So Am I

Two times I swept a spider from its place next to my clock

three times, it has built its web again

I collect her with my fingertips.

I pulled her strings until they snapped

she builds her web

again

again

The feeling is being pulled

carefully into uncomfortableness

and once again I am quiet

She’s quiet but so am I

when I’m this

uncomfortable

December 15

Dear Lord we should have been more careful

Dear Lord we should have been more careful

you and me that superteam, even though it wasn’t always clear

how evenly we split the work and how much you love

me and why we rarely talk anymore. Anyway I thought

the only time our friendship really broke

was when your gentle pause took the breath

right from her chest, couldn’t breathe

once you pressed down, be more careful

next time and don’t leave her broken.

The way the bag of saline was too clear

to be replacing blood, but you must have thought

it was an act of love.

But we should have a talk about love

what it is and why I’m angry you took her breath.

Dear Lord my thoughts

were as clear as that bag of saline, carefully

dripping inside of me, emptying clearly

not into the right place, but give me a break,

sometimes I don’t want to think about things. My heart broke

and you broke it, and you don’t even love

me the way that I love you, it’s clear

I need you, but you don’t need me. You don’t need to breathe,

with you I don’t need to be careful

about what I say to you or watch my thoughts.

But patience arrives, and I think my thoughts

and how when something breaks –

if when it was being built you were careful

enough to watch how it was done – then with love

you can fix it, if you hold your breath

and put your mind to it and if you’re thinking clearly.

Dear Lord when I was born I was clear

and unblemished but you found

these ways to break my trust and take my breath

and that’s nothing compared to what you broke

when you didn’t tell me I wouldn’t get your love.

When you don’t tell me things you should be more careful.

It’s just that my mind was so clear until you broke

something you shouldn’t have and thought that I would always love

someone who doesn’t breathe why weren’t you more careful.

December 15

When You Die, I Tell You

Your soul is crossing the river naked

where the water is sweet and comfortably deep

and if you stretch your arm over the side of the raft

the warmth of the river sticks on your skin.

Somewhere above is the house your grandparents lived in,

and you can smell the garden plants

you can’t name, but will always remember

the scents of a fading afternoon

and the memories fill the hands as a fistful of water

slipping away.

This gradual release feels like a rope being unwound,

feeling the colors come undone,

feeling the drift from one bank to the next.

You are not traveling on this river; this river is down hill

from where you want to be and how deep is it?

You’ve got to make it back to Concord, Massachusetts.

Being midway between the river and the house

it’s difficult to imagine what either extreme feels like

and then you are thinking about how difficult it is to pass

from one raft to the next when you see your soul down hill

lose balance and start to fall and begin to worry

how deep was the river?

I walked into the water until it tugged at my shirt,

drew me closer, whispered just like you.

If I could join you, join myself, join everyone,

the scent is sweet, the plants drowned

in the shallow waters of each spring’s flood.

December 10

Because You Asked

I’ve forgotten how it feels to kiss,

that first bitter taste, that sudden introduction

where the hands shake and the eyes meet

firmly, the confidences shared.

I don’t remember feeling

sweat erupting from my skin,

raising the temperature, snaking

its perfume into the heavy lidded air,

chilling in the open window’s song.

I can’t recall where I’ve heard these words before,

the heaving rise and fall

of their intonation and their sudden weight,

the impulsive silence that they left,

the aftermath

draped by the gentle rise and fall

of the curtains.

No, I don’t suppose that I remember,

but if you insist then it must be so

that I did what you wanted me to.

December 10

Negative Spaces

The sound of our conversation in the car ride

Home where no one speaks, and there is nothing

To break the silence. The music that is

Not on the radio is as loud as it has ever been.

The reproving looks no one is giving me

I wait in the backseat for a decision already made

Patiently is not a way to hug your parents

And I never talk to my siblings that way.

The more people there the more

We felt alone. Younger and older,

The feelings grew and faded away

But always we were returning and returning

To the same place, where we had grown

Together yet learned to hate each other, why love

Love did not work when there was no reason

For it to move beyond “because.”

I stayed in the car but felt closer to my family,

And what a way to avoid their hate. I thought

You can’t hate someone not there but

You can love them all you want.

December 9

When you start to think like me

look at the cracks

the foundation, the walls

still unsettled and uneasy

(from the last time you were here)

what did you expect?

Did you expect novelties,

fantasy in structure, but its the same

as every other room you've ever seen,

disappointed that I live with just four walls,

no tricks, just my thoughts on display?

Enter this room next year,

next month, tomorrow

seconds from now

this room will be different,

floors shifted, walls replaced

but always being what it is

I have room to think.

December 9

Seasons Past

I find them lying on the ground

chewed up, half swallowed,

yellowing into a pulp,

skins curling and peeling.

Am I too late?

Where was I when they blossomed

lightly on the breeze,

forms still full and curved

before the rotting happened.

I am too late to even watch them fall.

My fingers remember the way

the gentle tug (that was all it took)

felt just before they snapped.
This time it was not me.

I am too late or

removed for this.

I cannot bring myself

to pick them from the ground,

carry them with me.

December 9

The Butcher Knife

I was a child when I crept downstairs

that night to lift the butcher’s knife and weigh

its possibilities. Despite what I

assumed about potential and ability,

it meant so much within my grateful hands.

The window light illuminated how

the quick and slick wit blade transformed

into a sturdy, balanced confidence.

                                                                                      

Its power never threatened me:

Instead, I was transfixed to see it work,

revealing, as I watched, the world’s insides,

those weary lessons hanging in their place,

the stories stacked on shelves, the dust refused

to settle from their constant references.

