Tuesday, November 5, 2024

A Nation of Murmurations

 






A clamor of chatter

a chatter of skeletons screeching


A cloud of longings

a cloud of closings coming


A clutter of chaos closing

a matter of calamity calls


A concentration of condemns

a convention of consensus convenes


A congregation of conventions

a congregation of consenting constituents


A constellation of conditions

a constellation of concerns connects


A filth of finery 

a filth of flies’ flitter


A flight of foul foragers

a flight of opining flags flutter


A gathering of gaudy gods

a gathering of goons & loons


A hosting of harrowed helots 

a hosting horde of horror 


A roost of starlings

a roost of ranting rogues


A scourge of scarlet

a scourge of scoundrels scowling


A vulgarity of violence

a vulgarity of vultures


A vein of pain

a vault of fault


A winsome warrior of wander 

a wonder with words.







Sunday, November 3, 2024

The Other Side Poetry Night

 






time has a switch that sets off,

    in all darkness and is a faint light

that brings the bewildered,

                   the beholden

and

                   the benevolent

together

as a family of love.


Time and date is 21 of November

Six-thirty opens the mic!

Paladins!! come to the faint light

And rejoice

the rejoin of poets

And lovers of song.







Sunday, October 27, 2024

The River Stigmata

 






in the river

where one must

love floating

beyond; below the blue

while beneath; lower

where the raging draws

one into a vortex; abyss

and calm runs - 

free from the stigma

of drowning

to be free.














Monday, October 21, 2024

The Muse Constance

 








The Muse Constance


A boarding pass on the good ship.

A breath to behold upon the horizon.

Promise of a long and fateful trip

Upon the decorous Steamer – Kismet.


The open sea - calm without strait.

The first dance to celebrate

As the muse plays on into the late

For there is no inevitable to forget.


No eventual; no certainty; no end.

The edge is infinite - beyond the planets;

The stars; the galaxies – the eternity

Of seas where the knowns offend.


‘Tis an infinitesimal flicker of light

Across the timeless dark of existence.

Come my traveling delight

We will dance to the muse Constance.








Sunday, October 13, 2024

Terminal - Final







Terminal - Final


“It is terminal…”

The words lingered

As her eyes wavered

At the acceptance

Of such a sentence.


The heart stilled -

And for a moment filled

With ponderous weight

Of the final; of the eventual. It is late

At the terminal stop of await.


She is a beautiful fragile vase

Life is rampant in that lovely face

And her grace is her space

A gift to the crestfallen at her state.

We sit, we laugh and toast against life’s fate.


We bid farewell - until we meet again.

Yet, that word, terminal rumbles its fain!

Shall we wait at the station

Arrival and wonder if damnation?

Or run to the departure gate carrying hopes of redemption.


At the window’s ledge high above 

Heaven’s vestibule sits a white dove 

Calling home lost souls and spirits of love.

Many have come and gone through this place

Where young and old wait in pain or grace


For a last-second of song or prayer

To save one more breath; one last sayer

Before the departure reaches time.

 Ahh! Anne’s beautiful eyes find eternal rhyme!

While we travelers – we must cross the same terminal line.









   

For friend Anne - rest in peace.

Monday, September 2, 2024

Terminal

 






It is terminal…

The words lingered

As her eyes wavered

At the acceptance

Of such a sentence.


The heart stilled -

And for a moment filled

With the ponderous weight

Of final, of eventual. It is late.

At the terminal stop of await.


She is a beautiful fragile vase

Life is rampant in that lovely face

And her grace is her space

A gift to the crest fallen at her state.

We sit, laugh and toast against life’s fate.



We bid farewell - until we meet again.

Yet, that word terminal echoes its fain.

Shall we wait at the station

Arrival and wonder if damnation

Or run to the departure gate and redemption.








Monday, August 26, 2024

Particle Steps and Time Waves

 





The particles made their pulse

and the side of positive

assuaged the opposite negative,

“It is time to wave.” spoke Impulse.

His weary eyes need to feed the mind;

wondering by seeking the dormouse

who lives there – near the old farmhouse.


In the moraine - where mother’s flowered blouse

changes and is changing everything in every way

while in the mind it remains the same byway.

There by the old wooden gate - a white rabbit;

the defiant lake sits so still – quietly,

nary a ripple to note waves of tranquility.

His way is old, while his mind converses gently,

“Why the path will end where it began – satiety”.


And he gathers himself.  He collects the panoramic scenes

Of the long horizon that now approaches his time;

a fence line runs by the abandoned barn - in between.

Frame by frame, a kinetoscope story in rhyme

retelling of life approaching the vanishing point

as hesitant steps near a path that says: Wrong Way.

He says to the hawk and to the mourning dove,

“I have been this way – always, always gathering more love”.


He says to the wind, “until tomorrow concedes

and it becomes today – I will know where it leads”.

On the other side of the other side

Crossing bridges that sit aging in the narrow

path along the way and too, crossings of harrow

that is in the mind and just as suspended.

As a breath, just before the last second has ended,

Whispers, “remember me today and tomorrow”.









Thursday, July 4, 2024

Page 1

 






Page 1

 

There was never a first page.

However much it is written;

However more its passages

Are scribed into this diction.

