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subjectivity

Just did a little reading about an old Russian art movement called suprematism, manifesto and all. Kind of a curious thing. It was originated by an artist, Kazimir Malevich, around 1913, and he declared the movement ended in 1920. The only art movement I can think of whose originator eventually decided to end it. Never mind, though, Malevich was apparently charismatic enough to draw in a few adherents to suprematism, who continued creating supposedly suprematist artwork and writing (one Russian poet played with it) well after Malevich ended his movement. I guess if you don’t want something to take on a life of its own, don’t publicize it.

Anyway, Malevich was inspired by cubism and futurism to start this movement. In effect, suprematism is a sort of combination of the two. Cubism is basically artwork comprised of representational industrial shapes and angles like cubes and circles. Futurism is the extreme abstraction of the same.

Malevich, apparently, saw some metaphysical connections and called his attempt to bring them out ‘suprematism’.

So, here’s my stab at it, just for metaphysical cubist kicks.

subjectivity

clear your mind white
empty the canvas of thought

paint a black circle
a ring of smoke

outside is all the void
inside the void of self

scrape the inner edge
with a triangle’s black points

spirit thought and body
trapped within the void

now fill the black triangle
with questions feelings doubts

a snail crushed underfoot
a daughter crushed by steel

a spider’s shriveled figure
a mother’s crinkled corpse

a fly smashed by the swatter
a son smashed by debris

a red fox snared in iron
a father trapped in credit

it all lasts but a moment
the circle snaps and fades

and the triangle’s edges scatter
to join the canvas white

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Contrast

There are strange contrasts where I work. Inside it’s like a sort of grave—dingy, dark, dismal. Outside there is the Ukiah valley and the vibrant green hills nearby. There are cherry trees that grow just outside, and in the spring the contrast becomes even more pronounced.

Contrast

Sealed from the world
beside the drone of a dirty
ten gallon tank of goldfish
I look down the hall to hear
hidden in the splotchy half-dark
a cherry blossom breeze
and the twittering light refrains
of a yellow crested finch

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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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Elegy

My first marriage lasted just about a year. We were together for all of about two years. She was a walking dichotomy. Loving, kind, supportive on the one hand—evil, spiteful, and treacherous on the other. The emotional roller-coaster ride came to an end when she added drunken extramarital affairs to her treacheries.

I was in love with her, for some reason. Deeply so. I suppose this is why her compulsive treacheries were so poignantly painful. I understood that she was a borderline, and so I endured as far as I could. But, enough was enough. After all, her first husband had already committed suicide. So, I left her to her insanity before I found myself buried next to him.

It was another year and a half or so before I finally began to really accept that it was over, and thus was born my 22nd hybridanelle.

Elegy

I’ll not forget your kindness, nor the pain
staked between my ribs to rip my vital center.
I’ll not forget your laughter, nor the tears
I cursed in vain against the all unseeing skies
or whimpered like a mongrel clamped in iron jaws,
bleeding broken lamentation to the stars.

I’ll not forget your whispers, nor the poison words
you coated on the rusty spike of truth,
staked between my ribs to rip my vital center,
healed only by the seal of deep unfeeling scars
that still can never hide the searing touch of rage
I cursed in vain against the all unseeing skies.

I’ll not forget your comfort, nor the angst
inspired by deception, the shameless treachery
you coated on the rusty spike of truth,
the weeks of turbid panic that thundered like a storm
until my thoughts were beached on barren shores of death,
bleeding broken lamentation to the stars.

I’ll not forget your promise, nor the tragedy
that left me in a state of desolation
inspired by deception, the shameless treachery
that marred my sense of trust with green infected scabs
until, half crazed by torment, in uttermost defeat,
I cursed in vain against the all unseeing skies.

I’ll not forget your presence, nor the absence,
the swollen scarcity of faith and understanding
that left me in a state of desolation,
clutching onto dirt-clods, scraping over stones,
choking clots of dust, and in the hollow night
bleeding broken lamentation to the stars.

Though I may one day drink from streams of inner peace,
I’ll not forget your kindness, nor the pain,
the swollen scarcity of faith and understanding.
I’ll not forget your laughter, nor the tears
that welled from acid springs to melt away my skin
as, trembling at the edge of self annihilation,
I cursed in vain against the all unseeing skies,
bleeding broken lamentation to the stars.

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spires

A ghazal! I haven’t written a ghazal since June of 2005. So that makes this—what?—my 127th. Feels nice to get one out again. I remember I got real tired of them by the end of my ghazal project a few years ago, but I never really intended to abandon them altogether.

