Words

 

 

Words...


They come with the power of the ocean’s waves

Striking along the long beach front

As the sand’s regressions and egressions change

View and in a wider sense - they remain unchanged

 

They fill the skies in unfathomable numbers

Sparkling and twinkling a sense of time

The long past and by inversed position – the unknown future

Points that are at once inspiring grace and too, humbling truths

 

They describe nature’s palette renderings at each horizon

when light finds and ends the day

schemes of blue with swirls of reds, yellows and patched in stained clouds

while life and death meet at black

 

They celebrate the newborn at dawn’s new day

They gather at the pew’s line to honor death’s path

The words fill pages and books with human frailty using prose and poetry

To explain the impermanence - in a permanent way

 

 

 

 

The Cutting Edge

 

 

There’s a certain gentleness

When a finely sharpened edge

Breaks the skin’s presence

Penetrating, with particular incisiveness,

The covers that are the mirror’s essence

And the humor flows over the ledge

Unto the fields of divest

the claret imbues;  stains.

 

There’s passion in the cutting’s gentleness

As mortality frees away though the open veins.

 

 

 

 

Ware and Piece – A Backyard Epic

 

 

The lawn’s appearance has become a spectacle

The hedges have evolved many an unsightly tentacle

The black locust trees need their defunct limbs removed

The dandelion’s yellow flowers must be disproved

The fence lines are stained in colors of moss and algae

The gutters are filled with debris and so it be...

 

That weekend warriors must arm once again.

Let power tools surface from their proper keep

Rip those chords and let the roar of mighty engines begin

Their right angle trimmings;

their symmetrical cuttings;

their sculpted hedging;

their magic-wand power washing.

 

I love the smell of two-cycle engine oil in the morning!

 

The conquest is real – let the beer flow and the grilling reap

Garlic roasted tomatoes, marinated asparagus and big steaks that leap!

 

 

 

 

Edge

At the edge between the finite physical tense

And the infinite metaphysical suspense

 

One must muse causation

Of chance conception

 

As finality is basis in a each moment

Of creation or destruction

 

Life evolves at the brim of the first contraction

Where a primordial voice cries out its existence

 

Listen:  a newborn’s suckling subsistence

Turns into adolescent insistence

 

Maturing through the stages of presence

Diminishing upon itself at the verge

 

In brink before the forces of contradiction

Balancing the congruent lines of salvation and perdition

 

 

Planes set at the fringe of a tormenting descent

While in parallel dimension with a harmonious ascent

Until the moment when the rattling cage walls collapse

And disappear unto the edge;   eternity,  perhaps...

 

 

 

 

A Set With No Set

A symmetry within the jagged life lines

Even as the pulse beats in unconformity

A set with no set signs

Man with a parrot on shoulder leans uneven

while the bird balances set in uniformity 

together alone - they must believe in

Set of horses lying upon a lush green field

One white; one black - in an odd deformity

While life continues by - yet, death has a yield

Stooped man carrying life’s heavy load

walking a wrong way along mountain highway

seeking his set back to the levee’s lode

Man monitoring for ailed riders

To set upon an empty therapy trail’s way

Where harrows are filled with spiders 

Vexing men walking holding hands in contrast

One youthful dressed in a rainbow suit of play

The other, an old worn vet; a set in miscast

Silhouetted men running towards the opaque

Tall and imposing figures chasing a quickened day

While a poet tracks and waits to set view upon daybreak

Woman with empty eyes

Wondering around in set of pajamas tied in enmity;

Lost presence - she has no more replies  

 A broken wooden sign, with the word “Home”

Faded and missing the letter “e”,

Was once set to stop those who roam.



