Posted on 11/24/2003 9:52:48 AM PST by January24th
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shape shifting
airs
linger
twice
undone
...just once...
I did.
It was lovely
beyond telling.
I was thinking my spiritual contribution tonight would be...
tree
frog
green
seldom
seen
But then I remembered the mountains of Vancouver, golden aspen covered but diminished by clouds and fog and wondered if we don't share the same fate, gray in a darkening dawn. So, now I offer this...
shipmates
we grazed
a rocky port
north
of the mediocrity
we feared
I lack not the curve of a marsh moon’s
full and deliberate exhibitionism
glorious across the grasses
her visage
running headlong to meet
my appreciative gaze,
then sighing,
she arcs across my ancient city.
nor the Appalachian Lookouts
turning and twisting in the clouds
keeping the weary traveler
at peak interest
lest a unfocused thought
sends one aloft and alone
without a proper flight plan
I am well-stocked
with storks and herons,
full-up with fiddlers
and red rabbits
should I need to meditate
on quieter kingdoms
within and without my world
Add to all this: Autumn appears…
I no longer serve her,
and yet, and yet
it satisfies my heavy heart
to see her merry and mad
It would
seem unseemly
to quest for more treasure
than what’s been freely given
so darkened eyes have no recourse
but to widen with wonder
and hope the sun remembers her muses, too.
actually wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but found the thematic convergence kind of fun. So I am taking this from my private stock(as in never intended to be seen) file and posting.
Market dusk
Every street becomes a choir
raising its unconstructed
song, like weariness must sigh
in the same harmony
that designs the dawn
Oh praise Him
so take the sprinkle of scarlet sunset
that rides upon the dust and smoke
into every alley, and sweeten
with its holy last word,
the well swept paths
and shuttered shops
their bannered silks folded
in and in again
made ready for tomorrow’s
commerce of presence
Oh praise Him
listen to the settling sounds of refrain
making night welcome like a sleek
homecoming cat curling
against the masters leg,
both lost and found rejoicing
at the end of absence with repeated passes
requiring from neither,
explanation
Oh praise Him
there upon the days work send
up the offerings that make known
both the passionate
and the perfunctory,
like the fire lofts its own
ash ascendant in a flickering spark
as it does and is done
Oh praise Him
and hear at last one song
that assumes the lift chord
of the spirit foiled
upon a fragile wing,
once made but twice undone,
while in the street the hum drums
its soft fading tattoo of
Praise.
Stare decisis(mediocrity)
crows don’t back
away from the glittering
something in the sun
being more curious than wise
they can crack the strange code
of the mirror finding
some meaning inside,
and fly flapping
black-robbed meandering
with the shining treasure
keeping shady between the lines
that aren’t the shortest
distance after all, connecting two points,
which crows are supposed
to define
Ah the emperors of empty places
who aren’t given much to reflection
still their penumbras cover
just about everything for just caws.
I am a serious poet(bwhahahahahahaha)
Referencing (In my craft or sullen art)
The paper dragons
have subsided into the long last red hiss
having found the belly fire
at odds with continued existence,
still they made the dull streets lit
and drew crowds to their wicked wick
fueled by fear and giddy rapture
as they flamed and flared
the dragons danced to the future
they toasted with their own hot air.
now taking down the paper
lanterns it seems fitting that
they have fallen a little flat
in the illumination
of the morning after,
which really isn’t all that sad
for they have collapsed in laughter.
hold
I stand a wrecked stone
upon the beach where time
has drifted water, wood and sand
beyond my shiftless reach,
and I am but a sentry to the silence
of my sentence without end
yet I would take this sad relic of self
to throw after the relentless ebb
but I know I was only left
to mark the fullest tide,
receding from the moment we began
and I cannot, I cannot
follow as you flow endlessly away,
for I must ballast yet
the memory of what foundered
here in this loneliest of reefs
and my heaviness has stranded me
in this forsaken place
where there is no remission
of the weight of my planted-ness,
for the world must balance keep,
and stones weren’t made to weep.
she paused
on the
periphery
of the silence
that he knew
naked
without
an easel
one for monday morning laffs.
gamely preserved virtue
Sir Richard Burton raised
the royal standard,
over the darkest heart
of Africa, a world apart
from his native nation
(delightfully scandalized albeit,
by his edifying translations)
And he named a landmark for a Queen.
