For the unity of marriage I used Katrina as the metaphor for life’s struggles. And for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina I used matrimony as a metaphor for unity. This is my 12th hybridanelle poem.
Matrimony
To me, inspiration is a sacred thing. Without it, the creative soul experiences nothing but frustration and dismay. Some ancient poets were known to incorporate an invocation of the muse or muses into their epic poetry, such as Homer, Virgil, and Dante. I do not plan to write epic poems during my lifetime, though it could happen. Still, I would like to try to invoke the muses for the epic journey of my writing process, which I hope will last the entirety of my life.
An Invocation
O grant me rain from out the sounding clouds,
and flash against the backdrop of my thoughts
an inspiration wrought by subtle minds.
Dissolve the soughing haze that clings to all my dreams
and wraps confusion round my spinning soul.
Unveil the primal light obscured in stellar dust.
Release creative flow like prismed floods
that sweep stagnation from my standing sense.
O grant me rain from out the sounding clouds.
Lift the heavy doubt that cowers thick and close,
a fog that saturates in vapid shades of gray
and wraps confusion round my spinning soul.
Reach through this cacophonic mental din
and seed within my harried understanding
an inspiration wrought by subtle minds.
Sweep a translucent wind throughout my psychic planes,
infused with temperate airs to clear the cotton mist,
a fog that saturates in vapid shades of gray.
Defrost the ice and snow from all my fields,
the winter-scapes within that numb perception.
O grant me rain from out the sounding clouds.
Return decayed ideas to elemental drift
so they rise again as notions nursed on cosmic breath
infused with temperate airs to clear the cotton mist.
Connect me to the place where light is born,
from where it swells to crest in consciousness
an inspiration wrought by subtle minds.
Part confusion from conceptions fallen dead,
and draw its suffocation off my faculties
so they rise again as notions nursed on cosmic breath.
Restore the waters of my inmost lands,
so that my springs will flow with apprehension.
O grant me rain from out the sounding clouds,
an inspiration wrought by subtle minds.
Sing to me invention, and help me learn to heed.
Dissolve the soughing haze that clings to all my dreams,
and draw its suffocation off my faculties.
Unveil the primal light obscured in stellar dust.
This is my 11th hybridanelle.
Publication History:
Art Arena (web-based) — August 2005
During a recent cross-country drive across several states, I noticed how many yahoos sported the American flag on their cars and houses, but never bothered to honor it by taking it down at night (it should never be left in the dark) or retiring it once it fades out, cracks to bits, or wastes away.
It dawned on me that this must be how these Americans actually feel about their country and the constitutional ideals upon which it is founded. They may boast and brag about how great America is, but actions speak so much louder than words. You show me exactly what you think the ideals that founded this country are worth when you let the flag that represents them waste away in plain view of the world—Something that once upon a time would win you a citation.
Burning the Flag
Cracked and faded in the sun,
sported emblems lose their hue,
unretired and weather-torn.
Exposure to the elements betrays
emotional and mental negligence
to burning disregard for heritage.
Bumper stickers age too soon;
paper pride is left to wane,
cracked and faded in the sun
on well-kept pickup trucks and long sedans
beside some slogan spouting malcontent;
emotional and mental negligence
flies atop the roofs of cars—
sooty clown-ears deeply stained,
unretired and weather-torn.
Support is shown as mere velleity,
a symbol posted like an afterthought
beside some slogan spouting malcontent,
just another brittle sign
taking on a dirty tinge,
cracked and faded in the sun.
What shone for Francis Key one failing night
is treated now like any corporate logo,
a symbol posted like an afterthought.
Freedom flails on autumn winds,
half-remembered, growing pale,
unretired and weather-torn.
Abandoned to an apathy’s pollution,
the dream Old Glory strives to represent
is treated now like any corporate logo.
Banners rip on plastic stands,
unsaluted dawn to dusk,
cracked and faded in the sun,
unretired and weather-torn.
As mildew rots the fabric of the States,
exposure to the elements betrays
the dream Old Glory strives to represent
to burning disregard for heritage.