And when the child felt the footsteps sound

above, I was embarrassed until I saw

the blade reflecting my maturing face.

December 9

Some Things

Some interesting poets:

• Frank Bidart
• Michael Dennis Browne
• Galway Kinnell
• Michael S. Harper
• Stanley Plumly.
  William Stafford.
  Carol Muske.

New Methods

New methods.
I will start a poem every day. It is impossible to say when the poem drafts will be finished.

Abuse

A deepsea fisherman when out of luck
Will lure even the youngest, blameless fish
And lay their flapping bodies down upon
The deck, their tender flesh, the slapping mouths,
The blood and then the damp and woodwork fouled
While unaware, and still oblivious
Beneath the boat the kinfolk float nearby.

August 2  
Revised from Child Abuse, July 23

I Am Too Evil

I am too evil, fingering the threads,
Then nimbly plucking yours and pulling taut.
I'll put the strain of tension in your head
I'll swing a silky tongue into your thoughts.
Yet I will never cut that which is yours
Your choice, your fate, is held in your own hands.
Like slick Ulysses, I'll lead you to wars
Then disappear on Eve of your last stand.

September 11

Naturally

To settle every snowflake naturally,
To breathe the air that once had nourished Frost,
Would I shake hand with Mephistopheles?
Do I have courage to deserve such cost?

September 14

A New Love

A new love falls before my eyes,
It speaks in voices infinite –
I loved someone at home, I thought,
But opportunities appear and go,
They careen and grow and breath unnaturally
A voice for someone lost at sea,
A voice given to those long dead,
A voice of academia,
A whisper through the corridors,
A shout of all injustices,
A voice that could resonate through and with one’s own.
Take some time, I hear the voices plead,
Please take the dust, the knowledges,
All remembrances.
Please take the good, the bad, and what remains,
Some libraries can never be replaced,
But others are not limited in scope
Or possibilities of growth.


Topic: New Love
Date: August 31

Caught In The Web Again

As
our
worlds grow
our friends shrink
hands don’t reach as far
we lose the ones we love for what?

And
I
feel that
it can begin
again each time we give
our lives not to each other yet nowhere.

Don’t
lose
yourself again.


Topic: The Internet
Date: August 30

The Fifties

Some sixty years have passed since I was born,
If I was born when both my parents were:
One week after the trumpet of the horn
A fellow celebration could be heard
As, prefigured in shape and form, I grew.
Some sixty years have passed since I appeared,
As I acknowledge both my parents too
Were children as their own parents premiered.

Topic: The Fifties
Date: August 29

She, Before My Eyes

A strange sun rose above the land
A strange old sunrose
A flower blossomed as it grew
A tower fell while mountains chose
To stretch beyond their boundaries.

Topic: A Flower Blossoming
Date: August 28

In Good Health

How lightly must a scalpel dance
Over the tightrope of a heart
Swinging a life beneath the chance
A breath could leave a fatal mark

Hiding the calm within his eye
On gliding hands his gloves quiver
Sliding their patience underside
A life to save, life to deliver.

Topic: HOSA
Date: August 27

Dirty Bathroom

No dirty bathroom could convey
The sadness of a filthy heart,
The lack of will to cleanse and start
An unclean, bleak and lonely day.

Topic: A Dirty Bathroom
Date: August 26

The Ink That Bled

The ink that bled that day was thrice inflamed,
Once, when it left the cradle of its pen
And ran to form the letters now unclaimed,
Twice, as a heart grew close to bursting when
The thirst for contact scarcely could control
A potent perspiration that arose
In gasps as each drop dribbles in its role
To run and ruin feelings felt by those
Who never would reach to reciprocate --
And Thrice, as Fate spun slowly on her wheel
With nothing left to say she made them wait
'Til someone taught the both the ways to feel.
She held an emptiness, an empty stare:
A letter never written, never there.

Topic: Trying To Talk To a New Person
Date: August 25

Harmonize

I wish to harmonize with you.
I was surprised to hear your voice,
But not at what was beautiful:
It was, perhaps, that what I heard
Evolved before my eyes
Like planets revolving into
Their beauties and my heart again.

August 20

I Folded A Haiku For You

I folded a haiku for you
Into an origami bird.
This is not it.

August

Being Sweaty

With humid heat
in lurid sheets
--Pure terror
From human error.

Topic: Being Sweaty
Date: August 24

Waiting For Some Phantasmal Accident

Atop a tower on a heathen hill
A maudlin mistress from her windowsill
Was watering a garden's hungry maw,
And spying me, did not try to withdraw
Instead she read my withering facade
And called me hither from the sward of sod
I stood upon. My burnished cross held close,
I shuffled near to hear what she proposed
Beneath her lip out of the drizzling bleak,
Willing myself a taste of how she'd speak:
Yet as she threw that speech towards the ground
Some breach between our worlds obscured the sound,
I found myself counting the days I'd spent
Waiting for some phantasmal accident
And turning from my dreams with a disgust
I left her there alone to share her dust
With other souls who miss more than they must.

Topic: Yelling Obscured Things Out A Window
Date: August 23

Experiment

Tasteread
Still quite conventional
an unfamiliar breed unbroken still

Tasteread my words, and,

Consuming my contentions
Think

Topic: Experimenting
Date: August 21

These Glowing Words

These glowing words
The yawning snowbird shakes upon
The waking tree and then is drawn
Not down or up but all around
And whispering to ecstasy,
She disappears within the spectacle.

