moments, and to capture some of them—hopefully all—as best I could.

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cash-crop

Some women don’t see men as people, but as crops to be harvested or weeds to be destroyed. They don’t see them as companions, partners or even equals, but as assets to be used and ultimately discarded. These are emotionally dangerous creatures who manipulate and undermine honest, loving men who would have done right by them if they didn’t turn out to be callous, backstabbing hos.

cash-crop

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.
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mirage

Millions of years of biological evolution drives us; the mind rationalizes and justifies this compulsory insanity. Lucky is the soul who somehow finds he or she is at peace without the need of an idealized intimacy.

mirage

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.
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prayer

There is a little dirt road called Low Gap Road that winds into the hills west of Ukiah to the ocean. Not long after I moved into the Ukiah area to work for REBOL Technologies in ’99, I found myself exploring this road looking for a place pray.

prayer

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.

Ever since I was a runaway, as I went through my various spiritual-religious phases, I would seek out remote places in the mountains to pray. Prayer has had many meanings to me throughout my life. It began with pleas for my safety and well-being and migrated steadily toward seeking out understanding, sanity, peace of mind, and stillness of spirit. Mixed throughout have been requests for others who have touched my life. Ever present has been a desire to seek out god’s will for me, and the power to carry that out—a lasting echo from my teen and adult exposure to 12-step rooms and precepts.

Throughout my life, while praying in the night, it has been rare that I would do so without seeing a shooting star. I can remember when this began. I was still 15, and not long on my own as a runaway. One night on the top of a mesa near Kingman, Arizona, I made ready to sleep and found myself completely overwhelmed by anxiety and hunger. It was cold, and through the little round breathing hole of my sleeping bag I peered up at the stars and cried, praying. The moment I told the stars that I just wanted to know that everything would somehow be okay, a star fell across the length of my field of vision. I can still remember the sudden calm that practically tingled in my limbs. And an instant faith. A faith I have never lost.

This is how my hilltop prayers began.

I had a friend who worked as the head librarian at Mendocino College, the community college just north of Ukiah, who was dying of colon cancer. She was a quiet yet powerful influence on my life, in ways I don’t quite understand, but in ways I can say with certainty inspired me to go the direction I went with studying and writing poetry long term.

One night at this place of prayer on Low Gap Road I asked for her to be healed, and just as I finished asking two shooting stars, bright with long arching trails, shot across the night just in front of me, horizon to horizon, one above the another. I must have misinterpreted this response because about a year later my friend lost her battle with the cancer. My own father’s death never struck me with such savage pangs of loss.

After her passing in 2002 I visited my place of prayer I think once more, and then all but forgot about it. And since then to now I have not sought out another place for prayer.

A few nights ago I remembered Low Gap Road, suddenly, as if a voice just whispered it into my thoughts. And I found myself filled with ambivalence at the thought of returning for a visit.

I decided to go. And once there just stood silent—for over an hour—playing my bansuri flute in the night. Finally I folded my arms across my chest and looked up at the night and found myself saying, “I guess I feel betrayed.” And went back to playing my flute.

A while later as I played, I turned to look west at the risen moon, and just then a shooting star fell toward the north.

I don’t claim to understand any of this. But this poem, my 23rd terzanelle, was inspired by my reflections on it all.

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acceptance

Sometimes something breaks within ourselves, and the psyche is terrifically disfigured. Yet sometimes this becomes part of our growth and strength and not the cause of destruction.

acceptance

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. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.
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take me

Latest spill-over. Had Cohen‘s “Dance me to the end of love” stuck in my head so fiercely that I couldn’t make any progress on another poem I’ve been working on. So I decided to write something with a similar feel to it—but without the refrain and chorus—to see if I could get Cohen’s song out of my skull enough to focus.

take me

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.

Maybe I’ve learned a something through my study of Cohen’s poetry. His earlier poems were usually terrible, but his more recent material is outstanding on average. This is what I hope will happen with my own work as the years wear on—Steady improvement.

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sea dog

I was reflecting on how Robert Service, a favorite poet of mine, would write poems in various Scottish, British, and other dialects. Some of these poems are very moving. For instance, “Bills Grave” and “Pooch”. If you read them, you might suspect that Service was well acquainted with the dialect used in the first poem, as well as the mindset, and that he more or less guessed at the dialect used in the second poem. I believe the first uses a Northern England dialect, where he grew up, and the second uses the dialect of a Black American, possibly Southern.

I was also reflecting on this book I had just finished reading, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry. The nature of the story was such as to cause me a lot of after-read reflection, and there was some life at sea involved therein.

So, with all this stirring about in my brain, I found myself tapping out a few phrases, and shortly thereafter, my 21st villanelle fell out thus.

sea dog

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.

Writing poetry in various dialects is something I plan to explore over time, so it was nice to have this experience. The title was suggested by Chris England, an acquaintance I run into at the cafes here in Ukiah.

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regret

Regret is a powerful force of emotion, but it is not easy to depict in poetry. I once left someone I loved to be with someone I was infatuated with. Who knows why we do such things. Years later I found myself looking back on that decision with savage, ravaging pangs of regret.

regret

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. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

You may have noticed that the subject is not approached in the usual manner here. Throughout the years, I have been admonished over and over to “just say what I feel” when writing poetry, as if just saying that I have regrets, that it hurts, and talking about what happened to cause them is somehow poetry. It’s not. No matter how I chopped up the lines, this could never create a poem; it could only create prose that’s been chopped into short lines.

Poetry is in part the art of expressing such feelings using only depiction so that he who reads will be overcome by a sense of empathy and relation without ever being asked to empathize or relate. A poem on a subject such as this should manage to completely avoid ever saying anything along the lines of, “I feel regret,” or “I regret XYZ.” This is the job of prose. The poem, if successful, should awaken that regret within the reader as an emotion he can own for himself without ever being told to do so.

In the case of this poem, I use the title to create the expectation of a normal gush of chopped prose on the subject of regret only to seemingly evade the expectation entirely, leaving the last stanza to bring the title home in an entirely jarring and unexpected manner—like the thrust of a dagger.

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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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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.
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Alone

Tonight I came across a poem blogged by a woman who feels alone and lost, and the poem was basically asking ten ways to none who’s going to save her from feeling so alone. To me it seems bizarre that a pretty lady would have such thoughts, since it’s really easy for women to get male attention. It’s generally a good deal harder for men. However, I found myself sympathizing and commented with an earlier variation of the following.

Alone

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.

Well, not complete sympathy, considering she’ll be able to land pretty much the man of her choice once she figures out how the whole male-female human interrelations thing works. At least for short durations (most men seem to be unreliable as loyal long-term partners). But, in the deserts of loneliness, it is we who must save ourselves, scraping our way across the barren steppes toward the ever elusive springs of inner peace. I don’t see how another can really save us individually from our own loneliness.