I found myself enjoying a cloud mural painted in the skies above Ukiah’s western ridges this evening. I felt it deserved a tanka.
valley dusk
In this poem, my 13th trisect, segment one depicts steel. Segment two depicts the skyscraper, in which steel is the most essential component. And segment three depicts the effects of modern industry upon earth and humanity, which includes mining for and smelting steel and the development and movement of all those resources that lead to the creation and maintenance of the skyscraper.
Alchemy
Ore
Forged by myriad million years of light,
cast against eternities of night,
elemental embers collect amid the void,
pooled in glowing clouds of dust and rock.
Particles accrete through time and motion,
condensed to monumental orbs of molten
crystal moods, amassing alloys mid the darkness,
cooled to form a rind of raw potential.
Fertile soils rise from ancient stone,
animating shapes of wood and bone.
Nimble hands evolve and grope the ground for clues,
scratching for a means to reach the sky.
Fires smelt a future from deposits
quarried from a realm of veins and pockets,
charged into converters from out the depths of reason,
hatching alloys cast as new potential.
Corpse
They rise as if from out the earth, a maze
of beams and columns stretched against the haze,
looming like the relic frames of ancient beasts,
massive specters moaning on the wind.
Reflections slowly seal each giant carcass,
body bags of alloys mined from darkness
closed around the ribs of tall decaying monsters,
ghastly shadows cast across the landscape.
They cantilever labyrinths of gloom
hard against an ever present brume,
where wander human wraiths yet bound to living breath,
faces filled to silence with dismay.
Like mausoleums raised to mark the open
graves where hopes lie wasting in corrosion,
great facades reflect with every sunset whisper
traces of the hollowness within them.
Course
Canyons wrought from concrete steel and glass
soar above an ever seething mass,
heads and fenders tossed within a frantic flood
swelled from centuries of strong desire.
Arteries of lava, veins of phosphor
circulate through fields of psychic squalor,
where great malignant tumors feed upon the current,
welled from out the heart of mass confusion.
Discolored patches stretch and fade from view—
membranes taking on a sickly hue—
an ever growing quilt expanding abstract themes
flung beyond the grasp of human thought.
Filaments of culture weave a madness
shimmered from the dark side of a canvas
suspended deep in silence against abysmal backdrops
clung forever to the soul’s awareness.
The prosody is pretty complex. If you’re curious about it let me know and I’ll respond with an explanation.
I had no idea where this was going when I started it, but I thought I’d just go with it and see what happened. I’m kind of surprised. Perhaps even pleasantly so.
rainbow
i traced its edge
through deep green fields
over pine tree hills and higher
till it scraped the desolate
snows of nowhere
and still i followed
on through alpine vale
and florid glen and down
jagged canyon ridges past
island mountains that rose
as if from seas of sand
and still i followed
past mesas lined with crows
and sere grass ranges
where lumbering cows rid
the world of diversity
and yet still on
along wide slow rivers filled
with stench fish floating lifeless
on bloated sides and
by pillars of smoke that
chased blue from the skies
and yet still on
through lifeless mountains
painted green to please the eye
past springs that bubbled poison
and wells that oozed dismay
yet still i went
following those faded hues
amid a web of tall marble
monuments each depicting
through stains the long neglected
dreams of liberty
yet still i went
along shores littered with
death where rag-worn poor rake
thin pale fingers through filth
for remnants of life
and finally there in a long
white plaza it ended
all its color drained to sooty
shades of gray that flickered
out from the last remains
of a once great constitution
now but a distant hope for
greater souls to strive toward
I normally don’t approach topics of this sort. But hopefully I can pass this off as a sort of pen-portrait and not as any sort of political commentary. I don’t actually know or understand enough to comment on American or World politics. But, regardless, this is the undeniable impression I get when I see Bush and certain members of his administration up in front of the microphones.
strange disease
your face looks somehow
slack
not with age but some
strange disease
your tongue slithers in and out
slicking greasy lies
like rancid butter
across rows of microphones
your cheeks spill out
over insect jaws that work
mindless as mandibles
on flickering teleprompts
your eyes are toxic
squalid little pools of terror leaking
shivers from soft busy glows
sea to noxious sea
your ears have rotted gray
deaf as battleship decks
slack as the torn and tattered flag
silenced behind you
your voice is the sound of gravel
shoveled from the backs of trucks
with dirt and lime into
long shallow graves
your hands grope out trembling
as if overcome by pressure
tapped from ancient soils long ago decayed
to putrid pools of loss
and your head swells grotesque
to bursting from your dark black suit
pumped with agendas too fetid
for the heart to endure
As I got to know my future wife long distance, I found myself wanting to assure her that my love for and dedication to her will never change.
“He loves me.”
When I go backpacking, I tend to my bring my journal along, or at least a little composition book. Here I’ll record any thoughts I have, or poem fragments. I should do this more often, since it affords me an opportunity to really sit with my thoughts, undistracted. Later I’ll go through the poem fragments and see about expanding them into actual poems (though I’m told a poem fragment is usually itself a poem).
Of the five or so recorded during my recent eight day walk, this one feels the most complete.
Glance
If I have a child one day, where would he (bold assumption I know) come from? I think we rain from the void into awareness. I think we drift in a sort of sleep, locked in the watery depths of consciousness and are eventually lulled by the rhythmic sounds of promise into life. From dream to dream we sleep our way through eternity, connected by an ever expanding web of condition—or karma.
Provision
Once in awhile I’ll meet and interact with some small creature, and this will inspire a poem or three. I’ve attempted to interact with cicadas in the past, but they’re always so skittish, making it difficult even to get near one, never mind give one a ride. Maybe this one was a bit shocked by its downtown surroundings, making it more willing to try its luck with climbing on board. Which I think worked out well for it, since I was able to leave it someplace far more green.
cicada dreams
i
stained glass wings rest
light against the dull gray
tinge of stainless steel
compound eyes study a world
more strange and alien
than their wide and varied view
giant beetles rush colors past
sometimes disgorging unwieldy
young from beneath heavy wings
great square hives rise up
full of eyes that glint back bits
of amber pearl and turquoise
creatures half concealed by
remains of cocoon rush about
scratching out bits of song
small metal trees grow barely
a few flat leaves which never
bend to the touch of wind
there is no need for thought
for there is nothing to understand
here of this dim new dreaming
ii
curious eyes reach out and
touch ever so slightly front-
most legs with invitation
one rises up to ponder-feel
the alien appendage almost
lost in reflections of meaning
then all at once tear-drop
wings climb up light tan skin
and over thin brown hairs
one walks the other rides
before the floating scrutiny of
a large peculiar gaze
overhead floats a sidewalk
canopy of maples deep green
firs and old black oaks
sign posts and street lamps fade
behind a backyard gate that leads
into a garden where the sound
of city streets is hardly heard
among the many hues of spring
that climb and blossom toward the sun
and here against a beechwood branch
living wings are gently placed
returned to sapwood realms of dream
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
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
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
