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puzzles

I have been thinking of trying out another dialect poem. They’re really tough to write, requiring a lot of editing and reediting and thinking and rethinking about word and syntax usage, and how to graphologically represent a highly modified, accentual use of English.

This poem is inspired by a young teenager at a residential home where I used to work. He was someone who grew up in urban poverty and who ended up where he did because he—like many who grow up in such environs—made some poor choices. He was an angry kid, and a fighter. But during the time I knew him he demonstrated himself to be capable of totally random acts of compassion toward younger residents. For all his anger, it was clear that he didn’t like to see others bullied, demeaned, or taken advantage of.

He really liked putting together jigsaw puzzles, and would spend considerable time on them.

puzzles

so much gone wrong what
goes through ma mind as i
slide them pieces up
ova one anotha

th’ edges iz easiest to find
easies’ ta fit inta place
man what was that why’d
i beat that man down

then there’s them pieces
they look like they go
tagetha somehow cuz
they got the same cullas

they look like they match yet
a lotta times they don’t
i don’ know why i get so angry
maybe cuz my own pieces

they nevva seem ta fit
these if i look at ’em long
enough i find where they go
but no matta how long i look

at all th’ liddle pieces of ma
life i don’t see how they go
damn man i can’t ev’n find
the edges fo’ the frame

i used to force them pieces in
cuz it seem like they go like
that but then when i think ahm
close ta done it look all wrong

wrong like my damn life like
my damn future all jigsawed
but with pieces missin’ an’
forced all crazy ’till they’z all

bent up an’ don’ seem ta fit
nowhere no mo’ an’ i didn’t even
realize they wuz gettin’ bent
when i put them in but i learned

learned if i gotta push hard they
ain’t in the right place an’ when
they do fit they just slip down
all easy an’ it look right

maybe that’s what i did tried
to make pieces fit that didn’ go
where i’ look like they did
maybe that’s what my mamma

did when she had me when
she got high when she slept
wi’ daddey when she got mad
and took it all out on us

took it all out on us till we didn’
know how our own pieces went
no mo’ and now ahm here
here wi’ failure starin’ each day

hard in the face of a broken
tomorra wonderin’ wonderin’
what ahm gonna live fo’
wonderin’ how ahm goin’na live

but i got these puzzles an’ i
learnin’ how to find what pieces
go where an’ ta take the time
take the time to fit ’em right

i learnin’ how ta think about what
goes where how evrethang fits
tagetha an’ ta pick up the pieces
an’ maybe fit ma life tagetha

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allnighters

Since I began this wild and wastrel wend down the wandering ways of poetry, I’ve been sure to write or finish at least one poem each year on my birthday.

Most people think of their birthday as beginning at the stroke of midnight on the day they were born. But I’ve never processed it this way. For me my birthday begins at the actual time I was born, and carries on for the next 24 hours. This is when I took my first snatch of oxygen from the airs of earth. This is when the harsh sterile light of our world first tapped on the veils of my vision. For me the clock started then, and it wasn’t the stroke of midnight.

This is the only way it makes sense to me, the only to make it work wherever you happen to be. For instance, if I celebrated my birthday in the Philippines on the ‘day’ of my birth, I’d be a full day early. To celebrate my birthday there, I’d want to wait until 8am on the 24th, which is when I was born in Riverside, California, at 5pm on the 25th.

So, I’ve been pecking at this, amongst others, over the past few days. And here’s what I got for now, a handful of all-nighter senryu (haiku not seasonally focused), inspired by a handful of observations had while hanging out at the local truck stop various nights across the past couple years.

        allnighters

                      lumination

                saturn lights hang chained
                swung from a ceiling grid ex-
                tending toward the dark

              meditation

        coffee drop by drip
        wakes at the edge of midnight
        small black pools of thought

      contemplation

picture panes reflect
trays floating amid the void
headlamps in the night

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tease

Some people… Just have a way about them. And thank god for that!

tease

her tongue swirls out
a wisp of smoke curled
round the edge of taste
where at the rim of flavor
chocolate drumstick ice cream
dances nimble courtship
and periodically slides in
through lush brown seals that
close round the shivering tip
of double dark suggestion

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A word

Was just reading a bunch of poem blogs hoping to get a moment’s inspiration. And… That seems to be what has happened, though not quite in the sense hoped for.