 

Whatever may be said

Or whichever line is read

One will answer to the dead

Gaiety that sits now - silent and sad.

 

For in the realm of silence

Is found the coats of loneliness.

So very light to wear upon heavy shoulders.

Yet too a burden to set down – anywhere.

 

Too alone to be distracted.

Much too busy a gala to wait.

And so, the walk is a feather’s tract.

However, sleep will have a date.

 

Along the ways there is a path

To be found even when all is lost

While the story asks, “At what cost”.

Stumbling and falling into self-wrath.

 

The first page says it was fate.

The last page will ponder,  “Why”.

And the rainbow choir sings of glory

While the eulogy exalts the quiet face.








 

Monday, July 1, 2024

Signs







There are signs that may warn.

While some simply say, “Turn”.

Some signs are easy to read.

While others can mislead -

To go to a wrong place

Because somehow the face,

The eyes covet, is torn.


Which portends can one believe?

In dreams, simulations are confounding notes to learn.

While in the tea leaves, they might foretell

A curse in-wait or of fortunes to sell.

Signs can be hidden in plain sight

In the brightness of the sunlight.

Alas, the crosses along the road say: Aggrieve.


Read the sign; sign the line; don’t resign.

Life can turn on a twist or soar upon a yearn.

See what is there and sense what is coming.

Grasp hold the rudder; ride a storm’s warning.

The cave’s symbols tell of early plights of rhyme

As true as Einstein’s relative time -

Where paradox is the sign.


A place where stones mark a last conquest

The inscription explains, “Here lies the author in rest”.

And there too, are all his thoughts scattered in books

Found in libraries; and ancient stores; and in revered nooks.

A necropolis of dead poets and other rummies fame forgot;

A cemetery is a wonderful place for symbols of her -

Of Athena’s rules of knowledge that are conforms to digest.


Is the content merely fermented ignorance?

Once perceived true; imitations of menace and peace;

Redemptions promised in the old manuscripts – if, sins cease.

Woe! Consummation is the key to absorption and ease

Because heaven and hell are fantasy and chains to fate.  

The objects are beast and man set in murals mimicking life on a cave’s crease.

And the dancing shadows… 

                            signs of a sorcerer’s inference.









Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Poetry of Flamenco

 







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)







Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Eulogy for a Wheelbarrow

 






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)









Friday, May 24, 2024

Expire







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.














Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Friend or Fiend

 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.









Monday, May 20, 2024

Dance to the Stillness

 






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.









Thursday, May 9, 2024

Sonnet 218

 





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.









Saturday, April 27, 2024

A Blue Planet Aquarium







 

‘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.













Swirl Me into a Fit

 






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.









Sunday, April 7, 2024

Chasing Constance

 





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.









Monday, April 1, 2024

April's Folly

 








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.











Monday, March 11, 2024

: Distance :

 






: 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. 








Monday, February 19, 2024

Ides of March

 






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?











  


Sunday, January 21, 2024

Essence of Tomorrow

 








 


When the Colossus knows your name

there is infinity in the voice

asking, “Was that the choice?”


Shall I reply “In what frame

is there left

where fortune is bereft?”


That cosmic promises are deft

when reality encounters mortality

and ends immortality.


Tomorrow will be the only infinity

to complete the story;

To write the poem of life’s glory.







Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Cosmic Understatement

 







Don’t look to find meiosis

in the eternity

there is nothing that is lost.

 

What you may understand

is, at the moment,

Understatement.


There were never

any senses; no matter

how common.








Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Framework

 






Find the pieces broken

From thy face -


For the fragments, compositions

Form levity-

Fanciful or frightful they are ridiculous

Fables within the human framework.







Sunday, January 7, 2024

Disposition of Hydrogen

 








The travails of being elemental,

When the church of allotment calls,

Are both reductive and extravagant

Arguments for the circumspect

Balance between hydrogen molecules

And the universe of all reason

That states - value is abundance of utility.


Let the waters of life flow

To their source – 

A toast to the goldfish In the bowl.









Thursday, January 4, 2024

Ruing of the Anemoi

 








Why do you live so carelessly

In endless holler and scream;

Flowing from the behemoth granites,

Across the snow-covered plains,

and to my front door.


Why can you not feel the silence

Beneath our baren canopies

and understand the deep sleep

of regeneration.


Your roars may humble the beasts

But these woods –

These ancient woods will come alive

Long after you have passed.









The Ruing of Bianca







The figure sits alone by the window

Upstairs in the house by the bay.


Day after day with nothing to say

To the closing horizon with a drowning sun;

The empty frigates and the tall ships -

They each follow along with silent lips.


As the daily procession of each morning

Pleads with the sky to reason with sign:

“Why! Oh, why has the sea

made a widow out of me!”


If she could only take back time

And return her wanderer’s rhyme.








The Ruing of Dorothy

 








With the first two notes, the heart fluttered

At the thought of that Summer of ’42 -

When death sought comfort in my arms.

And your heart lay on the floor -broken

Like so many glimmering seashells along the shore.


Telling stories of a lifetime that never lived

That now walks in, with a tattered book of poems.

A phantom of lost love

That resides in a book of verse

In cold reticence;

And I, in warmth, holding a book of poems.