Posted on by EAT

The Distant Self

Lately I have been pondering the nature of death, what it really is. Is it closing your eyes one last time never to wake up? Or is it something more subtle, more unnerving—something much closer to home? When I look back through time to the teenager I once was, that person is not here. He is dead, and he has been dead for a very long time. But because I am still strong and somewhat clear of mind, I can forget that death and focus on the present life as if it now unfolds. But the reality is, there are moments, days, circumstances that I would hold onto for eons if it were possible—but they have long since passed and are dead.

The Distant Self

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.

Perhaps the movement between carnal death and birth is much the same. Even after that point of presence jumps from our last breath to some unfathomable new context, there is a recognition somewhere in our newly manifest being that something has been lost—a past and fully developed identity. Perhaps this death occurs on a lesser scale over and over throughout the experience of living. And those who see this most clearly are those who still live after everything else has been lost, and all they have left is to struggle for moments of clarity while wasting away in a nursing home.

Posted on by EAT

the misty sun

Beyond the elementary description of a scene and some personal feelings common to most people, nature poetry is actually not the easiest thing to write. The main challenge comes upon attempting remove oneself from the scene along with any personal feelings, using only imagery itself to convey such feelings through depiction. This poem was written to exemplify this process, so far as my abilities permitted, for someone who had asked me to critique one of her nature poems.

the misty sun

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.
Posted on by EAT

First light gathers

I have a tendency to be up all night, be it working, writing, or other. Not long after we, my wife and I, got a very nice new (second hand, but new to us) couch that allows one to recline comfortably facing the balcony windows, I would find myself there looking out into the night, sometimes as dawn broke. It’s an interesting time of day for me, dawn—especially first light. It has always filled me with equal parts anticipation and anxiety. Dread even.

I’m sure the anticipation is normal. It almost has to be. A new day manifests, with new potentials, even if I’m already tired. The anxiety probably comes from a variety of experiences that have taught me to expect unpleasant things to break with the day, the sort of experiences that instill fear and foreboding deep in the psyche. Here I’ve tried to convey that sense of ambivalence, using imagery gleaned from a passing storm front.

First light gathers

First light gathers above the
        Huffaker Hills, above the
    bulbous shadow of the
            old Virginia Mountains.

Slowly it grows behind
        cataclysmic clouds,
    gray shapes etched dramatic
            on the moving void.

Wind is heard against
        roof and walls, against
    wide glass doors through which I
            meditate my gaze.

Silhouettes of unfurling
        cottonwood and maple
    flail like the wild shades of
            dancing dervish souls.

Inside, a leaky faucet
        drips. The wall clock ticks
    above the redbrick hearth. And
            Joy stirs lightly troubled

        in her dreams.

Posted on by EAT

Without a Title

To begin anew, one must leave behind the old. This is at least the theory.

Without a Title

Perhaps I’ll start again
This time without a title

This time without the candle wax
the matted hair the long thin wire
all twisted and tangled into shapes
of desire and expectation

dangled from twine like a shrunken head
gouged full of pins and chanted words
until imago jerks and dances wincing
tortured steps of belonging

Maybe it’s time to forget all I dreamed
to tear free from voodoo strings
tendrils of blood wisped through the air
until the tired old spells are broken

to let go and plummet back through long
deep breaths and crushing gasps for air
through years of fear and foreboding back
to half-remembered moments of joy

Posted on by EAT

Trail of Prayer

In 2009 I visited Bear Butte in South Dakota with my Filipina wife. We weren’t yet married, but we were soon to be. The hike took about three and a half hours, all told. It was the day after Summer Solstice, and something unique was in the air.

There are several stories behind the trip that led us to this special place, and a few specific to our experience at the butte itself. Perhaps they’ll find their way into poem someday. For now, here’s a tribute to the butte, what it means, and what it has meant for years untold.

Trail of Prayer

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.
Posted on by EAT

Forsaken

I would consider this a random write. As someone who has lived in or at the edge of poverty his entire life, I have sometimes found myself wondering about my wealthy counterparts.

