Category: Poetry

The Volcano

October 21, 2024

The volcano is still a mountain 

For it can catch clouds

Force the rain to fall

Sculpt nearby hills. 

 
Gone is its snowy top

Thousands of feet lost 

To air, sky, and atmosphere 

Settled down to ash and dust.

 
But this just gives birth  

To new open lands 

Where the wild chipmunk 

Is a bit more exposed, and 

The eagle hangs upon new 

Thermals and air currents

They... 

Who live close know 

The volcano is still a mountain. 

 
The volcano invites you to watch 

The slow tangle of clouds

Talk & tumble amongst themselves

The new grasses that make up 

desert-like fields, inhabit space 

Where tall evergreens once stood. 

Creeks have been given new paths. 

 
Even a group of crows 

Crying in their best city voices 

Cannot break the volcano’s presence. 

They appear like children at a playground 

Full of noise, laughter, bratty, and playful. 

The volcano welcomes these tricksters. 

Unlike the city, there is plenty of room for 

Them to wander off and stillness returns. 

 
Which is enough for you to notice. 

 
Notice what the volcano wants you to see. 

The distant lake sandwiched between 

A valley under the veil of rain, 

Small dune-like hills of old ash. 

The cougar, elk, and mountain goat’s 

Footprints, along with yours, embedded 

In the leftover dust of the mountainside. 

Fragile prints on top of bare earth. 

 
But it is stillness. 

 
That is the volcano's most important reveal. 

For the sights that surround you 

Stand still, as if they were painted time 

Frozen on easel and canvas. 

Here, you can look and see 

With eternity in your eyes  

Even though you know 

Everything is forever temporary 

And you are but a stroke of a paintbrush 

That is still moist.

Mt. Saint Helens a week before the snow arrives.

This image fascinated me. This is because it changes the perspective of seeing this view live. That’s a river down there and the lake in the distance is miles away. The Toutle River was scraped by all the sediment and debris from the volcanic explosion. Decades later, you can still see the leftover damage. Damage?

24 comments

Their Orange Suits

October 5, 2024

Poetry

Here’s a poem of mine published by Spillwords. To be honest, I’m not that impressed with their use of AI art. It changed the meaning of the poem. That’s how strong images play into words. I appreciate your support! T. Ahzio

Their Orange Suits

12 comments on Their Orange Suits

And I don’t know why I want to begin with and.
Perhaps, it’s because my life is a conjunction, where I’m continually moving from and to persons, places, and things.
Just like you, I’m always in the middle of something.

Yet, and is tricky.
One must be careful to avoid “this bad thing happened, and that led to this bad circumstance.”
One might try to mediate their way out of that kind of and with long engagements with commas, em-dashes - semi-colons; and (parenthesis.)
But that is precarious and can lead to stringing things out for too long.
I think the answer is found by being careful with ands and taking time and patience to produce good ands.

Some ands that I have planned out have become successful, such as writing and revising.
I think one of the coolest is “We met and fell in love.”
And an and can be friendly and downright cute.
How could pralines and cream exist without a nice and to bring them together?
And what about the ampersand?
How many symbols can look cool and bring clauses together at the same time?
Hyphen, em-dash? They don’t come close.
Where would we be without ands?
The beginning? Nowhere to go? The end, plain, simple, uneventful?

So, I guess my desire to start with and is my way of honoring the conjunction, for this ode is a continuation from all my writing before to all my writing to come.
Pronouns, proper names and objects are wonderful places to begin, and I highly recommend them, and I wouldn’t be writing without them.
But nothing would continue for anything or anybody without an and.

8 comments

Lex’s Garden

September 23, 2024

Poetry

Cylindrical thoughts caught in symbols 
Covered by an outer celluloid 
Upgraded with playbacks and reruns 
Of old friends and fictions who are everyone 
They were, will, and want to be,  
Births, rebirths, death, and immortality 
 
I speak in repetition, stumbling into you again 
No wonder gravity forms balls and circles 
Our dialectic, a language of insomnia 
That living lip sync of teeth and tongue 
That make up the shapes of ghosts 
Crawling like faint shadows of moving clouds 
 
Our fleshy hearts tethered to the whirl 
Internal, speaking of the external  
Of clocks mistuned inside the unsteady continuum 
With our linear kissing and stove top stuffings 
Perhaps this is our mistake 
Caught inside the act of noise 
Trying to explain the hyacinth 
 
“Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, 
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not 
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither 
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.” 
 
Speach vanishes, with the incoming of golds 
Browns, yellows, and reds. 
Autumn turns, turns, turns, while the 
Wind haunts sticks and stems, looking 
Forward to their recycling, and our  
Eyes old and new 
Peering

Image taken around Tillamook Bay, where a small town used to stand.

