That rhythmic steps can hold time
speaks of form that is bold;
telling of sensuality in the sublime
with hands that clap old
romantic legacies in dance
art form; expressions of gypsy lore.
Listen - the syncopation grips in trance
as movements in seduction tap the floor.
(Image: Flamenco dancer Antoñita Singla performing in 1965)
Eulogy for a Wheelbarrow
She sat, as always, in her natural beauty
With alluring gems and minerals to offer
A grand scene beyond a painter’s brush.
Her mountains caress the blue from the sky
And her playful winds send the galloping clouds.
While brooks and streams turn rivers into channels
Of life and more - flowing to the seas.
Then enterprise found Nature as a prize
Sitting to be taken and settled to mine
Away her wealth and her beauty for the sin
Of wealth beyond survival and for ambition.
Alas, they were careless and lost paradise,
Leaving strewn a wheelbarrow; abandoned dreams.
For the quest of beast and all nature – it is lost.
(Photo by Julie Munroe)
If you were to expire -
What relic could keep an empire;
What moment-of-change must transpire
That contains such a wretched – choir.
If a candle were to expire –
What place should be the empire;
What endless darkness must transpire;
What voice shall become a holy – choir?
If you wish to expire;
Should too - the unholy empire;
Should all your words also transpire?
For the endless silence shall quiet the choir!
If Father Time refused to expire
Should we seek throughout the empire;
Should we see that curse and glory are about to transpire;
Should we make the sage and the obtuse become the – choir.
If Truth’s keys and noted-emboldens flourish upon the choir
And the old kingdom remnants – transpire;
Shall there stand a new realm - of an ethereal empire?
Pray - pray for the day; for time is set to expire.
What cost has this casted belonging?
It depends on your reflection of it;
Does it suit your need to hold on to vanity
Or perhaps, a collectible for your insanity?
Do not be rude or bid ill wit!
What value is there in this reflection?
This golden alabaster of attraction?
Forgive the query – no need to have a fit.
Merely wondering if the mirrors reflects
Your worth or if it merely add more affects.
Perchance, did this alabaster mirror ever pit
The hands of death as they became the eyes
And in the mind, the reflections of seven score of lies?
Were I a jester or pretender – I could say in whit.
However, I am merely your humble assayer
And thus, fear not what you see – you are the slayer!
I shall wait then for you to find me a quiet sit -
As this requires a very naked image
Of the forms and thoughts of old age.
You will find privacy in that mirrored tit
Then what hath happened will become apparent
That thee - is more ethereal than transparent.
Should troublesome times beset upon thee
Stealing halcyon days from diary
Then is when one must swallow all fury
And wait for a heartbeat to be jury
To the paradox that is the stillness
Of movements in the deep dance of darkness
Where turmoil churns loudly the emotions
And quietude of the deepest oceans.
With every breath there is silent pause
A musical note; a poem’s silent cause.
Stillness implies chaos and abides life
As floating in peace or beset in strife.
Tranquility is a war of the heart
and mind; only stillness may choose the part.
There are reasons to set off to the seas
Or travel across continents searching
for dreams; following adventures in breeze.
Every Spring’s vow is full of hope bursting
To grow; to prosper in nature’s harbor.
“If you are going to San Francisco”
Wear flowers and dance in total ardor;
Summers are long - so dress in calico.
And in the winter, when the currents change;
As winds race across the cradle’s holding
The days may turn into years as strange
As a vertical carousel’s folding.
A classical molding into a stage
Of waxing and waning forces containing
All things inward - away from the sea’s wage;
For the bay seems still while storms are churning…
Never intended to be here always.
Now the sea beckons: saying come away.
‘Tis there not a magnificent world for thee
Little goldfish - with your ancient and delicate fins?
Has confinement been good for the refinement
of the cyprinidae? (sa-prini-dee)
Oh, my great fearsome beast that owns the sea
Living in matrilineal groups
And through scores of time;
What hath thee more than me?
My precious little golden key
I know better the planet
Under the sea that speaks across the ages
Far more than you can ever know or see.
Perhaps this is so and only so to be
Because you must consume to suit your mass.
However, I too exist in masses under the sea;
Thus, we are but tiny exotic little things in universal relativity.
My name is Kakawa and I am ancient.
I am the source of pleasure and taste
And traded for gold around the world
To suit the impulse and mystify the sentient!
My name is Sundae and I am an affection;
Scoops and parts to be a conglomerate of tastes
Blended and added with nuts, bananas, cream
And the finest strawberry; a confectioner’s invention.