This is my 9th hybridanelle poem.
For a woman with dark brown eyes, she had a surprisingly bright countenance. This is my 7th hybridanelle poem, written to the woman who became my first wife.
Sunlight
For Jenna Joslyn
It seems to me the sunshine in your eyes
that burns away the glow of lesser stars
reflects the crystal moonlight of your soul.
Since our paths have crossed, I’ve never groped in darkness,
feeling my way by touch with uncertain hands and feet,
startled every moment contact serves as vision.
I feel the shadows fade before your gaze,
those blurred recesses deep where dreads are stored;
it seems to me the sunshine in your eyes
lifts an obscuring fog that would magnify my doubts
and cloud my thoughts with mist until I walked in quandary,
feeling my way by touch with uncertain hands and feet.
Your view illuminates my mystic core,
reveals a steady center in the storm,
reflects the crystal moonlight of your soul.
I’ve searched for eyes like yours, filled full of jasper mystery;
it often felt like folly; the hope would haunt my dreams
and cloud my thoughts with mist until I walked in quandary.
That dripping haze has drifted off my sight—
each day I wake beside your loving stare;
it seems to me the sunshine in your eyes
now lights the way before me, a path that once was dim,
concealed beneath the drizzle with slick unsettled footing;
it often felt like folly; the hope would haunt my dreams.
I feel the strength increase within my heart
because this narrow path beneath my stride
reflects the crystal moonlight of your soul.
So long as you’re beside me, I’ll always trust my heading;
you hold a gloom at bay that else would leave me blind,
concealed beneath the drizzle with slick unsettled footing.
Your smile clears a gray pall from my mind
and vivifies the world in which we stand;
it seems to me the sunshine in your eyes
reflects the crystal moonlight of your soul.
Your presence parts the clouds like gentle golden beams;
since our paths have crossed, I’ve never groped in darkness;
you hold a gloom at bay that else would leave me blind,
startled every moment contact serves as vision.
I wrote this poem, my 6th hybridanelle, hoping I’d be able to give a copy to the person who inspired it, a National Parks ranger stationed at Grand Canyon National Park, which I just recently visited.
There is a story behind the poem. But first the poem.
Cocoon
It was like a dream, a nightmare spanning years.
I drifted through a world of predators,
my larval soul awash in rapid fears.
One day I passed your station. You stopped me on the way.
You asked me where I went to and why my eyes were closed,
then handed me a sleeping bag and wished me well.
So with your gift, this orange coverture,
I found peace in the night, but in the day
I drifted through a world of predators.
My life was filled with terror behind impassive walls.
My thoughts were pumped with poison. In time I fled those cells.
One day I passed your station. You stopped me on the way
and questioned me with care—I would not sway;
you could not know what I had just escaped from.
I found peace in the night, but in the day
my blood was mixed with shadows, turned to serum-waste—
you listened to my answers, yet sensed what I withheld,
then handed me a sleeping bag and wished me well.
Your simple gift permitted me to travel,
to mend the fractured crystal of my mind.
You could not know what I had just escaped from.
I fled my own destruction into the fearsome world
to chance uncertain highways before my fate was sealed.
One day I passed your station. You stopped me on the way,
my fourth day on the asphalt running blind
with only pupal hopes—yet undiscerned—
to mend the fractured crystal of my mind.
Perhaps my eyes revealed the weight of iron woes.
You somehow glimpsed the quandary I would not dare expose
then handed me a sleeping bag and wished me well.
Those fibers offered metamorphosis…
It was like a dream, a nightmare spanning years
with only pupal hopes—yet undiscerned—
my larval soul awash in rapid fears.
In time I learned to fly erratic on the wind,
my dusty wings capricious upon the windblown fields—
One day I passed your station. You stopped me on the way,
then handed me a sleeping bag and wished me well.
