Posted on by EAT

blindspot

My 7th trisect poem. Segment one is focused on the thunderhead, or supercell. This is the metaphor for the “thing” that has blinded all sense of foresight for me my entire teenage and adult life, at least since I was 13. I’ve always been amazed by how some people can see a desk job, and through it “see” a four bedroom house, a Benz, and a paid-off mortgage in 30 years, complete with wife, kids, a dog, and a picket fence. All I’ve ever seen is this thundering cyclone. Similarly I find it amazing how some people can look at a pile of wood and see a shed, a new business, or a planter garden, while all I tend to see is just a bunch of wood—and the thunderhead. So, this is segment one, “Erubus”, the realm of darkness and obscurity personified (not to be confused with night—that’s different).

Segment two focuses on the narrow road—in this case the road of life, specifically my life path, or “calling”, as it were, which I do my best to follow.

Segment three focuses on my interaction between this road and the ever-present thunderhead which looms on the horizon (and often much closer in the mind’s eye), sucking “the long horizon from the mind”. So the process depicted here is that of obscuration, brought on by a life of personal defeat and dehumanization.

blindspot

erebus

a million million shades of gray
swim between the land and sky
absorbing every detail into mist

many-jointed shoulders haunch
hulking up against the dome
to scatter shadows out across the earth

amorphous legs traverse the realm
labored with colossal strides
gaping forth an omnipresent maw

and in its belly rumbles deep
the acids of uncertainty
which churn the world into obscurity
 

calling

laid with crumbling asphalt rock or dirt
a rarely traveled path meanders far
across the scapes of possibility

beneath the canopies of ponderosa
along the stony course of waterways
amid the yawn of jagged desert peaks

the way of freedom weaves by dusks and dawns
a twisted uroboros colored earth
wrapped across the contours of existence

boiled in the depths of crawling storms
it rises writhing sharply into sight
a tired trail of chance and destiny
 

presage

colors fold into a distant haze
an open road to somewhere fades from view
lost in many-layered nimbus plumes

long cascading booms convey
a wall of nearing emptiness
which sucks the long horizon from the mind

this narrow road unfolds and turns
to meet the turbid banks of doubt
which cling to every curve along the way

weary legs and blistered feet
lurch and falter on the path
yet swing forever onward toward the void

Posted on by EAT

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.
Posted on by EAT

Opened

Not everyone has your best interest at heart. Some people will treat you like an emotional science experiment, and if you’ve become emotionally involved with such a person, I feel for you. It sucks.

Opened

I’ve been split with a rib spreader
     in my sleep
          awakened to agony

My chest won’t close again
     anguished nipples face the wall
          a red fist pounds dry air

Tears ripped from my eyes
     can’t wail back the rift
          and seal the wound

Muscles spasm in vain
     against the stainless grip
          pinned to a shiny table

Helpless fingers clutch
     themselves back until bruised
          fingernails peel back the skin

Where is the surgeon?
     where is the nurse in scrubs?
          who will remove this awful grip?

Posted on by EAT

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.
Posted on by EAT

Whitewater

We’re all caught up in the stream of consciousness, the madly rushing stream some of the old Zen masters would refer to as “mind”. Such is the nature of samsara. It’s rough, but life’s rough. Existence is rough. Being is rough. There’s no escaping the roughness so long as mind moves. And since I don’t have a clue how to go about stilling mind.

Whitewater

we’re caught in a turbid flow
        you and i
    and we must learn to swim
both or die

the banks are high and torn
        rip-rap roots
    churn the heaving surge which
leaves no bar

ahead a canyon booms and
        we are bound
    to shoot its foamy rocks and
shoreless pools

snags menace every feeble stroke
        trunks and boughs
    broken into maenad nests of
tooth and claw

no raft will lift us safely through
        arms and legs
    are all we have to navigate this
wrathful flood

gather up your will and swim
        peel your eyes
    watch the movements of the stream and
tread the wake

beyond these tangled weave of bends
        we may find
    a white sand beach of clarity where
moments rest

Little poems like this can be good for playing around with imagery and exploring different ways of bringing an object to the mind’s eye using words.