Topic: Being Hypnotized
Date: August 22

My Best Companions

The orbits of my best companions bend
With touches of their ladies' gravity,
Whether fair weather or obscurity,
I'll not be guaranteed to see a friend
And won't suppose those throes would slow, suspend,
Or otherwise distend to visit me,
And traveling my own trajectory,
There's nothing curious about these trends.
Of course, there must exist a nucleus,
Or, caught in some incontinental drift,
Still swelling, an intolerable rift
Would soon extend into a loneliness.
This anchor pulls upon me less and less:
My circle has experienced a shift.

Topic: Circle of Friends
Date: August 20

True Love Had Flickered

True love had flickered in some abstract shape
Across the Southwest sands, and predator
Or prey within the nighttime's shades escaped
To fight a worthier competitor.
Upon the back seat of a rented car,
An illness struck my mind and soon assured
My immaturity of sight was marred
Still further by the punishment endured.
No cure! My ailment, though somehow subdued,
For now remains dormant inside my veins,
Fermenting with the pain it has accrued.
Were I once more to find that night and strain
My eyes to see a goddess in my gaze
I doubt my heart would fail to set ablaze.

Topic: True Love
Date: August 19

The Collar

The collar of my self vocation wraps
Around my neck, both crisp and snug,
But I would fain retain the pull and tug
And risk the starch and staunch hint of a trap

If superior rewards are in my sight;
Were I to wear my clothing loose and thieved
By dwarfish hands and not achieved
With selfempowered means I'd not delight

So much in what I surely grow to be
As I stretch towards my self made destiny.

August 26

Collage

The frame of my uncovered bed
Put scrapes upon my knees;
The falling of my basement walls
Injured above my eyes.

Although I didn't need or read it,
I stole a book from you,
When nothing was but memories
That book alone carried your hue.

The ache of something summer took
As August dried the grass
Would soon remind me of the ways
I'd let a lifetime pass.

The way some mornings made me feel
As light was true and pure;
The depths of some diurnal night,
Eternally disturbed.

I hang a collage upon my room
To listen to what's sung
Before and let the patterns show
Me what's to come.

Topic: College
Date: August 18

Traveling

The movement of your feet
Could change the rhythm of
My heart from anywhere.

Topic: Traveling
Date: August 17

As One

The vigorous vitality of hearts
Pumping for some ultimate cause:
Without an opportunity to think or pause
With every body as one part
Of some exalted, sweet success
That's vaulted for the laurels we possess.

Topic: Sports
Date: August 16

Family

We view our family as distinct
Yet still the universal analogues remain:

Observe the fertile ferns of any grove
Or sea foam rising in some fecund form
As in the desert sands or mountain peaks
A mother and a father raise
Their sunburnt cheeks and kiss
The child that we all become

Topic: Family
Date: August 15

Real Estate

I wish I could invest in real estate:
With you, alone, collecting interest
And waiting 'til the bubble had all burst
To savor our selections and to view
The tracts of land we bought to really live,
If living is what we do every day.

Topic: Real Estate
Date: August 14

The Backbone

When placing this much trust in currency
It seems responsible to weave our worth
Into the fabric which our country was
Constructed with, and fed and bled upon
From nation's birth until our current day.

Topic: Money
Date: August 13

Worse Than Dogs

The big and dumb,
The loyal and industrious,
The crafty and the insincere,
The unforgiving mindlessness,
Our lives are worse than dogs.

Topic: Dogs
Date: August 12

Boats

And ev’ry morn a city leaves the harbor ports

And wives and husbands left behind

And storms and tides and currents still

Keep families away and out at sea

Until, remembering their pasts,

They flounder back within the night.

Topic: Boats

Date: August 11

Fair Maiden

Fair maiden, did I startle you?

Enshrouded in your gossamer,
Your hidden jewelry draped
In husky opulence throughout
The clasp of stellar diadems
You hold, unveiling only in
The amethyst and night.
I watched you pluck those fruits
From your immortal trees and saw,
As if beneath a dusky dream,
Your pale and splendid body climb
The ladders to the firmament
And soon adorn with lustrous pearls
The mood of your domain.

Fair maiden, may I stay a while?
I could remain as naked as you are,
And harmonize my sighing with the hills.
You have dominion over me;
Your sight surmounts all mortal kind
And in your presence I can not
See that which lies nearby.
Despite this, I still view your peak
Above the sacred woods,
And trembling in the unclad air,
Lie prostrate and profess
Your effulgence an argent pagentry
Worthy of any stage.

Fair maiden, may our gazes meet?
It would be naught but death for I,
But I am worthy of this noble end.
Your taste, nocturnal smell, and whisperings
Entrance me as they always have.
I laid bewitched and curious
When just a child, frightened of
The night and its suggestions.
I understand futility,
And your impassive ways and grace,
But do not let the punishments
Of star-crossed ancestors prevent
My metamorphosis
Among the stars of my selection,
Hanging from the cross that I have built.
Embrace me in your radiance,
My Maiden never to be lost,
And kiss me ere I fade back to the day.

Fair Maiden, follow me where I may go,
Or if you wander, set me sleep,
In some descending valley side,
Dreaming for your return.

Rain Glance

The ground was heavy handed and
Pulled down upon my harrowed head
Until the rain came glancing off
My roof and glowed a graceful warmth

August 17

Awaking From a Morning Dream

I felt the air evaporate into a nothingness.
It seemed as if my skin was someplace else.
My every hair withdrew and wrapped themselves, almost relieved, within their neighbors' arms and prayed for their escape.
Despite how it had seemed I knew my own unfaithful skin, my own spasmodic spine were omens of misfortune.
And, agape I stood, but not surprised, when what had grown out of my fear was of my own design.

