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Company

Playing with some thoughts of romance. I’m always loath to take the mainstream approach to romantic poetry, if I approach it at all. And I’m learning, through my practice with the trisects and a study of the interpretations they elicit from my readers, how to use depiction to lead the mind in the direction I’d like it to go without my having to cram explicit thoughts into my reader’s face like a tangle of rotting guts.

Company

come
   join me here in darkness
   let your lips speak back
     long thin shadows
   let your touch brush away
     tendrils of haze

come
   let us meditate on stars
   fixed in double panes
     which fade to the slow
   approach of opal hues
     the zenith moon

come
   we can listen to the sudden
   rooftop rap of acorns
     as they call out their
   little reminders of towering
     greatness outside

come
   let us study the red
   diodes of time together
     silent motions that
   push with magic force
     toward nascent dawns

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regret

Regret is a powerful force of emotion, but it is not easy to depict in poetry. I once left someone I loved to be with someone I was infatuated with. Who knows why we do such things. Years later I found myself looking back on that decision with savage, ravaging pangs of regret.

regret

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.

You may have noticed that the subject is not approached in the usual manner here. Throughout the years, I have been admonished over and over to “just say what I feel” when writing poetry, as if just saying that I have regrets, that it hurts, and talking about what happened to cause them is somehow poetry. It’s not. No matter how I chopped up the lines, this could never create a poem; it could only create prose that’s been chopped into short lines.

Poetry is in part the art of expressing such feelings using only depiction so that he who reads will be overcome by a sense of empathy and relation without ever being asked to empathize or relate. A poem on a subject such as this should manage to completely avoid ever saying anything along the lines of, “I feel regret,” or “I regret XYZ.” This is the job of prose. The poem, if successful, should awaken that regret within the reader as an emotion he can own for himself without ever being told to do so.

In the case of this poem, I use the title to create the expectation of a normal gush of chopped prose on the subject of regret only to seemingly evade the expectation entirely, leaving the last stanza to bring the title home in an entirely jarring and unexpected manner—like the thrust of a dagger.

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Grace

However you may idealize the human form, there is one reality that wins out in the end—It will moulder and rot and decay back to the dust. There is nothing we can hold onto. Everything must go, even our most cherished fancies.

Grace

take your long lithe figure
your bright ruby smile
and take your pliant stride
filled with suggestion

take your smooth soft skin
carved from lily petals
and your slender toned belly
set in round swaying hips

and take your gentle cheeks
your life-altering glance
fixed like glimmering jewels in
Athenian curves

take it all off
to the charnel grounds
and meditate awhile
amid the waste

fill your porcelain nostrils with
the stench of what’s to come
and fill your deep brown eyes with
the reality of your perfection

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unperched

Some people seem to think of relationships—intimate, platonic, or professional—simply as a means of subjugating others to their will through emotional and/or financial dependency. Such people will encourage you to become emotionally and/or financially dependent upon them so that they can then use this as as leverage.

If you start to act or think too independently of what they like then they’ll distance themselves from you or suddenly become stingy as punishment. And if you persist with such independent behavior, they will eventually sever all ties and bid adieu, convinced to the core that they have just destroyed your life in retribution for not subjugating yourself entirely to their will. But, the reality is that people are more complex than this and, generally, the will to survive and move on is very strong.

unperched

perhaps you forgot that
    birds have wings

perhaps you failed to realize
    clipped feathers regrow

the downy breast will fight
    the storm for freedom

clawed feet will grip a cold
    wet branch for shelter

the beak by night will fold
    in its own soft shield

and by day peck out
    its hard won forage

but never will it probe again
    the ruins of its nest

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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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Alone

Tonight I came across a poem blogged by a woman who feels alone and lost, and the poem was basically asking ten ways to none who’s going to save her from feeling so alone. To me it seems bizarre that a pretty lady would have such thoughts, since it’s really easy for women to get male attention. It’s generally a good deal harder for men. However, I found myself sympathizing and commented with an earlier variation of the following.

Alone

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.

Well, not complete sympathy, considering she’ll be able to land pretty much the man of her choice once she figures out how the whole male-female human interrelations thing works. At least for short durations (most men seem to be unreliable as loyal long-term partners). But, in the deserts of loneliness, it is we who must save ourselves, scraping our way across the barren steppes toward the ever elusive springs of inner peace. I don’t see how another can really save us individually from our own loneliness.