Posted on by EAT

Forward

All conceptions of beauty are idealized, period. If you’re lucky, that ideal will emanate from a place so deep within your heart, that as your spouse begins to age and show the defeats of time, you’ll see only what your heart sees. But, for most of us, we’ll see only what the skin shows—And that is our unfortunate karma.

Forward

You’ve shattered the image,
    marble glass and clay
            scattered like broken dreams.

There’s no repair,
    no reconstruction
            for these lost ideals,

Grecian models fragmented
    into rubble,
            jigsaw disappointment.

What is there to save?
    These jagged shards will only
            tear the skin.

Yet there’s still the garden,
    paulownia trees in bloom,
            a little brown path.

Please, take my hand;
    let’s walk, find a casual pace,
            and leave this waste behind.

At best, for those of us disturbed by the shape of skin and bone, we must make an effort—a conscious effort—to move beyond what we merely see. If we don’t, we must repeat our tragedies over and over until there is nothing left to do but die alone.

Posted on by EAT

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

Posted on by EAT

sheer

One of the ways I’ve conceptualized coming, as in being born, is something like a dream in which there is no real self, but an egoless point of perception that shifts through abstract perceptions of unreality until at some point it is yanked from the ether and pinned to a fixed location—the new life that wails confused from the womb.

sheer

the dreamer falls
  crashing through patterns of ice
     submerged in crystal black waters

a flash of cold
  sears through the senses
     and life begins

And I’ve found myself conceptualizing going, as in dying, in much the same way. That point of perception becomes dislodged from the decaying self and returns to an egoless realm of dream and abstraction until the next time it is yanked into some fixed reality.

Posted on by EAT

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

Posted on by EAT

Architect

My 4th trisect poem, inspired by none other than the Lego building blocks system. Segment one depicts the building blocks themselves. Segment two depicts the various creations that can be made from those building blocks. And segment three depicts the imaginative play involved in making those creations.

Architect

The Elements

Modeled after brick and stone,
the cinderblocks and dolomites
that long have kept our ancient homes
half hidden from the crush of night,

a simple notion binds itself to form
in varied shapes of molded polymers
that—scattered out like remnants of a ruin—
tease the mind with possibilities.

Quarried from the realm of thought,
hewn from enigmatic veins,
abundant with the priceless ore
of nascent creativity,

each hollow cube is made to interlock
with all the many others of its kind,
magic puzzle pieces crafted such
that they will build whatever comes to mind.
 

Of Invention

Imagination rises up
to form a towered ring of walls,
ramparts crowned with parapets
that guard a nest of dens and halls.

Or simple village structures manifest
from deep within the wells of memory,
little homes around a market place,
a chapel standing quaintly in the midst.

Bridges arch above the spread
of nonexistent waterways;
modern superstructures scrape
against conceptions of the sky.

Even ships from other worlds emerge
to travel all throughout the universe,
forever redesigned in the docks
of varied moon or planetary bases.
 

At Play

Individual colors snap
together in a bold array,
absorbed into a growing sense
of cognizance and clarity.

Nimble fingers probe and rearrange
impressionist expressions of the mind,
each sculpture an accomplished masterpiece
comprised of cubist rectangles and squares.

Walls and rooftops recombine
as various disasters strike;
rigs develop stronger frames,
evolving after every wreck.

Experimental joists and joints explore
the art of bearing loads and distribution,
each new creation more elaborate,
expanding with the will to learn and grow.

When the segment subtitles are joined together, you have “The elements of invention at play.” This wasn’t by accident.

Posted on by EAT

Condensation

A full lifetime of pondering the implications of life and death, coming and going, has lead to a fair amount of reflection on the matter. Here I ponder the beginnings of corporeal life as relates to consciousness and its drive to manifest a corporeal existence.

Condensation

vapors ooze from a black unknown
   shifting places changing form
 currents swirl beyond sensation
   and dreams are set adrift
wafting like scents through the void

poured from starless reaches
   impulses consolidate in pools
 growing creeping crawling flying
   their primal manifestations
sprung in tandem from the abyss

color falls from the earth
   moisture grows from the sky
 soils sweep across the seas
   waters erupt into mountains
fires spurred to consciousness

flashes clear a shapeless dust
   and pink hued lumps of clay
 soak the stormy reign of thought
   stand and stumble struck with awe
blinded by visions of time and space