Yes, indeed my pretended friend
And if you will swirl my syrups
Around your mounds and peaks
You will then also become the perfect end.
Oh, my chippy cocoa bean, in full troll
I’m irresistible whether in a dish, cone or bowl
With sprinkles, nuts, licorice or a cherry top.
My taste is too scrumptious to stop
Only on Sundays as my sweetness, it is told,
Is always good for the young and the old.
in the mean of the blue
there known but few true
constants except for the run
to find the infinite one;
for each realm is its own
constant and will traverse home
to return to where the heart waits
for its star-crossed fates.
That which slept away
in the warmth of earthy loams
awakens now from the stillness;
from throes of a winter’s stasis.
The clarion of nocturnal and diurnal
voices sing: “Arise April’s muse of folly!”.
The first point of Aries fires the soils;
And the crownings of purple-yellow crocus.
Serendipity shall dance her fertile favors
upon lachrymose skies - to rain; rain; rain
and fill the streams of supple; flow tangible the rivers;
for a fool is never too far from dreams of Spring.
That love and love of love shall seed
the dormant and vacuous gardens
that his one true yellow flower
becomes a love bouquet for April’s fools.
: Distance :
I just stumbled across another colon;
Didn’t see it. Did not even think of it.
Even though its presence is the distance
Where time separates her incremental
Reign of the costly hour
Against the casual minute…
Why! Oh, why is life stolen?
Didn’t see it. Did not want to speak of it.
What miser chose such a remittance
When no second remains; is it transcendental;
Are sixty spaces spent to own one hour;
Is that : placed to keep right every minute?
We must be humbled by the distance
Between the two dates and the one final dash;
How can that line speak of life’s rhyme?
Our place apart is not a world but a breath.
Didn’t see it. Did not understand it.
And now this : stages the final act.
Look to the watchtower for an existence;
As the bells sound out their keep - in clash
Exulting our congruent nature with time
When mortality and immortality meet at death.
Did not see it. Did not wait for it.
And thus, the colon disappears from the tract.
Ides of March
What does one do on a cold and snowy path
After the sun’s warmth has left and the reindeer
Must follow the flocks of geese flying to the southern hemisphere.
There are reasons to believe that there is an aftermath
To be found beneath the blankets of snow
Where the ground is swollen with life and limb;
There is beauty, even in the decaying process, ‘though so grim.
Praying at the row and to names that no one really knows
And then, one moves away quietly and ever so gently
With and through the detritus of age - in tow.
The path there and back obscured by fog.
Now and then the woods rail so intently.
The wolves gather at the edge of the bog
Sniffing – smelling the air for a scent
Beware of the calling scritch of bete-noire dogs!
They will howl and snarl for life to relent.
Hide - be very still or flee; set in flight
For this day is not the time to carry on the fight.
Why does one walk alone on a cold and snowy day;
Is there some untold truth in the love of honey?
Some touching moments before the wintry bite slays.
The silent forest where the woods hold pray
For sacrifices and forgiveness by djinnis
While Delphyne songs enchant all into a final rend.
The long dark tree lines glimmer under the winter’s moon
It is uncertain whether all his poems were lost there - too soon
Before they were understood to portend
How phantasmic beasts track him by the light of the moon
Across the clearing of vagueness;
And confront him with the starken face of death;
A maquillage lineament of heinousness.
His heart slowed with each deep breath
As his mind twisted and retwisted in harrow;
His incongruent senses were lost in the narrow
Glen of mystery and of a vanishing point
Where the timpani sounds faintly as their last resound.
For the handsome prince is but a thin vagabond
Lost again to the vail of wonder;
Still seeking a place to rest and sleep.
Why does one wonder out on a cold snowy path?
After prayers are said at the gravesite of strangeness;
While mordant halos spin in counter of the antithetical arrow.
And the tracking eyes, along the tree line, follow
Closely - waiting patiently; their hunger will speak the final say
Of where his soul’s flight and repertory will be found.
The appall is not that one may fall or crawl
But more a fear that one may not be near or here at all;
The plight is to fight or take flight from the dying of the light.
Are life and death nothing more than perceptions;
Ideas formed in a cave and painted into images of rhyme.
The old sundial, at the entrance, a hyperbola in time?
The dark universe reformed by Kafkaesque inceptions
Plasmonic deviations; ephemeral and ephemera of pretensions.
The latent edges of fear slowly emerge from stolid eyes:
Livid skies loom quietly across the vale waiting the storm front
To consume life; as hungry wolves howl for their brotherly ties.
Why does one never return from a cold and snowy day?