Victoria, falls too, it seems,
Mrs. Brown between the sheets
lost lustily her royal patina
while a gillie nailed the good regina.
Tho it’s always handy to recall
that Victoria’s name was overall,
given to an era of repression
of urges we’re too polite to mention,
the standards must of course be raised
always to honour royal convention
and its edifying at the least
to know its not a function of high station
to be tasked with the relief
of a queen’s frustration
but as far as the standard bears any relation
to the conduct that’s your own
please folks, don’t try this at home.
But hearts of queens must melt its true
it’s not that we should ever begrudge them
in their lofty loneliness a chamber romp or two
for they must needs have raunchy explorers.
to claim benighted virgin lands
from their lowly denizens,
and as long as the standard rises
to the demands of royal needs
the staff of course must please the queen.
Those who brave the perils
of leading royalty astray,
are adventurers at heart
but must always have a care
to know the lay of that dark
country they would dare
and if one must seduce the lady boss
then better rise to the occasion
and give the dame a good right toss.
don’t go a chasing after the bongo
and take the wrong turn up the congo
to lands for her you might claim
while giving them all her lady name
cause somehow its just not the same
and history extracts the cost
and records the sexless livingston
as just known for being lost.
So this rambling meditation
has left me feeling fairly jolly
but I have taken too much time
to discuss Elizabeth and Raleigh
so let us just condense the lesson
without any more digression:
when royalty’s a gal’s profession
there’s no such thing as indiscretion
and only peasants can be slandered
for rising to the royal standard.
An enjoyable romp and an ironic truth. How do you do it? May as well hang up my poet-spurs after that!
sine
the unmodulated pose,
a frequency received
and rendered by the artist
who can only record
skin rasped
by raking light
as if the nerves
that are close
to the surface
transmit the essential
meaning of silence
like crystal ringing
to a tap
well, dang. this little ditty went thru a few iterations, and I posted the next to last instead of the one I intended. This is normal for me, and I usually let it ride, but this one loses the meaning I intended, so I will post the correction.
sine
the unmodulated pose,
a frequency received
and rendered by the artist
who can only record
skin rasped
by raking light
as if the nerves
that are close
to the surface
transmit the essential
meaning of silence
like crystal wants
to ring
to a tap
love's
closeness
dances
along
the
tides
her stars
grew quicker
thicker
more glittering
like fishspawn
than sea salt
turning on stalks
twice curved
bursting
with sound
if only
she could
hear it
night's
umbral
robe
gently
falls
away
love’s song
undresses
the shadows
and lets slip
the fears of night
like wax
around the ankles
of candles
that burn
till dawn.
hypothermia
the rain soaks me
with its rebuke but I make
no submissive cry to its repeated
soundless splatter of disdain
nor wipe its grief from my face
for I embrace a quickened pace
against its persistent falling
that drapes my nakedness
in veils of mist tho its cover
has left me shivering from exposure.
but defiance breaks upon my heart,
and I can bow only to its beat
and wrap myself more closely yet
in the sodden mantle I have won
from my brief time in the sun
and wait for memory to close
around my wordless conclusion
like a story that has come untold
it is only silence that is cold.
lucky 1300
superstitions
are substitutes
for the hard work
of thinking
lightning
strikes twice
in places
where it is welcome
and life deals sevens and threes
as oft as sixes and nines
toeing the line
and daring the fates
I smile and roll the dice
hold out for the pocket aces
and you bet your life
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