A word

Do you crack the old
dry twig of language
just to feel a moment’s
shock streak through hands
along bones membranes and
small raised hairs

Do you bend old yellow
rules of syntax until it frays
just to see paint crackle as
splinters rise against mind
revealing plywood layers of
a moment’s understanding

Do you have one idea
what you’re doing as you
play with words saying all
the same old things but
with broken verbs that
hang from splintered nouns

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strobe

Reflecting on the nature of existence again. It’s not like I try to solve the great mystery of being when I reflect on just what our experience of existence is and where it comes from. Nothing like that. When I reflect, it’s usually because I suddenly had an insight, and I find myself meditating upon it. For me, such insights tend to revolve around the coalescence of being rather than on the nature of being itself. Perhaps in time these insights will lead somewhere, so long as I’m careful not to over-think them and just let them be what they are—insights, pure and simple.

strobe

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 for the coalescence of being. It seems to me that the process would be a cycle of coalescence and disintegration (birth and death) with no real beginning and no real ending.

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rainsong

It’s been raining a lot lately. She tucks in the day with a giant gray comforter and lulls me to rest with persistent song. Since I work nights, this is welcome music.

rainsong

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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reflections

Another meditation on the nature of self, something I’ve wondered and asked questions about since childhood.

reflections

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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kalpa

My 12th trisect. The content required a lot of meditation and reflection on the nature of being—and a few conversations with a well-whiskered monk over Scrabble. Segment one depicts the body, as in the corporeal form. Segment two depicts mind, which was really easy since everything is mind. Segment three depicts samsara, which is also pretty easy because everything is also rolled up in that process.

kalpa

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.

The subject matter explored here is of great personal interest. Probably since I was 5 or 6, I’ve been reflecting on the nature of being. It started with a budding fear of death. But as soon as I found myself struck by that fear, I also found myself asking, “Just what is it that dies?”

Everyone seems to have their own answer to this question. As for me, I have found a balance with it. I am content now to leave it unanswered. Unanswered, yes, but this does not mean unexplored. I don’t seek an “answer” at this point, because I’ve realized that there may not be one. But this shouldn’t stop me from seeking insight. Insights and answers are not the same. This poem has manifested from insights and makes no attempt to answer anything.

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A Christmas Poem

On Christmas Eve I decided to go for walk in the Montgomery Woods, near where I live. I planned it around what I figured would be the sun’s nadir, so I got there about 11:20pm, and my walk lasted about two and a half hours. I brought my most weather resistant bansuri flute, knowing it would hold up to the cold, and still be playable the next day. When I go on my night walks there, I walk the full three mile loop through the groves, and not just the half-mile out to the first grove of the woods and back.

It was worth it, and I discovered I can play Noel on the flute I brought with me.

A Christmas Poem

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.

It is a dense forest full of towering redwoods, tan oaks, and underbrush—especially blankets of head-high fern. In the night it can be especially mysterious to walk through. When its a full moon, which it very nearly was, this mysteriousness is made all the more fantastic, almost eldritch. I use a small headlamp, not always strapped to my head, when I go on my night walks. More than adequate to see where I’m going and to keep visually aware of what’s around me. Sometimes I’ll take nearly the entire walk with it turned off, using it only to get by a few rough spots. But this time I had it on nearly the entire way. The cold somehow confuses my sense of surrounding, numbs it to a certain extent, making me feel more comfortable with it kept on.

When I first began taking these night walks a few years ago, I was very fretful, constantly snapping my head about at every slight sound or perceived motion, every unusual shadow, stopping to listen and be sure there wasn’t something near or following. And in these woods every shadow seems entirely alive. But these days I’m a lot more comfortable, and I’ve come to have a much better trust of my sense of what’s around me. Sometimes I do encounter animals out there, but they’re often a good deal less sure of me than I am of them. The last time I was out there I was serenaded by what sounded like a handful of wolves, baying from the woods nearby and nearby ridge-tops. They didn’t sound entirely like wolves, however, so I’m not sure what I heard. Yet I wasn’t very spooked by the experience, more just curious and interested.

