Fence Sentry

A cragged post stands a sentry fence

Holding ownership’s flags of forbiddance

Barriers connected with stern barbs and wire

And the medicine man dances the tribe’s dire

For the ranchers hold the land’s sentiment of aridness

With landscapes of ponderous yellow burnt starkness

And the vanishing points are jejune illusions

As are western deserts the home of delusions.

Phote: Brenda Krysh

Proposition

Don’t ever accept - a proposition

The first one is fashioned - to give

And the last one is certain - to take

There is a probable - abstraction

That assumes you will not - live

Beyond a meditation’s wake

For all karma must - forsake

The need to act - to forgive

And remain pure – without intention.

A pebble drops upon the panacean - lake

           The waves are - transformative

                      Nevertheless, the waters remain an open solution

The beast devours for self-preservation

           The rabbit digs a hole for the same inclination; and the missive

                     Reads - that the synergy must exist for existence - to take

Survival has many owners; most have their reasons; these remain - opaque

           Problems are questions waiting to become - remissive

                     Silence is the only one that understands - the proposition

Death has a single name no matter the masses in the annihilation

           Prayers speak of a goodness despite the moral - permissive

                     The long rows of stones mark humanity’s final - break.

What is a Vase if Not an Empty

What is a Vase if Not an Empty

Sempiternity is the emptiness of the vase

With time being the vessel’s surface that contains the space.

Sentiment fills the structure with all senses of the heart

 And with glittery objects that make for splendid transient art.

Romantic matters and idealistic notions are set upon a grandiose base

Where the power of ephemerality stands while holding death’s face

And bitter tears, for the sentimental “I am” of Descartes,

Fall like fragile rose stems torn apart

And placed into the void that is the universal vase.

Where the inward is the relative outward & the outer is the macro inner space.

These empirical affectations become the ill fates of logic and its vessel’s chart.

And so, what is a vase - if not an empty of nothingness;

And if inverted, inside out, then a fill of everythingness?

Sutherland Springs

Sutherland Springs

Corinthians  5:14

For Christ’s love compels us, since we have reached this conclusion:

If One died for all, then all died.

A blessed Sunday morning in a Church of Worship

Meets a small community with a Texas-size heart.

Gathered around the ministry – for it is time for prayer.

Join hands and greet your neighbor in this fellowship.

The Lord’s blessings and love shall all share

In this, the House of God and Sutherland Springs.

Praise be to God and Peace on to you - Friend.

The noon hour comes, when we shall all break bread

And offer praise and gratitude for all we share.

Pray towards the heavens for all will come to an end

For there is a madman with eyes of evil out there;

As death’s hand touches them and then, the church bell rings.

Long days of grieving will follow, after the slayed have been counted.

There was a baby; and an elder; and many, many more

Who, on a warm autumn day, the brethren shared the call.

There was a shooter, with killing on his mind, to be accounted

And there, a good neighbor who came to save the church so no more would fall.

Now they must bury their loved ones - while Amazing Grace sings.

The Secret of Vanishing Points

A noose sways in the wind

Moving slightly one way

Then back the opposite -

Back and forth it moves

Intermittently between being

And not being -

As the moment decides

Whether letting go

Or holding on -

Is also the interval

That exists before

And after life -

Is the nostalgic past

Different from the pained

One?

How does history change -

Is it not always

the same event?

That is, except when memory

Paints it into a future frame

Where all the paths disappear

To an uncertain eternity

Once, one is no longer

Part of its reference –

Thus, a vanishing point

Leads the eye of the painter

And distorts the poet’s meaning.

 

A Rose by Another Name

A Rose by Another Name

She stepped cautiously down each broken stair

That once, she could fly up and past in leaps and bounds

With winged feet and red flowing hair a fire

Her veins flowed blue from a heart without a care.

These long years now have taken full fare

Upon those green eyes that glittered with light; now veiled rounds

Dulled by a labyrinth that says everything by revealing nothing,

Her sharp words, whispered in a graveled throat, smite

(the ruins of countless Camels and cheap whiskey shots)

“Am I not the shining star -you came to see on this moonless night;

Have you been here before - when I was a slightly better sight;

Do you not see that what you see in me - is your own fright?”

The Inn of the Rising Sun, with empty rooms, holds prisoner the Argonauts

That came to conquer their youth; they all checked out but could never leave.

