Taste and See

The form of this poem is simple; I just increased the number of syllables in a line by one per line. Kind of a lazy form. The sense of swelling and building looks better in my moleskine.

Who Cares About Apathy Anyway? 9/7/12

that

my heart

would feel this

world so that

a blood-red siren

would grip, grind, rip my heart

bird song stitch it whole again

that the tides and summer storms would

wash my marrow with electric salt

so I can taste, smell, breathe all else in me

stand in wonder more (and more) at an engine

or an iPhone or an ant's exoskeleton

whisper to the night for fear of breaking it (or me)

and scream my footprint pattern into every stretch of soil

and so grow callouses beneath instead of upon my tongue

to grip the bitterness and savor the sweet agony of joy

and to found my bound into the thick wind's exhalation all around

And It Was Good

And It Was Good   6/25/2012
When my mother walks beside the deep,
she seeks a little round-rolled globe
in the stones; sometimes she finds a Real,
a world spun thin, with bumps and holes.
Perhaps she will seek
every beach for that stone,
perhaps forever--

I imagine all round all around
whenever I walk water-by
and run, squealing skin to groaning bones,
stones roll below toes till they cry my lie:
I find that I
cannot run for long,
not forever.

Every now and then she keeps a Real,
calls it good--
enough to keep.

Manitoba Fishing

Manitoba Fishing   6/8/2012

the lake at morning: wispy crispness

with bits of fog and boats floating

by docks filling with fishers sans fishes

into the universe the boating

scatters lakeward like july fire

popping like engines gleaming and croaking

soon the tap and plink of line and wire

on water, whoops and hoots echo boat to boat

over water ruffled over mud and mire

five feet above the bed we nod and float

beneath us silent phantoms whir and bend

that whispers of their winding in the ripples wrote

amid the mists we see ghosts like real men

winding wisps as if reeling real, lines refurled

their sound shattered by the silence and

we: a point still whirling in a stilled world

and all else seems thinning and leavening

and our driven purpose seems round us curled

But the cosmos seeps in, envisioning

the rod rocking rhythm as a breath unfurling

and the stillness, the stillness is deafening.

The Cave

Another poem on a theme similar to my first March posting.

Generally I would have edited this more for form before posting, but Finals are coming up and realistically that's not going to happen. So here it is.


The Cave 4/29/2012
It was autumn when they put me in a shallow grave
Two trowel twists and I was dead
The bitter sod made a sodden bitter bed
And the rest was unbearable cold save


The rest I found as I became acquainted
With the dim round pressure all
Around pressing around dim walls
And everything pressing around untainted


But breaking--spring's solar shafts brought
Shooting agony and shredded me too soon
My leafy neck broken by a bloom
Drinking warm and bright that I had long forgot.




John 12:24 "...unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

I lost my voice

Being Sick 4/13/2012
I lost my voice to a back alley trench coat,
All smooth shoes and polished words,
Lots of grins and glinting glances backwards.
My dash he dashed with a knife at my throat.

I lost my voice and then he left;
He left me merely whispered croaks
And wisps of spoken throaty chokes.
With lemon tea I remedy the theft.

Fog

When I have a plane flight, expect a poem.
Still working on my Iambic Pentameter.

Fog 3/25/2012
Early this morning heaven fell to earth,
The sun is blotted out and breath comes hard.
So we are re-wombed, ready for a birth,
Almost drowning in the air, white and dark.

So all of us must be borne above or
else heaven must rise and wait pendant for
our death.

Objectivity

For a while now, I have been fascinated with the linguistic production of the final consonants in words like "tests" and "trusts". I finally involved it in a rhyme scheme. Since the time it takes to produce the sound is so long, it really brings the line to a close. I want to try using it again where that closure is related to the meaning of the lines it ends. In this poem, I also experiment with consonantal rhyme in lines 1 and 3 of each stanza.


Objectivity 3/16/2012
I balance by a fulcrum worlds out
from earth; testing Archimedes' boasts.
From here I hear each dream and each complaint
and feel each people as she glides, spins, coasts.

I listen as I budge her up and down
And still on more improvements she insists.
She likes the light, but not the heat at noon,
and seasons, but she's dizzy as she lists,

And love but not fear and deep but not dark.
Not just clouds but rain, not just bread but crusts
Not just sleep but fatigue must bear her back
And so I shift and craft our global dusts
And then
With all my lever efforts done in full
I find I have not moved the earth at all.

If we had room enough to stand and lever long,
We would not be too weak for her, but she too strong.