This was my first walk in these woods during the winter. I’ve tended to not go on night walks during the winter because of the cold and wet. But I wanted to do something special for Christmas Eve, something that wasn’t exactly Christmassy, yet personally meaningful. So I took my flute and had my first Christmas night musical nature walk.

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Path Reflections

Just found myself pondering the nature of my path as a “poet”, whatever it is that old word refers to. I’m no Rabbie Burns, that’s for sure. But me and Mr. Burns have a common calling, nonetheless.

Path Reflections

I chose this path—I’m not sure why—
a path of never-ending change,
a path of study, growth, and time
invested in creative range.

I walk this path. I’m not sure where
it leads, or even if I hold
the strength to ever make it there.
It seems so far away—and cold.

And yet, since seven years ago,
when it occurred to me how soon
the spring of life will yield to snows
that fold its memory into ruin—

since I decided then to veer
away from living check to check,
planning for a distant year,
retired bent beneath the wreck

of countless countless wasted days,
the whole of life’s potential spent
on striving for a monthly gain
just tossed to mortgage, toys, or rent

until that truest treasure, time—
squandered to its very last—
is gone, and all that’s left behind
are memories of an empty past—

since then I’ve learned and written things
that may outlive my mortal life.
I’ve sacrificed security
and doomed myself to endless strife

for just the thought that someday some
may part the leaves and find my words
illuminating as the sun,
and wake within them sleeping birds

of hope, serenity, and joy,
poised to spread their feathers wide
and leap across the dawning void
to freedom, held aloft inside.

It’s not an easy calling, and to follow it can be every bit as fraught with hardship as to not. For me my potential as a poet has yet to be realized. It may be years, or a score of years, spent studying and cultivating my craft before I begin to achieve my potential. So to follow your path when your potential has not yet been realized means to follow a path of poverty and ridicule, for very few—if anyone—will see the potential that exists for you. They will insist that you make a living rather than putting your time into developing your path, and they won’t see what you see within yourself. They may even stand in the way of your path and push against you thinking that they are doing you a service to discourage you from your calling because they feel that you will do better in life if you can just forget it and go make a living.

This may be true on the front of making a living, but once someone who has become aware of their potential down a given path abandons that path, he will sink into a pit of dismay that will ultimately end in death from suicide or ill health. The sentient who has become aware of an unrealized potential must strive with all its might to realize that potential, for to do otherwise is to deny a gift that is extremely precious and rare—A gift essential to the health and well-being of the soul, the psyche, the mind, the heart, and the body. It is the most essential nutrient, without which the sentient wastes away into despair and self-destruction.

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promise

During my trip to Vermont in July/August, I visited the Devil’s Tower, where I had an experience that changed not only the course of my life, but the shape of my past. The details of this experience will remain with me, within me, to be buried with my bones and passed only to the heart of what posterity visits my grave. I will pass it then, the whole promise of it, one All Soul’s Eve, and so will the Promised.

For even then will we be side by side.

promise

from the moment i looked up and saw
just over my head your memory
draped off the stub remains of
a ponderosa’s lower branch

from the moment i felt lightning flash
through my mortal form till numb
my fingers tingled the beginnings of
an electric understanding

from the moment my eyes took in
the simple shape of your past hung
to the south of the bear-scratched tower
bleached white with unshed tears

from the moment i realized i stood
where grief-struck eyes set your spirit free
held hands and prayed for your hope
overlooking a plain of creeping thunder

from the moment you reached out and touched
my song with hidden fingers and embraced
my heart my mind my long forgotten dreams
with all the love you gave in life

oh my god i knew you then clear
as the cobalt sky that shook over dark
rumbling clouds suspended far
far in the distance

and from that moment i’ve carried
the shimmering whisper of your ghost in my
bones my joints my manhood like a promise
tangible as the stars themselves