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A Lullaby

Thought I’d write my inner child a lullaby. This is my 20th villanelle.

A Lullaby

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.

This poem fell out pretty quickly. I came into work about a week and a half ago to discover my schedule had been shifted dramatically. There is a part of me, a fairly large part, that always feels that I’ve just done something wrong and I’m about to be punished miserably for it. I’m pretty sure this is connected to the same part of me that, throughout my childhood, lived in sheer terror of dozens of unlikely events. Events like tidal waves (though living well inland), floods (though not living near a river or flood plain), super storms (though living in a mild climate), and really out there stuff like black holes sucking earth into oblivion. Oh, and death.

These were debilitating fears. When thoughts of this or that potential disaster passed through my mind, my body would go cold with terror. Not just an anxiety that causes fretting and unease, but the sort of fear that whitewashes the mind like hi-beams on a dirty windshield and sends waves of frozen fear throughout the body like liquid nitrogen.

For some reason, the most trivial things can trigger this liquid nitrogen whitewash effect. The night I started this poem, I was told by my supervisor as I walked into the on-duty administration office to clock in that he needed to talk to me. As it turns out, he needed to talk to everyone—about the restructuring of everyone’s schedules. But, in that moment, I was frozen in the headlights, and it took me a couple of days to recover from it. This is one of the long-term effects of thoroughly messing up a child’s mind.

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Acceleration

I recently stumbled across Newton’s Law of Acceleration in my readings. It was explained such that I was able to grasp and appreciate the concept. Then I thought of how bound we must feel as a people who have come to more or less understand such things. Here we sit on a speck of dust flung out near the rim of a predator galaxy. There’s a lot going on out there, and all we can do is watch through telescopes the faded light cast from events beyond history.

Acceleration

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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Cathedral

There is a redwood State Reserve about 30 miles west of Ukiah called Montgomery Woods. The woods are a series of groves which have been purchased and set aside for preservation by various parties, most of which have been involved in the logging industry one way or another, oddly enough. A friend and I used to visit this park on a regular basis, and we came to think of it as being much like a cathedral. In fact, we referred to the entry into the first large grove as “The Cathedral”. Thus my 8th trisect poem.

Cathedral

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.

As I wrote this poem, I read up on the history and architecture of European Cathedrals, dating back to the Roman Empire, and looked for visual relationships between them and various points of interest within the Montgomery Woods. As I did so this poem began to take form with the first segment, “nave”, which is to say, the main hall of a cathedral. This segment focuses on the redwoods themselves.

Then I tried to think of a more complex object of focus for the second segment and thought of the Catholic Liturgies, so “vespers”. But as I finished “vespers” it dawned on me that this was describing a process more so than an object, and as I struggled to find a process to focus on for the third segment, I eventually decided to make “vespers”—the prayerful sounds of nature—that process.

I decided to focus on the “understory” of the woods for the second segment, which can describe anything found beneath the crown of the redwood forest. Slowly but surely, when I closed my eyes and visualized my walks through Montgomery Woods, I began to see relations between the understory and cathedral designs, and so segment two took form.

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Origami

Recently, as I reflected on how I seem to resist the best efforts of people to change me in this way or that, I found myself writing this.

Origami

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.

Indeed I have always resisted obvious attempts to change my nature, especially when the person making the attempt seemed to have something to gain from it. Those who have had the greatest impact in my life are people who just offered ideas, letting me take or leave them as I wished. I think such people felt no desire to gain anything by changing me, and were therefore compassionately offering a piece of information and/or perspective along the way.

Publication History:

Clamor — Fall 2009

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Surrender

This poem, my 18th hybridanelle, began to manifest in mind about three weeks ago as I walked through the Montgomery Woods near Ukiah with a friend, utterly panic-stricken and overwhelmed by an irruption of fragile emotions. I had at this point been experiencing varying degrees of the same for about a week and a half.

There comes a point with extreme anxiety—panic—where life not only feels and seems unfaceable, but on all applicable fronts is unfaceable. The only way through this sort of thing is to resolve, or have resolved beforehand, to live through it, no matter the torment. And since I had made a deal with myself as a fourteen-year-old, after my first NDE from a car accident (see my first trisect, “E merge nce”, for a poem inspired by this experience), not ever to submit to death while in a non-peaceful state, I was grimly determined to ride it out despite some serious impulses to do otherwise.

When the car hit me as a fourteen year old, I was in a state of extreme mental, spiritual, and emotional unrest, and the horror of this state “carried over” in such a way as to become tremendously amplified in the absence of spiritual impedance, my body. And on returning to my body, I understood that I can never go like that. My life has been about cultivating peace of mind to the best of my ability ever since.