Forsaken

God has abandoned you. Go!
Cower beneath your rocks and pray.
Pray for a swift release. Pray
for a lesser hell. Pray for sweet
oblivion, cast deep into
the weightless black of naught.

Meaning has dried and mummified
taut against your splintered bones.
Hope has cracked and crazed and peeled
revealing raw infections of
despair. Where can you hide? Where
can you tuck your oozing loss away.

Seek the cellar. Seek the marble
floor. Seek the solitude of
pillared halls. Seek the satin
linens of your tier. Seek the
the double-breasted Valentino,
pressed firm against your perfect corpse.

You are followed, each and every
step. Followed by an ever
present loss. Followed by the
exponent of emptiness.
Pursued through every twist of fate,
through every vain attempt to flee.

You are damned, forsaken, lost.
No one waits for you beyond the
veil. Nothing but the cold and
fetid clay awaits the one
who banishes his soul to claw
for bloody scraps of worldly gain.

Posted on by EAT

Unrealized

I think the greatest tragedy one can experience is to become ever so slightly aware of his or her creative or professional potential, only to have any chance of ever achieving it ripped away. This has been my experience as a poet, and no other pain I’ve endured comes close to comparing. For me, to develop my potential as a poet requires the time and attention of a career profession, yet I am forced to work for a living, which leaves my creative potential sheered from the light and rotting in the soil.

Unrealized

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.

I have often contemplated suicide as the only way to escape the torment of knowing I have this potential to realize while not having the freedom to pursue it—For the quarter-measures afforded by the trifling free-time left at the end of a workweek are grossly insufficient. To live as potential unrealized because it has been made unattainable by the structure of society is in many ways worse than death itself.

Posted on by EAT

summer solstice at Bear Tower

A few days ago I returned from a two week long road trip with my fiance. The apex of this journey took place at the Devils Tower (Bear Tower by some accounts) national monument in Wyoming, where we camped two nights. This place is sacred ground to many. Though I don’t personally think in terms of “sacred”, the place is special to me for reasons beyond my capacity to understand or express.

I’ve always felt a connection with traditional Amerindian ways of viewing the world, and with some aspects of their cultures. Perhaps my karma is such that this couldn’t be helped. I was born here on the soils of California, nourished on foods grown from the dust of their ancestors, and nurtured with waters that welled from and washed over these same sands. Every molecule in my body—and by extension my spirit—has manifest from these lands and from those who have returned to its soils. Inheritance is not just genes and culture—it is much more.

We don’t choose our inheritance; we are manifest from it. For some reason, I have always sensed something about that from which my existence has manifested. In recent years I have begun to better understand this sense, and perhaps I’m also beginning to learn how to convey some of this understanding, using the medium I know best—Poetry.

summer solstice at Bear Tower

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.
Posted on by EAT

reality

The greatest tragedy I know is not being able to realize ones creative, academic, or professional potential after becoming aware that such potential exists. Not everyone is mentally and/or psychologically geared to survive in a cutthroat world while at the same time pursuing a creative interest. Most jobs demand a great deal of mental energy and psychological involvement to such a degree that there is no energy left at the end of the day for anything but recovery and recuperation. For such people, life ended long before the day they actually died.

reality

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.
Posted on by EAT

sunday morning

I am trying to learn what I’ve half forgotten, how to bring moments of thought—imaginary or reflective—to life through imagery in words. But with all the insights I’ve gained since before forgetting, I find now that I want to try out strange oblique angles.

sunday morning

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.

No, this isn’t about me, nor anyone I think I know. But it is about someone. It’s definitely about someone—somewhere.

Posted on by EAT

raven song

Throughout the years I’ve found that my heaviest moods can be lifted, at least for a time, by the lightest of songs from these shrewd, dark birds.

raven song

small black stones drop
through clear blue silence
and splash ever so lightly
in still water thoughts

ripples expand concentric
rebounding from the edge of mind
sliding back beneath eccentric
rings that wimple shards of light

                        and fade