Rose by another name danced her Mary Jane dreams

And sang all the songs of self when there was so much celebration

While whirling and traversing about in her sea colored boat

Twirling her dress of white silk and a multi-colored ramie coat

As she leaped out the window of her mind so to float

Falling from heaven’s grace down upon the streets of desperation

Where the Rose, by another name, cries out in blues of hesitation.

What Rhymes with Time

What Rhymes with Time

At the end, a fourth line reads: A Poet - Here lies.

In this place of death where the plots

Are laid out in grids and numbered by lots

Separating those souls of wealth with their majestic tombs

From the poor ones, whose only richness was life’s dire wounds.

And there too, resting in peace a wordsmith - forever buried by whys.

Walking along the outer and inner edges of quietness

One’s pace slows at each marker that reads that life

Was lived between begin and end; there was a son and a wife;

There was Confederate soldier killed in the Battle of Tupelo  

And, there was a woman who walked this earth 153 years ago;

Setting nearby, a baby born and died on the same day - in stillness.

The Junipers stand alone in twisted forms as if in mournful wailing

While the Sallows group together, down by the old pond, sadly weeping

Seemingly reaching down for the yellow evening primrose creeping

Along the water’s greenish surface where a knot of frogs hides

And then, a thought leads to a reason why one never chides

The dead nor wails at their passing due to life’s failing.

Instead wonder - What rhymes with time?

Then gather all the words very carefully;

Place them together impeccably.

Chose each line to build the account of one.

Form the stanza that will then stand - forever done

And that ends with: a poet lies here - with no more lines.

Indivisible

There is a light at the very edge

Where elapsing lines of impermanence

Weave in and then fall away like scorched lace

Always; always just within desperate grasp

But never; ever near enough to save us

Any more than a candle can redeem grace

Nor can a perfect prayer make the night

Indivisible from the visible and the invisible

Things that walk the paths of this tortured place

Testaments to the devils and the angels we avoid

To know; to dance with; to lie with; to die for

What we are and are not - are parts of the same face

What words can be said; written; spoken

What love can be given; taken; wasted

That will ever explain why we seek the empty space

The dark at the very edge

Where elapsing shades of permanence

Pour and fill the universe like an empty vase

Here Instead There

The bird flew there; she was here -

instead

The bird flew here; while she was there -

instead

And blue bird’s song did not sound -

dread

That she was there but could not be found -

fled

The bird was here and quiet now – how

sad

She was here too, lying upon the bough -

dead

Rejoice the bird lifted its wings and flew -

instead

She rested here and she there upon a flowered blue

bed.

The Vacant Occupy

The Vacant Occupy

There was never any design

That the line’s end be consigned

To a forgotten museum yard and ravaged.

The once bulwark engine’s roar savaged

To an endless silence from the days of yore

When the iron wheels and rails made for songs of lore

While handsome men and lovely ladies were preoccupied

By the sense of linear movement of the lives they occupied

Together with the hobos and economy class travelers

Off to another place - better suited for dreamers and revelers

And now, a stillness holds the vacant windows blank

Nevermore to engross starry eyes around the next bank

Or anticipate a panoramic scene - nor hold breath across the long iron bridge

That spanned time like a vanishing point moving towards a faraway ridge.   

Photo: BKKrysh

Pathos Finds Ethos

I do not disagree with that man who was once me

And, most certainly no such fool could I ever really be

For all the things prayed for then -  have changed, and he knows -

And now, all those things once mastered are buried treasures - covered in woes

That sit upon a checkered chessboard table - empty of all the pawn pieces;

Devoid of any studied moves - the white knight’s veiled leap - seizes

The black rook’s standing and so, destroys the castle walls

Exposing the black king to the white queen’s mating mauls.

No, I do not know that lost old man in wander

Nor can I speak to his iambic ponder

I see only that the path he walks is one that is long past

And the place he dwells in is a ship - cursed and without a mast;

Wrecked upon the shores of nirvana - as the ancient seas

Have long since receded - beaching the noble Pequod to her knees

Poor Ishmael, he must tell the ghastly tale once more, to a naïf wedding guest

A story of a white whale that lives in our hearts - while the albatross hangs at our chest.

Yes, I can attest to the soul and heart of this man of words

Who once wielded killing swords

Until it made little sense and held even less reason

Behind select uniforms that followed uniformity so to avoid a path of treason

I can confirm that this man stands naked before mother

And that, as mountains and oceans need one another,

The stoic man needs his solitude to feed the quiet madness

And then waits dawn’s tender touch to awaken a recovery of gladness. 