As a fifteen year old, I had been a road-wandering runaway for four days when I found myself in the Grand Canyon National Park—hiking to the bottom of the canyon and back. This, I later realized, is something only an Olympic trainer or an uninformed teenager would consider doing. It was a grueling hike, thousands of feet in elevation, and through several climate zones.
A ranger stopped me about a mile half down the ten mile hike to the Colorado, when he saw that I wasn’t carrying any water. He was horrified, and told me there was no way I could expect to make it to the bottom and back without water, and when he realized he couldn’t talk me out of the hike, he shoved a gallon of water in my hands as he grumbled something about crazy youth.
I did make it down to the Colorado, where I watched the rapids boil for a bit before starting back. He was right about the water.
On my way back, he noted with some surprise that I was still alive, and ushered me into his ranger station, where he proceeded to express his feeling that I was a runaway and tried to get me to admit as much. I lied and lied and lied and he eventually gave up, but before letting me go he followed some instinct burning in his chest, and gave me a confiscated sub zero sleeping bag.
I lived in this sleeping bag for the next year and a half as I wandered a better part of the United States. It saw me through blizzards, wild thunder storms, silver cloth, hail, sleet and more. I’m pretty sure that if it were not for this random gift from a total stranger I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it today.
I wasn’t able to find the park ranger when I made it to the Grand Canyon. So late in the night, about 2am, I left a copy of the poem on a billboard beside the Bright Angel trailhead, the same trail I hiked so long ago. After this, I walked over to a point where I could look north over the Grand Canyon and asked god to look after the spirit that gave me that sleeping bag. As I did so, one of the brightest and longest shooting stars I’ve ever seen slid across the northern sky.
This, my 4th hybridanelle poem, was written for someone I never got to meet, the ex-husband of my first wife. He committed suicide not long after she divorced him. His ash remains are buried at the base of a young sequoia on his father-in-law’s property in Northwest Oregon.
Fusion
Publication History:
Pacific Review — Fall 2006
As scary and abusive as my father was, I still think I eventually would have found a way to reconcile with him in adulthood, had he not killed himself when I was ten. Though I’m not the most successful of individuals financially, I still think he would have been proud of who I became as a person. Somehow I’m certain of this.
Like many who claw their way forth from disadvantaged backgrounds, I often felt the urge and impulse to throw it all away to drugs, thievery—and much worse—as a way of dealing with feelings of impotence and inadequacy, as a way of lashing out at myself and the world. But instead I somehow chose to self-cultivate, slowly but surely, over time. A never ending process of ever evolving fruition.
If I were my child, I would be proud of him, knowing the impossibility of what he had to overcome both internally and circumstantially. And so sometimes I wish I could show myself to the father who left my world, who left life when I was ten, and enjoy even just a moment of his acknowledgment, his praise. The proud father of a survivor who learned to thrive in his own way.
I wrote this poem, my 19th villanelle, as I pondered what my father has missed out on. I know that he would have wanted to be here for this, to see me find my way. So as much as I lost him when he died, it seems like he lost me even more. I think this is the way with the suicide of a parent—The parent misses out on everything. The child adapts and ultimately finds his or her way, but the parent misses out on absolutely everything. It is the ultimate loss.
To the Parent Who Committed Suicide
You’ll never know what they will come to be,
The children of your heart who live without your love;
At best, you leave behind but stings of grief.
You’ll never share their triumph or defeat
And smile when again they rise with new resolve;
You’ll never know what they will come to be.
You’ll never comfort them in times of need
Or feel the subtle joy that always comes thereof;
At best, you leave behind but stings of grief.
You’ll never see them strive to meet their dreams,
The hopes within their soul they struggle to achieve;
You’ll never know what they will come to be.
You’ll never beam a parent’s prideful glee,
To see them find their way and how they learn to live;
At best, you leave behind but stings of grief.
You lost them as you swung your failing feet,
And now you’re just a void that they will always have;
You’ll never know what they will come to be;
At best, you leave behind but stings of grief.