August 15

Thoughts on the Future

Rather than lamenting the inability to live in a bygone past, we should be looking forward to a better future. I realized tonight that my point of view towards life, that the future can always be better than the past, has not come through in my work up to this point. No matter what has happened, there are always possibilities for what may happen. A present and future world can still be viewed through a lens that appears to echo the past.
This most certainly does not mean that the past is made superior than the future. To the contrary, the best of the past may be taken to the future while that which was not successful or healthy can be left behind. Therefore, there can always be improvement.

Insolent Apathy

Teenage life right there.

August 12

Sculptor

Where have you gone, my latent muse?

Were I some sculptor, dreaming how to use

A gleaming block of marblestone

I’d certainly have long abused

My brain and moaned and groaned

To paw my raw material

Into some shapeless mass of clay.

Were I some painter, with a poor display

Of paints stuck in a serial

Repeating of some sad success

Distraught to find the lines so blurred

And nothing but dour distress:

As I am not these things, it still occurs

To me the blank pages lying in sight

Will stay unwritten all the night.

August 11

For Now

Was it just in a dream?
A nightmare, perhaps,
A narrow alleyway, a buildingtop abridge
Remember everything
For now

Topic: --
Date: August 10

Some Choice Advice

A coronet, a crown bouquet,

The lifting of a heavy weight,

A pair of friendly, flashy shades

To win a woman’s heart.

Topic: How to Impress a Girl

Date: August 9

Rhode Island

My skipping car pulled off the turnpike’s veins

  And dripped into a rural residence

  The downtown felt my trespassing presence

But didn’t bustle snub me or complain

I met my cousin by her neighbor’s drains

  Our quick embrace confirmed her poor patience.

  “And isn’t this as close to Providence

As I will ever be?” was her refrain.

I still don’t feel like a colossus much

  Even this day, but when I think of all

The people I will save from Death’s cold clutch

  And see her smile’s shadow slowly crawl

Across her face as she revealed the touch

  She shares with death, I don’t feel small.

Topic:"My Trip to Rhode Island"

Date: August 8

Gas Prices

The rising and the falling, such a rocking motion might be,

When given to any other abstraction,

Almost relaxing in its inconsistent reliability.

But not when such commodity is priced

So precariously and confusingly.

Topic: Gas Prices

Date: August 7

Ambitions

I gently squeeze a firefly between my thumb and forefinger

It squirms for liberation

Others have named them “lightning bugs”

And see the segmented body of this tiny Prometheus

I imagine my self as Zeus,

I gently squeeze a firefly

It squirms for liberation,

But not for its own self but for those that he loves

Why else has such a creature taken on the light?

His friends and families, captive and bottled dry

And suffocating from injustices

But my heart hardens beyond my will,

And though I let him go I will pursue the bug again

Or know that some clever bird shall

Tear him apart.

Topic: Firefly

Date: August 6

The Lifting of the Shroud

I clutched the crumbling night shade’s swinging string

   And clawed another veil precluding sight

I’d underestimated everything

   The dismal lamppost gave off feeble light

The early morning breath and hanging clouds

   Meant ignorance, and nothing changed for worse

Despite efforts, the lifting of the shroud

   Shall not occur, no worth left to coerce.

It is December when my father’s axe

   Completes its work and falls to restless sleep

   It itches for its final animation

I, one of many children, felt the cracks

   Upon the windowpane to see how deep

   I fit her into my first real equation

August 6

Not With the Scales

The day after tomorrow shall be weighed

Not with the scales of what’s to come

But what inevitably has passed.

Justice cannot blame someone

For the things they have not done

Topic: The Day After Tomorrow

Date: August 5

Learning

Just yesterday I relearned things about myself
That just the day before I thought I knew -
Yes, things I should have remembered,
And things that define who I am;
Things that I read in books about myself,
And things that I've shared with no one in particular.
But I must share these things with me before the times have passed.

Topic: Yesterday
Date: August 4

Complements

Within our world there is no good, no evil,
The world cannot be so simple as that.
Rather, all things must complement one and the other:
The feminine and thus masculine,
The blazing chill and succor of the flame,
And all things beautiful but worthless to praise.

So, let me compliment you -
Be to me one and same everything at once

Topic: Yin and Yang
Date: August 3

PowerBawl

Please put all your fortune to trial,
But I'll waste my cash how I please.
You gamble and cringe all the while
As I buy my own brand of sleaze.

Topic: PowerBall
Date: August 2

Essence

Put ev'ry syllable where it should go
Yet let all pure thoughts coalesce and glow.

Topic: Poetry
Date: August 1

Piano

I frown at how depressing the piano keys
Is such a positive experience
For just the player and his audience
Can't the piano have a circumstance
Where tension lifts, he's recompensed and pleased?

August 2

August Thoughts

It's been quite a while since I had a true thoughts post. I've decided I may use this as more of an actual blog, not necessarily cataloging my daily occurrences but my "deep thoughts."
This was in a recent National Geographic:

"Do you know what saved me from becoming a cold-blooded murderer? My language saved me. There is no way for me to be hateful in my language. It's such a beautiful, gentle language. It's so peaceful." Then White Plume started to speak in Lakota, and there was no denying the words came softly."

