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nose hairs

I have spent a lot of time in poetry focused writer’s groups. These are mostly populated by people who for some inexplicable reason love the writing of Whitman, Ginsberg, and the like. When I get my turn to share my work and hear critiques, these folks generally have only one thing to say, which is something along the lines of, “Just say what you feel, man! Just write what you feel! It’s all about what you feel, man!!” Well, alright, at the moment, this what I feel, man!

nose hairs

they stand in line
  stiff and stark
rank and file
  on the march

merciless soldiers
  raised from hell
heft their siege
  in endless swell

rifles raised
  with bayonettes
they stab their way
  with no regrets

shooting always
  toward the brain
with deadly force
  unfailing aim

for each one pulled
  from out the race
a dozen rise
  to fill their place

marching always
  on the brain
marching till i
  go insane

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an inkling hope

The idea for this poem came to me a few months back, at which point I hurriedly tapped out the opening four lines—then nothing. So today after four or so months of periodically checking in on it, I’ve finally managed to sit down and finish the original idea.

an inkling hope

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.

Publication History:

Clamor — Fall 2009

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Visions

Originally, this was going to be part I of “Transmogrification”, but the energy and time investment involved in adhering to the strict prosodic scheme of the stanzas proved to be too much. So I saved the first fragmented stanzas to be finished later and restarted “Transmogrification” with a simpler scheme. As a synthetic ode, the prosody and length of this poem would have to have been mirrored exactly in an antithetical part II, which I knew would require more of an effort than I was ready to commit to at the time.

And yet, what I had already managed seemed worth saving and building upon.

Visions

Earthen eyes gaze out on crescent dunes,
     there to ponder remnants
of cities melted ages past in doom,
          cultures from another time
          ground to rolling fields of sand,
no monument nor trace left moaning on the wind.

Sagebrush eyes peer off through scented timbers
     and sense within the green
an elven nation thriving, ever timid,
          past the reach of human menace,
          fortressed in their deep concealment,
a realm of sylvan magic lush with rare fulfillment

Lapis eyes take in a waste of waves
     and fancy far beneath them
a shimmered halflight rippling from the wake
          down on castles carved from myth,
          peopled by a watery race
who dream in coral homes and thrive without a trace.

Soft gray eyes look up to view a sky
     where nimbus clouds conceal
a wonder floating just beyond the sight,
          palaces of pastel color,
          built by beings half transparent,
forever held adrift on atmospheric currents.

Hazel eyes reflect on fields of light
     and find within the silence
a universe replete with distant lives
          strewn across the starry swell,
          spun throughout the depths of space
on worlds of every axis bound to planes of grace.

Imagination dares to dream a world
     alive with magic hues,
emergent shades of mystery at work,
          bearing gifts of subtle wisdom
          manifest from hidden sources
welled from deep beneath the realm of conscious forces.

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happy deathday

I guess my “holiday” poems tend not to be so festive. It was a phrase from Joyce’s Ulysses that somehow got me going: “Must be his [Smith O’Brien’s] deathday. For many happy returns.” (pg. 93).

Thought this a curious twist on the phrase. And found myself jotting down a note in my composition book… which expanded into a quatrain… which expanded three more stanzas. At which point I looked at it and thought to myself, “Why am I writing something like this this early Thanksgiving morning?”

Why indeed! But with a little reflection, it came to me.

It’s the forth anniversary of a father’s death—suicide—which I can’t help but feel some responsibility for. Our most tragic mistakes shape us, hopefully into better beings. But they also scar us. And sometimes others.

I’ve been told again and again that I shouldn’t accept responsibility for this suicide. But… leaving circumstances untold here …It’s difficult not to. I hope his shade some semblance of peace there at the edge of Styx.

So, this realization in mind, I found myself focusing the last three stanzas more tightly.

happy deathday

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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Transmogrification

My second synthetic ode. Parts I and II represent antithetical aspects of a child’s development, first the creative wonder and exploration all children seem to enjoy, then the addictive violence and desensitization of modern video games. Part III presents the synthesis of these two, the soldier on the field of battle, ready to kill without hesitation or remorse.

Imagine, as you read, one voice—say a soft-spoken female voice—reading part I and a second voice—say a harsher male voice—reading part II. Then, as you read part III, imagine the two voices reading in unison.

Transmogrification

        I

Hazel eyes absorb a world of wonder,
    cities floating through the sky
  half concealed among the clouds,
    mermaids dancing in the sea
  half revealed among the foam,
    and camouflaged away from human sight
        elven nations thriving all around the world.
            Nimble hands explore
    paper wood and plastic,
          creating new inventions week by day.
        Supersonic aircraft zoom through hallway canyons
          and out across imaginary bays;
        coffee table cities rise among the couches
          busy with the sounds of industry; and
        stellar ships and space ports emerge from bedroom closets—
          precursors of a future yet to be.
 