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Hard Fact

I like to hang out in Denny’s on my nights off. It’s one of two places in town that’s open all night, so if I’m not going to just sit in my tiny cottage and rot, it’s a place to go. When the bars close around 2am, the drunken masses crash the gates and burst in like a flood. They bring with them many antics and loud conversations.

One such conversation occurred right near me recently, and got me to thinking. Two middle aged women were going on about all sorts of things, including ex and current boyfriends, child support from ex husbands, and you name it. I quote the segment that got me going for this write in the poem.

Hard Fact

“How was it last night?”
“It was great. I felt things I never felt before.”

How many times have I heard this
    said this

It should have dawned on me then that
    yes of course
        each experience is different
            each partner a new adventure.

Yet it’s nothing new
    this new thing never felt before.

It’s been felt over and over
    since the dawn of man
        since infant hands first reached
            for mother’s receding breast

This is hardwired
    the new thing never felt before

Coded into every membrane
    twin twined strands whose chief
        design is to drive the wet
            machine to reproduce

Consciousness manifests a complex
    ghost in the chassis

It has never been felt before
    so it must be real
        sincere and meant to be
            the path to joy everlasting

But it decays and the hardware presses on
    relentless for the next new thing

The cell wins over rationale
    till no excuse can justify
        the barren need which strives to burst
            forth well placed seed

Yes, we are but hapless victims of our biology, and periodically we even think we’re having a great time. But really we’re just being taken for a ride, dragged through rocky, sulfurous mud by the wild horses of brutal instinct.

So, there’s some Buddhism for you.

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Origami

Recently, as I reflected on how I seem to resist the best efforts of people to change me in this way or that, I found myself writing this.

Origami

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.

Indeed I have always resisted obvious attempts to change my nature, especially when the person making the attempt seemed to have something to gain from it. Those who have had the greatest impact in my life are people who just offered ideas, letting me take or leave them as I wished. I think such people felt no desire to gain anything by changing me, and were therefore compassionately offering a piece of information and/or perspective along the way.

Publication History:

Clamor — Fall 2009

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Opened

Not everyone has your best interest at heart. Some people will treat you like an emotional science experiment, and if you’ve become emotionally involved with such a person, I feel for you. It sucks.

Opened

I’ve been split with a rib spreader
     in my sleep
          awakened to agony

My chest won’t close again
     anguished nipples face the wall
          a red fist pounds dry air

Tears ripped from my eyes
     can’t wail back the rift
          and seal the wound

Muscles spasm in vain
     against the stainless grip
          pinned to a shiny table

Helpless fingers clutch
     themselves back until bruised
          fingernails peel back the skin

Where is the surgeon?
     where is the nurse in scrubs?
          who will remove this awful grip?

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Whitewater

We’re all caught up in the stream of consciousness, the madly rushing stream some of the old Zen masters would refer to as “mind”. Such is the nature of samsara. It’s rough, but life’s rough. Existence is rough. Being is rough. There’s no escaping the roughness so long as mind moves. And since I don’t have a clue how to go about stilling mind.

Whitewater

we’re caught in a turbid flow
        you and i
    and we must learn to swim
both or die

the banks are high and torn
        rip-rap roots
    churn the heaving surge which
leaves no bar

ahead a canyon booms and
        we are bound
    to shoot its foamy rocks and
shoreless pools

snags menace every feeble stroke
        trunks and boughs
    broken into maenad nests of
tooth and claw

no raft will lift us safely through
        arms and legs
    are all we have to navigate this
wrathful flood

gather up your will and swim
        peel your eyes
    watch the movements of the stream and
tread the wake

beyond these tangled weave of bends
        we may find
    a white sand beach of clarity where
moments rest

Little poems like this can be good for playing around with imagery and exploring different ways of bringing an object to the mind’s eye using words.

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Braille

There’s a young blind man that frequents one of the coffee houses I like. Whenever he comes tapping in with his white cane, there is always this pretty lady with him. She dotes over him and helps him with whatever he needs. She could be his sister, or his lover, but I suspect that they’re intimate.

The last time I saw them at the coffee house, I found myself drafting this poem, thinking about what it must be like for him. Later I revised it further. It’s abstract, as I imagine a blind person must perceive the world in an abstract sort of way.

Braille

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.