The power of words: Their importance cannot be stressed enough. A whole language can change someone's outlook on life. My biggest regret in writing poems so quickly and publishing them with little time to think them over seriously or fine tune the word choice is that the diction is frequently "off" or slightly skewed. Selecting the right word is imperative to the success of a poem. If I could, I would look up the meaning of each and every word I use and ensure that the connotations and denotations are in line with exactly what I wish to convey.
On the other hand, this would not produce results and would more often than not end in many unfinished poems that could probably pass as acceptable. On this subject of poems languishing until a final form can be finished: My latest poem, Ballad, is a poem with a composition date stretching back to the first day of the month. Entirely unintentionally, I completed the poem on the last day of the month. The poem could certainly be taken as being superficially and figuratively symbolic of my July poems: Anxiety about originality, increasing wordplay and experimentation, but eventually returning to the same formulas that kept me going in the past.

You Are

You are
Uncompromisable
Humanity humane in humbled aspects
A stalwart light to guide
A friend
To where he needs to be.

Topic: My Hero
Date: July 31

Ballad

Upon our corollary to
The ancient, humble harp
I sought a solitary string
'Twas neither flat nor sharp.

Extending towards the tensive coil
I plucked a simple strain
Whose melody was found to me,
So labored, crude, and plain,

From depths within my childhood,
Or recent reveries
And thus gleaned from my teaming brain
And played ungracefully.

--

I figured that before myself
Some countless bards had struck
Those notes in such an order that
The Gods despised each schmuck

Who thought he had discovered something
New and glorious,
When in the the stark and naked truth
Each to himself had less

Than the musician ere his time,
Who wasted his good gifts
By giving songs poorly built wings
Only to find them lift

Not on the grace of Apollo
But as rash Phaeton tried,
A noble striving for the sun
That ended with him fried.

--

So as I sound my modest song,
Aware of this, and meek
I pray that you will hear me play
And with a smile in your eyes
Make my heartsong unique.

July 1 to July 31

Guarantee

I guarantee that once the trees my lawn
Is shaded by have lost their final leaves
We’ll love each other yes we’ll love and yawn
In late night times and hold our own beliefs
Each morning take yellow umbrellas to
The shops downtown and nestle in the cheeks
Of comfort clouds and let the drizzle through
Our windows just to taste it, after weeks
The spell of weather drying us is gone
And as your dresses twirl to fade and snow
Falls lightly dancing once again upon
Our memories the wind dies down although –
This was a dream I used to dream and hold
Until the sheets shrunk up and my bedside grew cold.

July 31

Glazed Their Lives

The Lotus eaters munched upon the weeds
They plucked from off the river wharfs
And glazed their lives into oblivion:
What else was there to do after such pain,
The murders and the child deaths and pain
The stole pride, the senselessness, the pain
Of never knowing when one's hearth will be
In sight again, the endless thoughts at night.

But I insist, had they been stronger men
They could have left their blind comforts behind
And set the sails again to move through baths
In western waters, warming their cooled hearts
And living life in glories pure and clean.

Topic: Smoking Weed
Date: July 30

Please

If your hearth loses all the warmth that it once held,
And a sullen fog descends upon your world,
Remember that while Fire can melt Ice
Ice can do no harm to a Fire,
And scrape the shivers from your wintery car
To come back to my world.

Topic: Fire and Ice
Date: July 29

Paternity

The quest in search of one's identity
Begins again with one's paternity,
As Cronus saw when his sharp sickle tried
To slice his fathers glory and his pride
Only to be displaced by his own son.
And Ham's true disrespect in poking fun
At naked Noah was to curse offspring
That may not have felt such a servile sting
Had he noticed the ways that chains can flow,
Twisting together those that came and those that go.

Topic: "A Shot to the Balls"
Date: July 28

No Parole

A life in prison spent with no parole,
A summer job devoid of a pay roll.
A forfeiting of all control:
What one mistake may soon unfold.

Topic: A Life Spent in Prison Without Parole
Date: July 27

Apart

When all the world within's a quiet place
I slip through portaled doors to my mistress
My Mother Nature, second family
Diana's gentle kiss upon my face
The gentle murmurings flow and caress
My ears to hear the sounds earthly
Yet spectral in their stellar origins
And feel the peaceful swell within.

Topic: Mother Nature
Date: July 26

A Lonely House is Not a Good Thing

There’d be no point in visiting a house
Without a host to make the scene hospitable.
The doors locked shut, the windows closed,
When no one’s there, there is no joy at all.

Topic: A Day at Mike's Lake House
Date: July 25

This Moment

This moment was meant to ferment
Much longer than it ever had to be
Waiting inside its womb of carelessness
And prematurely free what could one say
Because just "breathless" is inadequate
For knowing that the air is there
But not having the privilege to use it.

Topic: A Moment That Leaves You Speechless
Date: July 24

(If I were feeling cheeky, I could have also made this about a time I lost the words to a presentation I was about to give: A moment that left me speechless.)

Child Abuse

The deep sea fishermen when out of luck
Will catch even the youngest fish
And hook them, laying down their flapping bodies
On the deck, their tender flesh
Will not engender any other,
And blood will never yield the brood:
The issue must be halted at the source.

Topic: Child Abuse
Date: July 23

Smoking

The entrails of a thousand dying friends
Still whisper terminal farewells freely
And in the night there stands a solid youth
Despite the cries of Venus for her love,
Adonis still will die when he has damn well chosen
But let the ones that measure out their lives
With trips that they have taken to their heads
And let those ones die when they wish, sore hearts,
And blackened lungs, enriched their lives and souls
And put their value into those few years in which they live the least

But still, lament the feelings and the grace
With which a person falls inside himself
And tries to see the problem in a noble way

Topic: Smoking
Date: July 22

An Ode to Violence

A wildflower left within the wind
Droops slowly to the ground. His weighty head
Was born and died forever to be pinned

To the descending motion, falling dead
To be reborn, like Bacchus from his grave,
While honeyed milk dripping as blood is bled

From stem and soul alike. The wind, it raves
Insatiated, and will not restrain
Itself, and to brutality enslaved --

So Violence, be not unborn again,
A wildflower droops, in peaceful glens,
In places unsuspect, where best of pens
Can little do to capture horror in
The hearts of those that droop within the wind.