        II

Stormy eyes absorb a realm of slaughter,
    cities rotting with the dead
  overrun by demon hordes,
    Gothic townships ever dim
  overwhelmed by zombie mobs,
    and everywhere, apocalyptic doom
        drowns imagination with visions of the slain.
            Frantic hands control
    pixels bent on trauma,
          with implements of every kind of war
        wielded to the hymns of personal damnation,
          gentleness made mad for battle-scores,
        shooting hacking slaying, all discrimination
          lost amid a growing thirst for more. And
        steadily the will to think and learn is narrowed
          to morbid rivulets of combat lore.
 

        III

                Steel gray eyes survey
            silent flesh and burning bone,
        columns pluming black against the darkness,
            cities rubbled with dismay,
        broken homes where broken mothers moan,
    brick and mortar scattered through a halflight
fraught with holy terrors lurking deep in shadow
and sensor-tripped explosives stashed along the roadways.
        Steady hands take aim,
    crossing foes between the rigid hairs
        of righteousness and training,
    a firm belief that killing in the hallowed name is fair
        ingrained through years of subtle inculcation.
            Calloused fingers stroke the edge of death,
    forever tense, prepared to deal
            the fatal strike that leaves the twitching dead
        left glaring up one final supplication.

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Alchemy

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.

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The Poet Obscure

I used to prepare and send as many as sixteen submissions a month. But after a few years worth of rejection slips, save for the acceptance of two or three poems in chapbook journals, I now rarely submit my work. If I saw poetry of some quality getting published, I might strive to improve upon it and continue submitting. But most published poetry could have been written by pretty much anyone. There’s nothing to set it apart. And the few poems that stand out above these aren’t much above. Still, for my own sake, I strive to improve my craft. This is what a student, a devotee, a child, a creature of poetry must do.

My guess is you have to know the editors personally, or at least know someone they know, to get your poetry published. And if not this, then at the very least I imagine you must have to overtly buy into whatever politics and agendas they’re selling—and your submissions must demonstrate as much. Whatever the case, the quality of work doesn’t seem matter, so long as it fits snugly within a predetermined socio-political paradigm.

Knowing this, I still go my own way. Either I go my own way, alone and unknown, yet scaling heights of beauty and insight, or I trample along through the plains as just another brown hump in the stampede.

The Poet Obscure

He may not have the gift of high allusion,
quotes and references to texts obscure
recorded with compulsory profusion.

Perhaps he’d rather find a natural scheme
where words and metaphors come more sincerely,
requiring no exegetic scrawl.

He may not use strong images so nearly
as often as the modernists demand
is vital for a poem to be clearly

more than just a monologue of mind,
for he’ll make use of other strong devices
that let him deftly transmit all he means.

He may not ramble on of sacrifices
he’s made throughout the years, and what he feels
the world should know of all his strengths and vices.

He might instead decide he’d rather fold
his tales and meditations in the hearses
of dead and dying tenors to the fields.

He may not give his all enjambing verses
haphazardly across each random page,
every line chopped as he disperses

strong opinion, malcontent and pain,
for he may see the line bearing notions
beyond the norms imposed by donnish pride.

He may not feel romanced by Greek devotions
nor feel inclined to scatter Roman lore
throughout the lexicon of his emotions.

A broader range of histories may lure
his thought to ponder cultural connections
rooted in the loam of distant lives.

He may not share the common predilections
of using poetry as but a means
to push his politics in all directions

and further what agendas rule his mind,
for he may have no motive but to travel
through landscapes green with self-development.

He may not heed the rap of fashion’s gavel
and follow every statute set by fad,
accepting precedents as laid in gravel.

He might be more inclined to stray afar
from sooty highways, trampled by convention,
on subtle paths that lead to mystic finds.

He may not raise his hackles at the mention
of making use of meter, maybe rhyme,
filled with indignation, rage and tension

to think on prosody, semantic rules,
for he may sense mysterious potential
swelling deep beneath that censured realm,

waiting to be seen as quintessential
to evolutions ever influential.

This is my third terza rima. I’ve used disyllabic rhyme for one weave of the scheme, and end-line alliteration for the other. Each line is a pentameter. Seems to work.

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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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Her Best

My first poem for 2008. A good friend wanted me to write a poem for his fiance, and here’s what I came up with. Think he’ll like? Think she’ll like?

Her Best

She calls me your very best for her—
I only ask that you mean it so.
And if there’s a doubt in your starry mind,
dear god I ask that you lay me low.

Lay me low in the moldering clay,
if one harsh look or a bitter word
exists deep down in this heart of mine,
so that it may never be seen nor heard,

so that she may live the span of her years
believing the absolute best of me,
trusting forever the love she holds
is the love I keep till she follows me.

But if you look and you see the man
she thanks you for each day of her life,
then please dear god will you guide my will
so I never bring her a moment’s strife?

Will you teach me all that I need to know
to be that childlike soul she sees,
tender as dew on the bamboo’s leaf,
gentle as hope on the slightest breeze?

Will you grant me health and the quiet strength
to stand with compassion at her side
for however long we both may live,
whatever fates roll in with the tide?

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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.