This poem attempts to describe an experience a friend had with a ghost while out backpacking on the Lost Coast Trail, north of Fort Bragg, California. After researching the old logging town of Wheeler Camp, the place where her experience began, and backpacking to the site myself a couple of times, I got the feeling the ghost she encountered was a child’s ghost.
Using what she told me, what I sensed about the area myself, and what I gleaned from my research into the history of Wheeler Camp, I managed the following.
The Phantom of Wheeler Camp
I
The Child’s Life
The ancient redwoods fall like crashing thunder,
Hauled to the clanging mill that pays for his evening meals;
Dismayed, he sees his refuge torn asunder.
Each morning rugged hands awake from slumber,
Heeding a daily call to climb the canyons and kill;
The ancient redwoods fall like crashing thunder.
How can a child teach his father wonder,
Who razes pillared hills, destroying enchanted halls?
Dismayed, he sees his refuge torn asunder.
The sentient forest beings fade in number;
Heavy machines befoul and ravenous saws defile;
The ancient redwoods fall like crashing thunder.
He dreams of ending all this senseless plunder;
His hope decays and fails, for no-one cares what he feels;
Dismayed, he sees his refuge torn asunder.
His world is carted off as squares of lumber;
Helpless, alone, reviled, he grieves to no avail—
The ancient redwoods fall like crashing thunder;
Dismayed, he sees his refuge torn asunder.
II
The Child’s Ghost
Suddenly all is dim; he wanders in psychic dream
Among the barren hills of senseless slaughter,
Broken by savage harm, now one with his blighted home.
In death he holds a grief which never falters,
Transformed into a sprite that floats where the saplings sprout
Among the barren hills of senseless slaughter.
The loss has crushed his heart till nothing can soothe the hurt,
For every old-growth tree was slain for profit,
Transformed into a sprite that floats where the saplings sprout.
Two thousand years of forest-song, melodic,
Vanished amid the moist and constantly shifting mist,
For every old-growth tree was slain for profit.
Visitors sense his ghost, a subtle and somber guest,
An apparition vaguely seen then faded,
Vanished amid the moist and constantly shifting mist.
His anguish grew as all he loved fell wasted;
Suddenly all is dim; he wanders in psychic dream,
An apparition vaguely seen then faded,
Broken by savage harm, now one with his blighted home.
III
Decades Later
Eroding skid roads slowly change to forest;
Alders emerge from sleep and conifers climb the slopes,
Obscuring man’s destructive greed from notice.
A gentle woman dreams in the canyon shadows dim;
Her heart is touched by something lost in torment,
And shaken by the gleam, her spirit succumbs to gloom.
She wakes and walks beneath the new-growth foliage
With heavy-hearted step on trails where, defined and steep,
Eroding skid roads slowly change to forest.
Dismay beyond her own fell just for moments
And brushed her troubled mind with losses forever mourned;
Her heart is touched by something lost in torment.
Her vision blurs with feelings strangely foreign,
A pain she can’t escape that distorts her mental scope,
Obscuring man’s destructive greed from notice.
A grieving spirit groaned within the molested ground,
Responding to the aura of her presence,
And brushed her troubled mind with losses forever mourned.
She stumbles home—her limbs grow weak and torpid—
Hardly able to cope where, as the semesters creep,
Eroding skid roads slowly change to forest.
The very heart of nature stands attendance;
Coyotes hold their poise and ravens serenely pose,
Responding to the aura of her presence.
So few would guess the ancients all were corded
To see these living shapes in place of their eldership
Obscuring man’s destructive greed from notice.
The air around her sighs the whispering subtle soughs
Of sorrows that a broken shade remembers;
Coyotes hold their poise and ravens serenely pose.
Her thoughts are framed with images emotive,
An endless foggy drip and trails where the branches droop;
Eroding skid roads slowly change to forest,
Obscuring man’s destructive greed from notice.
Long after mists have cooled the campfire embers,
A gentle woman dreams in the canyon shadows dim
Of sorrows that a broken shade remembers,
And shaken by the gleam, her spirit succumbs to gloom.