Topic: Violence
Date: July 21

Reflections While Playing Miniature Golf

In miniature:
An imitation, while far more personal,
Less in stature, and hardly to acclaim.
No less the glory, no less accomplishment;
I spotted as I played the game
That which I had lived my life by:
For always I was crafting, in my brain or otherwise,
Mine own original, with a new spin,
Sunk with the perfect shot into my goal
Of having my own world.

The passing sounds of time will yield
Whether or not this hubris is a negative.

Topic: Miniature Golf
Date: July 20

October Glory

O Yes you in your autumn arrogance
Boasted a flame!
But ice storm dragged you down and split ye timbers
And shagged your boughs
And glorybegone bloody is your ruddy color,
You are not dead but never shall you be the same.

And on this day, I relax, the heat is not too much,
You are green and splintered and you shall never be the same
And come October will you stand in all your glory?
And drop your livery before it weighs upon your back
And brings you down

And wait with such a prideful name
How could anything be expected how could anything be the same,
After the gods have their share of divine retribution
There could literally be no other explanation
October Glory,
Hang your heads again
Humble.

Topic: Hot but Relaxing (Again)
Date: July 19

Hot But

Flower pots gentle swinging
While wicker chairs disintegrate
Each day the grass is dying, curling,
Yellowed by the lapping tongue
The sun stretches to taste the earth.
But cool, but cool, within the bower underneath a shade
I relax and watch the wind.

Topic: Hot but Relaxing Day
Date: July 18

A Love Sonnet to My Passion for Reading

Often a flame burns bright, busting in air
It sputters and so gasps for more and more;
Its luminescence seems without compare,
And heat appears from tip to twisting core.
But as each outburst leaps into being,
The flame grows slowly weaker every time,
Each particle flutters, wants to be fleeing,
And kills the fire soon after its prime.
My love holds no such dangerous passion:
It shall not burn less brightly any day,
And will continue on in loyal fashion
Forever in its so consistent way.
As days go by, I also guarantee,
My love will grow to limitless degrees.

July 18

My Back Aches

After hours of turning back and forth
I sat up quietly and switched the light.
The rain cried softly through the window
Which had been opened by a gentler hand
And which I couldn't bring myself to close.

My back aches, and a drowsiness compels
Me to prostrate upon the mattresses
And sheets, and curse the body that allows my mind
To live: There's nothing wrong with either part
Of me, but they must rest at different times.

I didn't close the window though I knew
That there was no action better to take
Than that: I took no action after all was said.

July 12

On the Adventure of Michael in Vermont

I
On Monday matin, 'neath a verdant shade,
Michael in saintly images awakes,
With dreams of the past night seemingly made
A prophecy of what may be at stake:
A love soon lost, that cause a heart to ache.
He rise from bed, go on his busy day,
And once while passing to refreshment slake,
Espies a mountain where the wood nymphs play
And promises himself return without delay.

II
As Tuesday breaks, our hero can't forget
That which he saw while passing by with chance,
And so then reappears, unaware of threat,
Viewing in the mountain's massed expanse
A fairest damsel in a garden dance,
With wild eyes and feet of fleeted light.
As Michael moved to make his first advance,
The nymph, as goddess bathing, fled his sight,
And thus for one day more he was denied Romance.

III
Enamored and bewildered by events,
On Wednesday Michael now consults his peers,
Who far removed suggest ruin ferments;
But Michael heeds not to their scattered fears.
For who is Mike but one whose golden heart steers
His ev'ry action and compels th'utmost best
From artist, politics, or engineers?
And so he doubts excitement in his chest
Could lead himself astray or make his mind distressed.

IV
On Thursday he returns, enthusiastic,
And on the hill approaches cautiously
The woman he finds most ecclesiastic
To his senses, and asks, "To some degree
May this fair boy, in your good company,
Find love and comfort now so well deserved?"
She frowned, but then she laughed to hear his plea,
Her elfin fingers 'round his digits curved,
And 'til the night came they dance, two unobserved.

V
With Friday morning, showers briefly rain,
But after noon he brings a garland fresh
And bracelets grateful. As she entertains
His ev'ry sense he feels strength in flesh
And sighs to see their lives now hap'ly meshed,
But unaware of how soon he'll be cut
As deaf to danger as grain to the thresh:
Surely within his intuition's gut,
He realizes? Yet no, his eyes and ears are shut.

VI
On Saturday, the even long since gone,
Poor Mike awakes to find himself desert,
With only memories of her, jumped like a faun
Into the wilderness. At first, he's hurt,
But then sees how she could easily pervert
His thoughts, distract his day, and ruin work.
'Tis better, Michael now knows to assert
His happiness, and realizes all the perks
Of not being captured by her evil, false smirk.

VII
With Sunday comes a peace now found within,
For all illusions should be left behind
When moving on, when new life must begin,
And maybe some girl to whom Michael was blind
Will soon emerge, and he will be in kind
With some fresh energetic, eager soul,
Who Michael in a new adventure finds
And gives to her solely his complete whole.
If he wishes, it's true: His life, so his control.

Subject: Mike's adventure in Vermont over the next few days
Date: July 17

It's a Long Walk

It’s a long walk from here to Hades,

The cries still resounding in my ears,

Her father knows me more than I can know myself,

And I could never know him quite so well.