 

La Noche En Rondo

 

 

The door was never really closed

 

Nor was it ever wide open - in anyway,

 

Each angle and position merely held

 

 

A  juxtaposition;

 

A countering point

 

between the enlighten view

 

Of calm and contentment

 

 

And the confusion of darkness

 

 

Where fears scoped out the mind

 

 

While pain ate away at purpose

 

 

 

 

The ashen bedroom walls

 

Painted a watchtower’s isolation

 

Waiting a young prince

 

Runnings - round and round and round

 

 

At the night’s silence;

 

 

Evanescing into moonlight

 

 

And out the tower’s portals

 

 

With the flying lace curtains;

 

 

Waving standards of remorse

 

 

 

And conquest... 

 

 

 



Unrequited

The winds came in fury

the sails fell upon me.

The rains swept me out to sea

As darkness took my eye

and hasten pained jury

for reason the albatross cry.

The leviathan shall seek

the wretched and the meek  

but nay, it shall not be - I

Who bows to ill fate

nor will ever wait

a ship of fools

with fine silks and twinkling jewels. 

Left alone; naked to the ocean

Redemption is soothed by water’s motion. 

The Good Ship Forbearance

In seas of turmoil the good ship forbearance

Strained her bow against the rising depths

As lower forces assumed a threatening coherence

Between the angry wave’s of tilting oceans 

And the menacing skies in lilting motions.

The masthead standards violently swaying lose

Releasing enmities hidden below the deck’s breadths

As the ship’s foundations lurched about

In chaotic spasms - severing the fastenings and screws;

Bringing a flinch to the captain’s eye and a compromising doubt.

Whirling winds spinning around the vessel’s foursquare bearing

 With the after-house facing tumultuously across each compass point bereft

Of calm viewpoint, purpose or direction.

The morning blue sky promise now accursed perdition;

the storm’s blackness consuming the day’s good faring.

The storm’s surging forces implode into a convex

Proximal center and thus, swallowed into the deep sea floors

Where calm and peace reside without perplex

Of expectations nor possessive notions to any shores.

The quietude rises to consume the ship’s abnormal; allowing forbearance to forget.   

A One Way

The train leaves; moving away quickly ...

Sitting alone in the front car

facing south to feel the warmth

as the sun's rays propose their vitality

(thru the opaque glass)

upon the exposed skin

and heat the frozen fields

so the patches of winter's white covers

 relent their long hard grip;

succumbing to the inevitable Spring

brimming below the frost lines

 waiting to burst through in response

to the call of the equinox

as it reaches its annual cycle

to the vernal tipping point

spilling empty life’s vessel

so to ready the next full measure.

Where we are bound; is a one way.

 

 

 

Redemption in Destruction

The photograph said: “Look, a dead merganser upon the ice”

 

The bitter coldness brings to focus lithe certainties

While, at the same time, exposing deep frailties

Of expectation and desperation

Each is an impersonator lingering at the edge

Waiting the long hard winter’s dredge

To uncover the frozen destruction

And too, to reveal a survivor’s redemption

Though, neither is a curse into hell’s spate

Nor a promise thru sweet heaven’s gate.

 

The poetry said: “Look, life and death aftermaths have a price”

 

 

 

A Healing Garden

 

A Healing Garden

 

A radiance awakens with imperceptible glints

 

 

Across the transparent surface forming patterns of diaphanous tints

 

And dawn’s blue rush converges upon mother’s prints

 

Painting a winter’s garden growth of golden leaves

 

Creating a place where cold and heat healing interweaves

 

 

 

Steps

She steps past each day

Reaching for harmony’s rungs

None shall keep her in sweet stay

 

 Haunted way too young;

Running in faltering stride,

And chased by many a dissonant tongue -

 

A young mother bride

Runs across the sand

Seeking a mate at her side

 

Treading for a place to stand

Measuring each riser’s time

Whilst reaching out her hand

 

Knowing neither the rhyme

 

Nor reason that transcends

Both the carnal and the sublime

 

Does the stairway descend

Unto waiting of the day

Or lift up to heaven’s ascend-

 

She sings, “Come with me this way -

Matters not thy trebled steps –

Only a voice to sing away the day”