Up to that point in the Montgomery Woods, I had been trying out various mantras to fend off the anxiety. Each of them would provide me with some level of distraction from my panic and emotional distress, but none offered any sense of comfort, reprieve, or peace from this turmoil. I told my friend who walked with me that my prayer-mantras were only providing some limited distraction, and that it seemed impossible find something that would overcome the sheer strength of my anxiety and doubt, my tendency to perseverate and fret. And then I asked him if he had any ideas on what I should ask god for in my prayers that might provide this offset.

He then told me that I was going about it all wrong; that I was going to god with my hand out like a beggar on the sidewalk. As he said this I already began to realize my mistake, but he continued. He went on to point out that the various religions of our Western societies have produced a race of people who go to god with a shopping list, and who become very resentful of god when certain items on this list aren’t granted. This could only be called ego-based prayer, and this is exactly what I was doing. So he aptly made it clear that I was asking the wrong question, and for the wrong person—myself.

And it’s funny, since I have been a member of twelve step programs most of my life you would think that I would already know that the most peace comes not from trying to manipulate god toward my own will, but in humbly seeking out god’s will for me, along with the willingness and strength to carry it out. Whenever I’ve done this, I’ve been led right, toward personal freedom and peace of mind, and in a way that magically contributed to a few other lives around me, oddly enough. Whenever I’ve done otherwise I’ve slyly managed to land myself in a brand-spanking new life tragedy that ultimately ends up sucking time and energy—peace of mind—out of my own life and the lives of those who care about me.

Once this understanding comes, it’s kind of a no-brainer—Just a matter of coming into contact with this understanding and internalizing it… Yet again.

Surrender

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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List

I have been reading The Aeneid of Virgil, translated into English by Allen Mandelbaum. Yesterday I came across a passage in Book VI, the prayer of Aeneas to the twin doves which landed in front of him at Hesperia; he knew them to be those of his mother, Venus (Aphrodite).

Be my guide if there
is any passage, strike across the air
to that grove where the rich bough overshadows
the fertile ground. And you, my goddess mother,
be true to me in my uncertainty.

And so, with the final phrase of this passage ringing in my head, I found myself writing:

List

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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Braille

There’s a young blind man that frequents one of the coffee houses I like. Whenever he comes tapping in with his white cane, there is always this pretty lady with him. She dotes over him and helps him with whatever he needs. She could be his sister, or his lover, but I suspect that they’re intimate.

The last time I saw them at the coffee house, I found myself drafting this poem, thinking about what it must be like for him. Later I revised it further. It’s abstract, as I imagine a blind person must perceive the world in an abstract sort of way.

Braille

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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Sakura

My 6th trisect poem. The first segment depicts the cherry blossom, by means of impressions. The second segment depicts the environments into which the cherry blossoms manifest and disperse. The third segment depicts the ephemerality of life.

In Japan the cherry blossom has long been associated with the ephemerality of youth and life, sometimes even painted alongside scenes of samurai harakiri and other scenes of mortal transition. In this poem I’ve attempted to depict these associations using mostly Western imagery. I’ve also tried to lace a sense of ephemerality throughout the entire poem.

Sakura

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.

What’s interesting about the trisect is that I often come to see more in the poem when I read it than what was there when I wrote it. Already I can see associations and connections in this piece that I would have been sure were intentional if I hadn’t written it myself. I find myself wondering if this isn’t some kind of connection to the workings of the unconscious. Trisects are dreamlike in a lot of ways

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Unbounded

I was inspired to write this, my 16th hybridanelle, after listening to a recent edition of Coast to Coast AM, where the radio show’s original host and creator, Art Bell, dedicated an hour to describing his experience with the recent loss of his wife. I’m not sure what motivated me, but it was a very strong sudden urge, and I pursued it to the creation of this poem. Hearing him talk about his experience was very moving to me—Made quite an impression.

I was actually about to start reading up on an entirely different subject that I felt was suitable to the hybridanelle form. But after listening to this broadcast I changed my mind and reoriented my efforts toward dedicating the next project poem to him and the memory of his wife, Ramona Bell. She passed away without warning on January 5th. Although I sent a copy of this poem to him, I doubt he’ll ever see it since he’s pretty much drowning in emails from his listeners.

Unbounded

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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Ark

This, my 5th trisect poem, is inspired by the moon of Europa. The one in orbit around Jupiter. Some believe there could be something neat happening beneath the rind of ice surrounding that unique sphere.

Segment one depicts that rind of ice. Segment two depicts the underlying potential. And segment three depicts the evolutionary process proposed to be a possibility.

Ark

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.

Publication History:

Art Arena (web-based) — March 2006

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Ambivalence

It was an interesting dream. Though my ambivalence lessened as a result of this dream experience, it ultimately did not work out that I remained her step-father.

Ambivalence

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.