There are three poetic forms used here: Parts I and II are my 18th villanelle and terzanelle, respectively; part III is my 1st hybridanelle.
This poem, my 17th villanelle, reflects on the conditions and spiritual aftermath of my father’s suicide. I wasn’t there. My parents separated and divorced by the time I was born, and though I lived variously with both of them, at ten years old, when my father ended his life, I was living with my mother 260 miles away.
Sometimes, as the years went on, I’d try to imagine the circumstances of his death—What he felt, saw, heard, and pondered. What crushed him? Was it truly just his alcoholism? Who knows. But it did end in the dark of the Monterey County Jail drunk tank, an old building used for the purpose since the days of the old west.
In adulthood I’ve visited the jail, just to see it. And I could swear I sensed his presence there, all unheeding—Lost in the abysmal trap of its own self-pity and sorrow.
In the Shade of Suicide
steel bars seal the concrete cell
dim lighting casts a haze on everything
suffocating hope until the pulse is still
here unheard there sobs a secret weeping soul
the air is weighed beyond all comforting
steel bars seal the concrete cell
some can sense a lost control
regrets cascade and crush in heavy throng
suffocating hope until the pulse is still
year by passing year brief glances rise and fall
a faded figure sometimes seen to hang
steel bars seal the concrete cell
wrenched within their drunken pall
detainees wake to hear a gasping lung
suffocating hope until the pulse is still
violence born of sorrow echoes through the hall
the final act of him who kicked and swung
steel bars seal the concrete cell
suffocating hope until the pulse is still
Publication History:
The Awakenings Review — Summer 2007
I was inspired to write this poem after one of my full moon visits to a particular redwood tree that grows near a place called Usal Beach, north of Fort Bragg, California. It’s a remote beach, accessible only by six miles of dirt road, after driving at least 60 odd miles of remote highway. Most redwoods grow straight up, a single spire swaying up to the clouds. However something has inspired this tree to grow very differently. About fourteen feet from the ground it suddenly spreads out into about thirty individual spires, each of which have grown over the years into mature redwoods. When seen from a short distance, the effect is that of looking upon an enormous chandelier. I call her “The Lotus Tree” because of the whorl-like pattern of her individual spires.
This tree has a strong presence about her. And judging by the path that winds up to her knees through a grove of similarly twisted redwoods—though none so spectacular as herself—it would seem that she has connected with quite a few people over the years. Knowing her has been one of the great blessings of my life.
The Lotus Tree
This poem was incorporated into my villanelle/terzanelle project, so “the grove” and “full moon visit” are my 15th and 16th villanelles, respectively, and “the sagess” and “astral visit” are my 14th and 15th terzanelles, respectively.
She has a connection with horses that is difficult to understand or explain. I’ve met people like this over the years, including my friend Del. Maybe they’re remembering something from a previous existence? Following this train of thought, I found myself writing this poem, my 12th villanelle.
Transmigrant Memory
For Bonnie
Horses race upon the fields; thunder rolls within the earth,
Where laughing neighs are echoed up the canyons to the peaks;
Lightning flashes in her eyes, dark eyes full of silent mirth.
She storms amid the thronging herd; all the valley holds its breath,
Where jays watch from the aspens, ravens from the elder oaks;
Horses race upon the fields; thunder rolls within the earth.
Billowed sepia-colored mane whips across her chestnut cloth
And dances in the ether, blown in long unfurling arcs;
Lightning flashes in her eyes, dark eyes full of silent mirth.
Each passing nimbus rains a mist, morphing like some giant wraith,
And shadows cast below them briefly dim the verdant brooks;
Horses race upon the fields; thunder rolls within the earth.
Feelings flood her human heart; karma wrought a human path;
Where deep within her nature something equine rears and strikes,
Lightning flashes in her eyes, dark eyes full of silent mirth.
A knowing broods within her soul, welling up to issue forth,
And somehow she remembers; visions fill her heart with aches—
Horses race upon the fields; thunder rolls within the earth;
Lightning flashes in her eyes, dark eyes full of silent mirth.