There is a darkness that sits at the core

There is an anxiety that consumes everything – yet, it has never been more

There is however, a way there - to an open peacefulness seeing that time is less

There are regrets that bent the mind and that rage - twisted into a mess

There are all the many stumbles and falls drowned with anise

and green bitters…   The red nurse said, “When you wake - just go ask Alice.”

There is a blindness that feeds his head and keeps him near - fear

I once knew a man who was a lost boy that brought all his tears - here.

Broken

What is a plenary life

if not a collection of broken

pieces; lost parts;

the last shreds

of treasured loves;

a splinter of existence;

a last gasp of resistance

the glowing embers of persistence -

the frozen ground of earth gives way

to Spring’s primordial urgings

as the ancient crocus

breaks the soil’s reach

sprouting yellow saffrons;

its profound existence

an honorable presence

of faith in mother’s persistence -

the sultry winds of Summer

break open the skin’s pores

so, to cool life’s passions

with sweet sweat

beading;

running across the brow

in a lush sense

of verdant intense

and fertile presence -

Autumn’s tapestries

fall across mother’s lap

with colors of many splendor

breaking at the season’s

final breath for one last

banquet of earth’s plenty

in a redemptive presence

of death’s essence -

a grey pallor consumes the landscapes

as white blankets

cover the cold ground

and the winds of November

came early

breaking spirit and flesh

alike and away to a long pretense

that life’s persistence might beget an eternal existence.

Cogito in Contrast

An old pair seeking commonality

Walk the paths of dual reality

Carrying eyepieces that magnify

Foreshadowing calls and birdsongs that cry

Accusations and salutations – wry.

Pleasure and misfortune are duality

For in the middle exists the contrast

Black or white; black and white they seem aghast

Common birds that pray and too, birds of prey

The vernal equinox is this first day.

Walking yonder a young reticent girl

Wearing pretty skirt, coat and hat of reds

Her eyes lower; her head turns like a swirl

And away from any connection to her dreads.

Her steps are cautious, her demeanor sad.

She carries a package perhaps, a diary

Covered in yellow ribbon shreds - it swings

Back and forth flashing hints of her carry.

Now it is clear. A small bird’s flutterings;

Pain’s reality or merely, fallacious mutterings.

La sangre como el universo es infinito

The gentle eye sees; the acute mind contrast of cogito.

Orange Marmalade Man

What is this new reality’s - tonality?

Is it a fact; or merely an augmented reality

With fashions of glitter and blowing balloons in a parade

Led by the strange man of Orange Marmalade.

Reverberating voices prattle on about transparencies

And mix into sounds of confounding frequencies.

Thus, arises the Opus - Right is Wrong, a symphony executed with vagaries;

A prelude to the new order - an act accompanied by the Ride of the Valkyries.

Hear the social drums beat into patterns of dissociative dissonance

And watch the tongues of anger slather up fear and ignorance

Wrong is right and right is wrong – the madness is out of control.

Resist –

Persist –

Consist –

Exist

In the world of the “Alternative Fact” – the purpose forms its own augmented roll.

Protested –

Arrested –

Attested - by the whiten fear

The orange marmalade beast is perched at the outer edges of this new frontier

Listen; listen to the silence, for the maelstrom widens,

The librium in the cabinet leads to the music chambers of Master Haydn.

Sinking into the waters of solitude is an immersing bath

To wash and cleanse away the stains of wrath

And at once, the calmness wraps the vastness of nothingness

Shielding sanity from the onslaught; the atrociousness

Fending off the red; the blue parties of attacking pen swords;

Protecting from righteous regiments with piercing words.

Finding –

Identifying –

Complying –

To the political points of these augmented realities

(that are conformed and transfixed within the mazes of dualities)

Soothes the ego with turns and winds - so to please the Id

Ah! Soy el rey – Soy el Cid.

The exploits of the Orange Marmalade Man

Are rationalized truths resplendent in gold leaf scam

Forms of nonsensical terms; wrapped nicely into silly tweets

and lumps;

and thumps;

and bumps

that suggest the suckle of the orange marmalade’s teats.

Oh, Orange Marmalade Man - what is it that you say?

You’ve sullied the white house promenades – again, today?

Yes, indeed! Nothing else matters for Hetfield and Ulrich – play,

“Never cared for what they say

Never cared for the games they play

Never cared for what they know”

Nothing else matters - you must go

Oh, Orange Marmalade Man – why is your hair aglow?