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from here

Most Tuesday nights I meet with some people to play go at a Perko’s cafe in Willits, 25 minutes north of where I live in Ukiah. Last Tuesday, as I finished my last game for the evening, I overheard one of the waitresses talking with some customers—people she clearly knew—about problems with her daughter. As I left I got curious and asked her about it, and she laid out the story for me.

Years ago, when her daughter was very young, she was addicted to drugs. Her judgment impaired, she sometimes left her daughter with baby sitters of questionable character. Something happened during this time that she to this day has no knowledge of, because her daughter won’t open up about it to anyone. But there’s enough behavioral evidence to suggest she was molested, or worse.

In recovery now from the drug abuse, she strives to make up for her past neglect. But the damage is done, and she struggles to raise an extremely intelligent, angry, resentful nine year old who seems to be developing sociopathic tendencies. As I drove home, potential lines began to manifest to mind in relation, which later built upon themselves to metamorphose into this poem.

from here

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.
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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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missing

Sometimes when a kid runs away from the residential home for children I work at, I can’t help but be a little worried. Most of them are not capable of making healthy choices out there on their own, or of protecting themselves from the most dangerous of predators—the mammals that walk on two legs.

missing

what will become of you?

your meal-back waits silent
  cold as the grave

three slices of turkey
industrial green beans
  exhausted in a pile and
mashed potatoes
  tipping from the edge
  of the topmost slice
all soaked in brown gravy
  glistening in a dull dim pool
  from the styrofoam

at regular intervals
  AWOL marks your absence
even your ghosts have gone
  slithering off to whisper
  doubt and foreboding
behind your mud brown eyes

the roads are long
  the streets dusty with soot
  tapped from the heals of fear
and predation

you never took that one slow breath
  hands trembling eyes twitching
you never breathed down
  into the heart of your anguish
  giving it room to rise
into understanding

down the hall your room
  gapes in the stillness
bed neatly made
writing desk arranged
  the dorm radio outlined
  in hushed gray hues

the city’s cracked walls
  harbor a quiet will to
  cull out the weakened
passing cars carry menace
  sharp white smiles cheerful
  with an unsettling calm
anticipating indulgence

your meal-back waits silent
  at the edge of the office desk
  on plastic wood veneer
across the narrow room
  plastic fluffs the hollow
  gray of a tin garbage can
and it too waits
  for the nearly plastic cold
  of your neglected dinner

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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.

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Thanksgiving Night

Normally, I avoid writing poetry that’s focused on things like Thanksgiving or Christmas, or any holiday. It’s just not the sort of thing that tends to interest me. However, as Thanksgiving day approached, I found myself pondering what Thanksgiving day, a day when most families come together and reconnect, would be like for the kids who live at the group home I work at.

I actually had my own Thanksgiving days in group homes. In fact, group homes not unlike the place I’m working at. Then there were the two Thanksgivings I endured as a runaway teen. So I have my own memories to draw from in trying to bring the hidden voice of these kids to the world. This is my 21st terzanelle.

Thanksgiving Night

A long cold wind blows down the long brown hall.
The lights are dim. The night man gently paces,
and one by one we drift beyond brick walls.

We AWOL through our dreams and greet the faces
that make our stomachs sick with love and dread.
The lights are dim. The night man gently paces.

Outside our doors the floor creeks from the tread
of memories, like ghosts within the halflight,
that make our stomachs sick with love and dread.

We’ve eaten much, and yet there looms a hunger,
an emptiness that writhes amid the gloom
of memories, like ghosts within the halflight.

We stir the darkness in our broken rooms.
We’re full, for well we ate to stuff our sorrows,
an emptiness that writhes amid the gloom.

The heater drones, yet chill seeps to the marrow.
A long cold wind blows down the long brown hall.
We’re full, for well we ate to stuff our sorrows,
and one by one we drift beyond brick walls.

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Reflexion

So far as the average partying bar-hopping American is concerned, I probably have no life. The bar-hopping flies and turds are of course welcome to this view. Now that my schedule has been changed so that I have Friday and Saturday nights off, I find myself sitting in Denny’s during the night with my laptop watching the bar-flood sog, slurk, slump, stumble, slurp, and slink into Denny’s as the bars close up around two in the morning. In some ways they’re interesting to me. These living ghosts represent a feeble attempt to make the harsh lonely realities of existence more bearable by using alcohol and probably drugs to alter their perspectives manually. And the shackles of healthy inhibition removed, these emotional deadweights swarm each other’s sexual urges like piranhas in a bloodbath.

I watch them fondle one another, compete for attention, get pitted against each other by attention-seeking females, rise up in dimwitted defiance, and fight. Sometimes the tables fly up to avoid the charging bulls, enraged by the double tragedy of their life’s inevitability and the loneliness they face in the cattle-chute.

Once in awhile one of the cows—even pretty ones—looks over and notices me with my books, and smiles suggestively. I smile back, courteous, and quickly avert my gaze before one of the drunken bulls notices, and return to my own process, satisfied completely by my own path—a far cry from the cattle-chutes. In my peripheral vision I’ll sometimes see one of the cows staring at me as I type, read, or think. And I think of that last long look at the pastures as a bull or cow begins to find itself corralled into the slaughterhouse pens, and driven through the chutes toward the mill.

Theirs is not my world. And so this poem manifested as I listened to the gaze of one of them; one who has yet to hit bottom.