5 comments

Attaining Cat

September 20, 2024

Poetry

I feel a slight brush upon my calves

Then, a light head butt.

It’s Mr. Fry, the cat, looking up at me while I write.

He’s concerned about my Word document

My Google Docs, my Office Suite, PDFs and printables

Shared and synced, blogged, published, and backed up.

Apparently, according to him

My prose is threatening to verse

My verse is proposing to prose

My characters are in a state of mutiny

My narrator refuses to put a word in edgeways

My alliteration is acting like an assonance

My plot took a poop

“My dialogue is depressed, crying like a monologue,” he says.

My enjambments are threatening to reach the right side of the page and beyond

My cliffhanger is falling to its death

My denouement denies all involvement

I’m suffering from hyperbole!! It’s no exaggeration!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr. Fry offers his help……

Searches at my feet, looking for stray words I may have disregarded.

He claims to have a better nose for such things.

He loves to bat words around like a plastic ball with a bell, engaging the toy muse.

He licks the side of his front paws, then cleans his face with them

Starts nibbling at his back paw toes in earnest

Twists his head as far as it can reach to lick his back.

He’s intent on editing.

Then rolls on his back, asking for a tummy rub (He’s kind of a dog kitty).

I’m thinking, the finished piece?

No, he moans (He’s Siamese).

He wants better writing

Writing that acts like catnip making him silly with play

Taking him to a higher Realization of Cat

To touch, to speak, to comprehend

All that is of Cat.

Attaining Cat.

I tell him, sorry dude, not today.

I promise to go to the store later to pick up a treat.

I return to my scratching post.

He gnaws on a T.S. Eliot book.

An artsy version of Mr. Fry. May he rest in peace. This poem is for him.

29 comments on Attaining Cat

Homecoming

August 26, 2024

Poetry

Aluminum foil-covered, cardboard stars above our heads and the basketball hoops have been drawn back, painted lines and circles below our feet. We dance in socks, leaving our shoes out in the hallway.

We mimic the leaves who aren’t ready to dance, because the air is still warm and we glow with a luminescent heat, moving in aimless directions as if the gym floor is a sacred grassland and the seasons do not exist. Our desires – a clutter of arms and legs. The sweat on our lips drawn down to our tongues, for the world has always been and always will be a dancer.

Winter will come.
We’ve skated on its skin before, scooped the marshmallows off countless hot chocolates, been told the stories of the wolf in the snow. It will change our waltz, starting when the rain comes. So, in this form, today, we dance in the body summer has given us and we coalesce to get ready for colder climate, dancing to escape the body, while being in the body.

When we look, it may seem like we follow the sun, aligning with the rising and setting of things, turning with the Earth. At other times, we are beings of our own choice, crisscrossing the paths of others. In these moments only movement exists, nothing else is real, we can only dance. The galaxies are no different.
Look. See them samba with our own eyes.
For all these moves are known by heart.
And when we sense we know our hearts, we feel the floor beneath our feet.

17 comments

Velvet City

August 19, 2024

Poetry

Elvis can’t strum a note. 
Still, many look for him  
During a nighttime shanghai. 
But these ghost-like hijacks  
Excite only hipsters and bruisers 
And cute, off-hour barista users 
Wearing their best lattes  
To catch the ships of myth. 
  
Back on landlubber strip 
Alcoholics look like pimps. 
The 99 cent lady scratches 
Lottery tickets, chewing on mints. 
She yells at the gutter kids 
Who pee on sidewalk cracks. 
Children of insults and rip-offs  
Selling newspapers to news crews 
Their mouths askew with twisted views 
 
Crooked grin from the bookstore girl. 
Her windows bashed in for no reason. 
Sells last year’s calendars & rusty rock pins. 
The trattoria boils millions in noodles 
Hiring from art school purgatory 
Haloed waitresses with yoga mats 
Channeling their inner schmooze  
Living off deep-fried borrowed blues. 
  
The mayor rolls out sorted plans 
Sketches of the new Pantheon. 
City council sucks sugar tits 
From kiss-your-ass developments. 
While food carts form shanty towns 
For the visiting team’s hangovers. 
Their mascot yanking on his head 
Stuck  
In a permanent state of cheer. 
 
The old urchins on their last barnacle 
Live back in the glory days 
Of cheap chiva, bad Bud, & noses caked with coke 
Taking bus rides to fake desperation 
Basking in their burn out, dabbling in 
Dysfunction. (A national holiday) 
Celebrated with bogged down Bloody Marys 
And get-well cards with handwritten 
Apologies for nothing... that’s gone wrong.

17 comments

Category: Poetry

Winds

Old Fields

The First Real Rain

The Volcano

Their Orange Suits

Ode to And

Lex’s Garden

Attaining Cat

Homecoming

Velvet City