Each step I hear the sounds grow harder,

The slap of rubber sole on rotting asphalt in the sun;

The summer fragrances turned sour in the afternoon

As sewer drains are clogged by pollen;

Her house is a place for penance,

A holy hovel stale from lack of worship,

But every time my foot leaves the pavement

I wish my leave could be more permanent

And that I wasn’t walking from my own life

Towards the one I’ve left behind.

Subject: A Long Walk

Date: July 16

An Aloof Apology

Pure nature fell, as poor Pygmalion did,
In love with its own ivory creation,
And we, possessed by endless greedy Id,
Repaid her for our vivification
By tearing at the raiments that she wore
And suckling harshly from her swollen breasts;
Her face, once fair, now sullen, trenched, and scored,
Her tempting gardens serpents now infest.
Remember what faint Dryope once advised:
Use caution when you pluck a flower's bud,
For every bush could be a nymph disguised.
We humans are just made of dust and mud.

July 11-15

A Day Spent in Savannah Grass

A day spent in savannah grass
Is magical -- Relatively.
The day perspires, and hours pass;
Right now I would much rather be
In the Savannah of the States
To meet my spectral ancestors
To live and love -- There, life pulsates,
But I am here, impatience festers.

Subject: A Day in the Savannah
Date: July 15

Contest

I have entered into a contest with my fellow poet friend. We will send each other topics to write about every day and complete the poem before going to sleep. Those poems I publish for the contest will be tagged with the label "Contest" and in the post itself I will record the date and given subject. Good luck to both of us!

EDIT: All contest poems can now be viewed with their corresponding dates on the Contest Page, accessible through the button on the top right of this blog, underneath the title.

The Evening's Irreversible

Passing shades, the afternoon's long gone
Into the night, the languages
That keep a man alive will disappear
The spoken word so confident when verbally
Presented to a man -- But change must come
Not from without but from within.
A people dying into the masses, losing their identity,
Cannot be shaped by any other.
They must control who they are
And make decisions before the evening's irreversible.

Subject: Dying of Native American Culture
Date: July 14

The Thunder Mumbling

The thunder mumbling nearby
Apologizing much too soon
And putting on his evening wear
Excused himself.

The dear sat down upon the grass
And stayed until the darkness came
Unheard and then unseen it left
As a whisper.

When it returned it nibbled on
The edges of receding yard
And felt its way towards escape
From everything it knew.

Finished July 12

The Arrowhead

In my backyard, pulled freshly from the earth,
The Arrowhead had opened up a cataract
Of beauties and remembrances of worth,
Traditions, as traditions are, abstract
But vivid as in flesh within my mind.
When scholars of the Renaissance revived
The Greco-Roman glories past declined,
Or when to Keats, Chapman's Homer arrived:
I comprehend now to some small degree
Exactly how they felt, as in their glee
The possibilities grew from the ground
As if the Arrowhead that I had found
Was not obsidian, but dragon's tooth,
And how those poets of forgotten days
Must have, while struggling to capture truth,
Seen countless soldiers warring in their gaze;
A stream of natural ideas that flow
And never cease, but run to where none knows.

July 12

The Death of Passion

The Death of Passion is a yawn
And is in no ways furious
To shake the hand politely and
To give a gentle kiss goodbye
Is to consign a lifetime's worth
Of solitude and loneliness
But nothing in our sorry world
Could be more sad or natural.

But please do not be so misled
As to assume that all Passion
Inherently is good - It's not.
For Passion causes lechery
Just think of Phoebus, left alone,
After he lusted Daphne's roots
Or that both Gluttony and Greed
Are sins of the worst character
For they are Passions both for food
And gross desires for money.

When Passion's dead, is it complete?
Or does it live, in those handshakes,
In flowers from the blood, the past,
And can a Passion not transcend
All life as God's own son once did?
And wasn't that in many ways
As sacrilegious in its day
As fevered Passion and its whims
Are to some people now? And God -
If Passion cannot be again
Then let it die for everyone.

June finished July 11

Tongues Not of My Birth

And what a marvelous escape
And one I'd not thought of before
To think and feel and dream in words
In tongues not of my birth.

June 29

The Throat-Song Glory

The gutting strings so sensual

The throat-song glory warbled free

Evocative in rhapsody

A pendulum’s perpetual

A native tongue producing sound

The horse head’s heady, rich in gait

But with no force to propagate

A coil cut falls to the ground.

July 5

Possibilities

And possibilities --
OH do not tempt, and say no more.
I could spend the rest of my life collecting nothing but books.
They would fill my nostrils until I could not stand the smell of dust.
They would fill the room.
And when I finish I can give my children them.
And they will know me by my underlinings and by the quotes that I have writ in the margins.
And they will die someday.
And my books will mildew and mold, and shape no lives and they will fade.
But I never lost any possibilities --
NO, even when I lost all else I always held my possibilities like a pagan talisman across my chest.
And fleets across the dark broad seas to find Ulysses will sail in pursuit of gods beyond compassion and worlds without darkness or light.
The only possibility that I will still not accept it that I only have one possibility to live.
That possibilities exist does not entail that I may take a part in all.
But with so many in my hands, I feel each page and smell the glue and binding and I sigh.
Then letting loose the window, they take flight into the atmosphere.

July 4

"To Blame or Not the Gardener for the Rot"

~ from "Quiet World":

To blame or not the gardener for the rot?

Everybody has, I feel, decisions
Whether or not their garden’s to be kept
And they, as Hamlet, can with fore-visions

Remove the weeds that surely now have crept
Within their lives and that sully the ground
That could have nursed any flower – Except

Now herein lies the issue that abounds
Which plants to treat as weeds and which to not?
In such decisions all tragedy’s found.

