Posts Tagged ‘ poetry ’

Skimming BBC

Alone
Alone
I am always alone
Under the covers of my mind
No thought slips in but what I put in
Insinuate
Insinuate
Sin

Fast broaches the dawn of discontent
Hours with swelling need and vacant desire
No energy just a sucking
A sucking of all that is
To the place of hurt that I hope will
Die by
The side of my gathered calamities
The moments of being that aren’t mine but should keep
Deep in the well of an educated soul
Fresh places of pain for all hours of the day
Alone.

Port to Air

Standing
Breathing waiting
Sleeping wishing
Cough cough
Whisper buzz
Can I charge here?
Little kid boy baby
Huge bags
Bag bag everywhere
Colors mostly black or sad or old
Who knows you?
Can you read my name on the ticket?

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Michigan Sky

Velvet isn’t always black or dark or deep.
Sometimes it’s sharp and clear and high
Like a Michigan sky.

The loveliest silk washed o’er the high ways,
Frosty tops and homespun bellies
Bulging with the lake-weary winds
Turning home to the dry prairie tickles.

My green soul leaps with the cherry-throated grosbeak
To meet the goddess of the Air full-stretched across my face.

The lush season of the sunbeams is nigh
And many a pliant wood rejoices in the un-freeze.
Wrap us up in cattail down and tuck into the summer.

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2:37 a.m.

toss at the moon

Sitting alone at night makes me tired

But there’s energy for the taking because no one else is there to steal it away

Sap at your reserves and make you pay

Through the nose for something you didn’t really want in the first place

But couldn’t say.

 

I lay awake waiting for the time to come when all last pages fall to the ground like bits of over-soaking algae wafers.

Have I fed my fish today?

Streams of rain run down the glass inside but I know it doesn’t melt with age.

Discovery Channel told me so.

 

Dreams come and go quickly and I’ll admit I hate the word

That says something immaterial can describe something real.

Together they are made for each other but never as one.

It won’t work.

 

Why do the paper airplanes fly?

I wish I had a kite or some other symbol of man’s lost sky to toss at the moon of a lonely night.

Hello Twitterverse

hello September

hello September

Twitter trends crack me up.

10:02 p.m. #Goodbye August

10:41 p.m. #Hello September

Isn’t is amazing that we can now track what thousands and thousands of people are thinking about?  And even with all the tracking, there are so few surprises.  We all have the same basic rhythm, the same primary needs, the same mood swings.

It reminded me of when I first started working retail.  It was like all our customers coordinated a full-on assault!  Out of nowhere, suddenly there would be 20 customers needing personal attention.  Then, as quickly and supernaturally has they appeared, they would vanish, leaving carnage of tried-on clothing in their wake.

Yup.  People are people.  August is hot and slightly inspirational; September is moody and evocative—and slightly annoying, because you suddenly realized that you overcommitted yourself in back in inspirational August.  We think of ourselves as being different…but we’re not.

who's gonna lead the army?

who's gonna lead the army?

Maybe I’ll ask my friends from Australia: are they are predictable as we are?  Do Australians feel about September the way Americans do?  Are there such things as global trends—because the universe as scientists know it is expanding, but the Twitterverse is shrinking, pulling us closer and closer until we’ll all be the same.

Anger: Digression

Quietly the change comes upon me.  Soft and stealthy at first and then with roaring, hide and sinew exploding everywhere.  Anger is a rough handler.  He pounds you down into the ground, through the tunnel to China—expectorated out the other side of the green orb.  If you’re already in China, you tear apart Butte, Montana on your way out into the chasm-pocked deep.  (I say “Butte, Montana” only because it seems appropriate not because I know it to be geographically across from the vast provinces of “China”—-poetry should never be technically accurate about the insubstantial realities of life.)  Anger is like the Red Bull in The Last Unicorn, God help us all.  I feel like the last unicorn sometimes—the geeky leftover of a glorious mythology.  Not enough like the harpy or the pegasus to really be myth but not enough like your pet pony to be led into your foyer and fed apples and sugar during a tap routine.  Its hard to be stuck between myth and fact, poor unicorn.  People only believe what they can see in front of them or what is so far removed that it shimmers ever before the mind’s eye. Magic is stuffed.  Anger is stuffed.  Real feelings are stuffed under the ice, let out through a little whole, baited by wicked hooks that sting and rip and exorcise the darkness of Below.  No body wants to go down to the Deeps, all by themselves rummaging around the insides.  People tend to get lost in the dark, and above all—thank GPS—we forbid ourselves to get lost.  Its too stressful, not knowing what’s next; so we make up games, the rules whereby we predict outcomes, generate patterns and expectations.  Most expectations get met, of course.  And if they are disappointed, you could have expected that.  Anger knows.  Anger sees.  Anger doesn’t feel and so mocks you for feeling.  Maybe anger is a big red bull, charging through the forest, hunting down the last of your weak glories.  (This, of course, is the kind of anger that petty people feel for themselves and each other—not the rich, dazzling anger of a righteous lord, wreaking havoc on behalf of the trammeled.  I feel that’s an important point to bring up.  Pardon the digression.)  Anger.  Anger.  Anger.

There.

the many faces of anger

the many faces of anger

Soft Lays the Night

Soft lays the night on my beating heart.

Not one, but two things have I spoken.

Don’t forget to turn in your key

when you pack up your things and sashay  away with a crisp apple between your teeth

the last fruit of a weary yoke.

 

I remembered you at the dawn.

When the mists rolled in through the asphalt cracks and the brakes tore through the treads.

I was there.

I was there when you cried and shuffled to the three-step dirge.

Don’t look away now, in the soft of the night,

in the pillow of the patterned fall.

 

I will be there again in the blazing 1 p.m. sliding the card in the slot.

Quiet laps the evening on the memories of my mind,

On the tired places that cannot pull together but lie naked, beating at the surface.

 

Sleep in peace, and pass on to the Time, my wild-hearted friend.

 

Soft Lays the Night

 

Rainy Day Yellows

People say they get the blues when it rains. I get the yellows.

Rain mellows me.
Comforts me.
Inspires me.
Generally, encourages me.

The Yellow Brick Road (photo by John Manno)

The Yellow Brick Road (photo by John Manno)

Yes, of course, I’d rather stay in bed and read or stumble around my room in my dressing gown writing poetry. But ultimately, rain brings the promise of something new, a moment of intersection between the world that is (air) and the world that will be (water). It’s like a brief rubbing of shoulders between now and eternity. It enlivens things that are dead and dispenses justice evenly to all.

I’m definitely hyperbolizing and analogizing considerably here.
But what else are rainy days for?

I WAR FOR YOU

BurnI disagree with Rejection.I disagree with Bitterness.I disagree with Lust.

You shall have no entrance in me or our Body.

I am accepted in the Beloved.

I am a partaker of the Divine nature.

I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is for me.

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