Reflexion

yes…
      i am far beyond your reach
     we merely share stale air
    drowned in broken hormones
   slurred jests and wild urges
  surged through pickled brains

    i will stumble only
      from exhaustion fueled by work
        a natural need for rest

your eyes…
      track me to my corner
     then turn with sad forlorn
    to tease a drooping cock
   with spittled absinthe lips
  home to soiled sheets

    my lips are only flecked
      by sober songs flung
        with passion to the stars

tonight…
      your bed will creak with pain
     a quiet hopeless rage
    stilled only for a moment
   in the half lit aftermath
  of sullied expectation

    my sheets will cover only
      stillness found within
        a coffer filled with peace

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Ambivalence

It was an interesting dream. Though my ambivalence lessened as a result of this dream experience, it ultimately did not work out that I remained her step-father.

Ambivalence

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.
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Architect

My 4th trisect poem, inspired by none other than the Lego building blocks system. Segment one depicts the building blocks themselves. Segment two depicts the various creations that can be made from those building blocks. And segment three depicts the imaginative play involved in making those creations.

Architect

The Elements

Modeled after brick and stone,
the cinderblocks and dolomites
that long have kept our ancient homes
half hidden from the crush of night,

a simple notion binds itself to form
in varied shapes of molded polymers
that—scattered out like remnants of a ruin—
tease the mind with possibilities.

Quarried from the realm of thought,
hewn from enigmatic veins,
abundant with the priceless ore
of nascent creativity,

each hollow cube is made to interlock
with all the many others of its kind,
magic puzzle pieces crafted such
that they will build whatever comes to mind.
 

Of Invention

Imagination rises up
to form a towered ring of walls,
ramparts crowned with parapets
that guard a nest of dens and halls.

Or simple village structures manifest
from deep within the wells of memory,
little homes around a market place,
a chapel standing quaintly in the midst.

Bridges arch above the spread
of nonexistent waterways;
modern superstructures scrape
against conceptions of the sky.

Even ships from other worlds emerge
to travel all throughout the universe,
forever redesigned in the docks
of varied moon or planetary bases.
 

At Play

Individual colors snap
together in a bold array,
absorbed into a growing sense
of cognizance and clarity.

Nimble fingers probe and rearrange
impressionist expressions of the mind,
each sculpture an accomplished masterpiece
comprised of cubist rectangles and squares.

Walls and rooftops recombine
as various disasters strike;
rigs develop stronger frames,
evolving after every wreck.

Experimental joists and joints explore
the art of bearing loads and distribution,
each new creation more elaborate,
expanding with the will to learn and grow.

When the segment subtitles are joined together, you have “The elements of invention at play.” This wasn’t by accident.

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Disparity

This was written as I reflected on some of the stark disparities between myself and a well-known poet and musician, Leonard Cohen. I would actually sing a lot of my poems, if I could. There is a problem with my throat that prevents me from being able to explore that side of my craft. This problem also makes it difficult for me to recite my poems at poetry readings.

Disparity

i’ve never seen such a cross
between whisk and wood
rod and rood

your words portray such
longing for the very thing
in your arms

what drove you to spatter
prolific patterns of thought
into sylleptic song

was it really the tenderness
you found beneath blue skirts
or was it g-ds

no i have a feeling it was just
the same old question
that manifests us all

stranger we both wear black
yours stylish and dapper
mine rotting and threadbare

and stranger we both bear songs
yours in starbucks cafes
mine hushed dead in my throat

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The Sophistry of Prophecy

There have been apocalyptic Christians somewhere in my life as far back as I can remember. These folks love to reflect on the signs of the end-times and such. Yet every sign reflected upon, I eventually came to realize, has been going on not only since the death of Christ, but clear back to the origins of man. This stuff might even be universal to sentience, wherever its manifests.

So I got to thinking on the sheer sophistry of apocalyptic prophesy—It just can’t work if it’s going to focus solely on earthly and celestial changes and humanity’s tendency to make really bad decisions, for this has all been going on as far back as human records reflect. If a prophecy is going to hold any water at all, it has to be entirely specific, and concrete—none of this wishy-washy, highly interpretable, metaphoric stuff.

So I got to thinking about it further, and ended up writing this poem, my 10th hybridanelle. I studied the types of prophecy commonly focused upon—around ten—and ultimately came to dedicate about one stanza to each of them. These were: Wars and rumors of wars; Apostasy; Earthquakes; Famines; “Fearful events”; Lawlessness; Persecution; Plagues; Celestial signs; and False messiahs and/or prophets. Stuff that has been going on since time immemorial.

The indentational scheme is intended to create the effect of reading bits of unraveled scroll.

The Sophistry of Prophecy

        when was there never famine, never war,
      no bloody battles fought for real estate
    with every nation harmonized in peace?

  when have the heavens paused like polished stone,
motionless across the fields of space,
  to pass a single year without a sign?

    what season never yielded plague nor blight,
      with all the divers cultures steeped in bounty,
        no bloody battles fought for real estate?

what age has seen the quaking earth hold still,
  her ever-changing contours locked in place?
    when have the heavens paused like polished stone?

      which hour never saw men gaunt with hunger
       nor ever shook men from their chosen path,
      with all the divers cultures steeped in bounty?

    when have conditions failed to vex the soul,
  and terrors slept enchanted with the grace
to pass a single year without a sign?

        what creed has never suffered purblind wrath,
      nor punished those who hold a different faith,
    nor ever shook men from their chosen path?

  where has the climate never loosed a storm?
what river never leapt beyond its base?
  when have the heavens paused like polished stone?

    what people never felt the touch of crime,
      no greed nor malice wasting human hearts,
        nor punished those who hold a different faith?

when have diviners ever granted sway,
  allowing humankind some minor space
    to pass a single year without a sign?

      since time began to crumble written thoughts,
        when was there never famine, never war,
          no greed nor malice wasting human hearts,
        with every nation harmonized in peace?

      was there a time impostors never sought
    to stage themselves as some important face?
  when have the heavens paused like polished stone,
to pass a single year without a sign?

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Burning the Flag

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.