To blame or not the gardener for the rot.

June 5

"A Beach Read Can Be Taken Anywhere"

~ from "Quiet World":

A beach read can be taken anywhere
And lent about to almost anyone
Flapping back to you, little though you care
With sodden pages, bleached beneath the sun
All paperbacks awash with poor persuasion
Could be swept out from shore without concern
You wouldn’t mind to meet them on occasion
To talk briefly perhaps – though not to learn.
But this is not the same for borrowed books
Or ones that teach you secrets of yourself
Their power lies far deeper than with hooks
That could be found lounging on any shelf.
            Quiet accomplices in your travels
            To keep you loved, secure when you unravel.

June 5

"Here, Memory Rolls Through the Boulevards"

~ from "Quiet World":

Here, memory rolls through the boulevards

It matters not what any king carried
Or what exact phrases a pharaoh hacked,
I feel our views of history vary

Though humans never left their common tract
Of feelings and desires and disgusts –
We disregard the sentiments, and facts

We slobber after, little though we trust
The truth of John or Henry or Richard,
And learn nothing from our pedantic thrusts.

Here, memory rolls past the boulevards.

June 5

"Given Time – Does Every Summer Cool?"

~ from "Quiet World":

Given time – does every summer cool?

The ancient “star-crossed lovers” has a twist
Forced upon it. Despite impending doom
It sparkles so casually persists

Because our culture thinks not, just assumes.
In some ways I feel such a thing is apt
For loves drawn out by cologne and perfume

Their comprehension of their love is trapped
Like Romeo and Juliet, the fools –
To be star-crossed’s to die – not to be rapt.

Given time, most every summer cools.

June 5

"I Remember Every Time Your Fingers"

~ from "Quiet World":

I remember every time your fingers
      Gently touched the covers, rubbed my spine
      And studied me, as if a text divine
In your eyes, as they stumbled and lingered
And breathed in every word or thing there
      There was to me: How my paragraphs aligned
      And how my lace and stitching was designed
My body sang for you – would any singer?
But you could never understand beyond
      That which was plainly scribed for you to read
      You could or would not see intricacies
Or give to me the thought deserved, you yawned
      And put me on your floor, then felt no need
      To open though I gave you liberty.

June 5

"I Remember Reading You"

~ from "Quiet World":

I remember reading you – each page
      I turned with you laid out upon my pillow
      I stuttered and I sped through it as though
I thought the fastest finish time could gauge
How much I’d learned from you, but at this stage
      I would have learned as much had I gone slow,
      As I should have read you, so I would know
You, and not to have desires assuaged.
But now I can remember only notions –
      And left with vague suggestions of your value,
      What is there really to be said of you?
I certainly, at first, gave my devotion
      But frustrated with how I never grew
      I walked away in search of novel views.

June 5

July Schedule and News

As the updating has been rather spotty now that summer has entered its heat, my new schedule becomes even more lazy: Once I write a poem, I publish it. If I don't manage to write a poem, I will unfortunately (but rather logically) not be able to post a poem for the day.
As a side note, the next few poems posted tonight will be excerpted from my long poem published in early June, "Quiet World," which was composed of several shorter poems in a vague narrative. I am giving the individual poems chances to breathe free from the framework of the longer poem and giving those who may not wish to read a longer poem the opportunity to enjoy the portions of the poem that can stand alone freely.

August

I see an august field beneath
An auburn sprawl of curling sun,
And crawling on a zephyr's breeze
To turn the landscape lush from heath
A taste of the sweet autumn's freeze
That, offering varieties,
Has in the Fate's own weavings spun
A wordless future now begun.

For even if the future's bite
Will hide the nurturings long past
No time is spent, too slow or fast,
That won't with all its glory fight
To have desires filled at last
And make its place
Out in that field, where laureled grace
For its own sake is worn upright.

To not just see but tend those fields,
Where never ending harvest yields
Ambrosial pleasure past sublime:
All grievances are healed
And happiness grown any time.
O summer sun, give me August
There's no reward for me more just.

July 1

As Any Children Will

Their god was mad when they ate from
The tree but was his fury a result
Of having his children gain their knowledge
The knowledge they no doubt deserved,
Or was it from their disrespect of him?

How often have you seen parents command
Their children but then not explain to them
Why things they do are wrong or give a true
And valid reason for their righteous rules?

June 19 to June 29

What Is True Adversity

Upon opposing true adversity,
    There are two plans the Gods may have in store:
    That after struggling you shall try no more,
Accepting how it was not meant to be,
Assuming you've averted tragedy.
    However, obstacles also insure
    Upon succeeding you'll truly adore
The things that you have gained in victory.
The threat is never that one option's wrong --
    It's that one option's right, and that the choice
    That you will make is sadly incorrect
To that, I say man's willpower is strong,
    And that in these decisions we rejoice,
    And plow on through without time to reflect.

June 29

A Scholar's Work

A scholar’s work can never be complete,

    For by its restless nature it will yearn

    To travel far beyond mortal concerns,

To capture the abstract with the concrete.

The world will always offer reams replete

    With brisk experience: The seas that churn,

    The breathing earth, the trickster suns that burn;

The scholar’s drums shall permanently beat

Onwards towards the next fruitful conquest,

    But when each takes their prisoners of war,

As ancient Romans did when they progressed,

    All captured things, from sky to lowly shore

Shall gain free reign, and never be oppressed,

    And made dear friend as both look on for more.

June 27