With this one I veer away from using my penname in the signature couplet (last couplet) to using a reference to one of my penname’s meanings. In this poem it’s “open skies”, since “vast openness to the heavens” is one of the Arabic meanings for ‘Zahhar’.

spires

let’s twine our roots beneath the world together
until we rise against the wind together

let’s turn and reach to gather shades of light
with countless long thin leaves that wave together

let’s make a bed beneath our outstretched limbs
shaded by the dreams we weave together

let’s draw clear waters from the hidden earth
and breathe them out as vapors washed together

let’s share the sounds of creeks and faint cicadas
their rhythmic songs like magic wound together

let’s shelter soft brown trails among the fern
where lovers holding hands may walk together

let’s filter daylight from the open skies
through daydreams spun like amber webs together

Publication History:

Art Arena (web-based) — March 2007

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oak touch

My 22nd terzanelle. There are two particular inspirations behind this poem, but I’ll mention one. Years ago I had an extremely vivid dream involving a large black oak, species q. kelloggii, or California black oak. Without going into detail, in this dream the tree drew me to the shade of its canopy, and once there I found myself surrounded by all sorts of dream-time creatures (the sort of creatures that don’t exist in waking reality) as a raven high in the crown dropped a small something down for me to investigate. There’s more to it. Actually the dream is pretty well laid out in my poem, “markers”.

Well, two weeks later I was driving back to Ukiah from the coastal town of Mendocino over the Comptche-Ukiah road—a radically windy one-lane little thing—and as I rounded a corner just east of Orr Springs, there it was—the massive old oak from my dream. Years have passed, and I’ve struggled to understand what that dream and this oak are all about for me, but I still don’t really know. I would like to know. But I don’t know. I must settle for vague insights, as this is the way of such things.

oak touch

sepia leaves and branches shade
the supple parchment of your years
rooted deep in stardust dreams

wind shimmers through the boughs of time
beneath an ever phasing moon
the supple parchment of your years

bares the mark of ancient grace
that rustles by a canyon’s edge
beneath an ever phasing moon

grasses lap gray plates of bark
spread throughout a billowed crown
that rustles by a canyon’s edge

with each new breeze like subtle gems
glimmers softly in the dark
spread throughout a billowed crown

writhing in elusive light
the serpent beauty of your form
glimmers softly in the dark

etched against the realm of night
sepia leaves and branches shade
the serpent beauty of your form
rooted deep in stardust dreams

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investment

It’s been raining all day. The skies are heavy. I love heavy skies, actually. I love rain. I could use a walk, though, but I don’t always feel like going out for a walk or hike when it means I’m going to get wet. Haven’t been out so much the past few days due to the rain because I’ve just gotten over a monster head cold and I don’t want a relapse. But in a few days as I complete my recovery I’ll be out for my walks even if its raining.

This doesn’t have anything to do with the poem. Just a bit of environmental context, in a sense. I just wrote this while sitting in a Starbucks cafe. I played with a couple of stanzas then went out and played my bansuri flute for awhile beneath the awning. I’ve found that bamboo flutes and rain mix very well. Very satisfying to my spirit. Then I went back in and played with the poem some more. Then back out again with my flute.

As I played a man from Mexico came up and asked me if I was playing a kanakta (assuming I heard and/or spelled that right). I asked him what that was and he told me a South American wooden flute. I told him I was playing a bamboo flute from India called a ‘bansuri’. He was really intrigued by the instrument. His enjoyment of my playing was also satisfying to my spirit.

Anyway, this poem. I met someone recently and we’re getting to know one another. Looks like it will turn out to be an intimate relationship. Never know where these will lead or how they’ll end up. But I guess I’ll give it a go. She is very pretty, and unique. And we all know how pretty and unique affects most men. But it’s a psycho-spiritual investment, the sort with uncertain returns.

investment

perhaps i’ll brush my fingers
  down the backbone
 of your thought

feel the white frame move
  beneath the smooth motion
 of your silken cover

perhaps i’ll reach out
  and sip from the spring
 of your thoughts

part my lips and let
  your essence slide
 to my center

perhaps i’ll stand barefoot
  by the whispering edge
 of your emotion

wet my feet with waves
  and risk the moonlit tides
 washed from mystery

perhaps i’ll stand in awe
  beneath the star fields
 of your reflection

and catch my breath
  when one parts and falls
 from the night

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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

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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.