Category: Poetry

Ode to And

September 30, 2024

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.

16 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

Watching the Caribou

July 22, 2024

Poetry

Charles is in the twilight heat

Where summer rubs

Like tectonic plates on skin.

He tells me stories

Of shooting people in Vietnam

During the war.

–

The rifle he used is under his bed.

I saw it once when he asked me

To feed his cat Molly while on vacation.

He took his wife to Canada

To watch the caribou, migrate.

–

It’s such a plain rifle, worn.

Wood stain nearly rubbed off.

Barrel dull, black and textured.

He drives hundreds of miles

To watch the caribou.

–

Through his kitchen window

He mentions how hot it is.

The sun is an orange throb.

He tells me how he used to hunt

in southeast Oregon, Steens Mountain

Hauled back all the animal

Limb by limb, organ by organ

Buckets of blood and fat.

–

I don’t like it when the morning sun is hazy

Before the heat proves

It can take the night.

Charles throws seeds to blue jay parents.

They’re always uptight, worried.

Especially if Molly chews grass near them.

A grey squirrel gnaws on antlers

Nailed to a tree in his backyard.

The antlers are decades old.

–

The goal in Vietnam, he said, was to maim not kill.

It ties up resources, beds, hospitals

Doctors, systems, and puts stress on a country.

Killing just needs a burial or a burn.

–

He’s in a wheelchair now.

Sits in front of a television, volume turned up.

Still feeds the blue jays.

The seed is stolen by crows.

A bus picks him up once a week

To visit the VA hospital

Treating him for dementia and heart disease.

Talks about how he watches the caribou.

Molly doesn’t seem to notice.

Dichotomies are an interesting feature of the human condition. In of itself, dichotomy appears as a binary, representing a contrast. In “Watching the Caribou” I explore a version of dichotomy which becomes blurred. Charles, a vet and an ex-hunter, is somewhat of a hypocrite. In life, he shot, killed, and hurt, yet he celebrates nature and life, via watching caribou and makes sure his cat is well taken care of. In a twist of fate, he becomes the very thing he was ordered to do in Vietnam, becoming “tied” up in social services. Irony. In many ways, this reminded me of humanity as a whole, where there is a side of our institutions set up for violence (e.g. the military, police, etc.) and another side set up for peace (e.g. acceptance, love, etc.). Irony?

13 comments on Watching the Caribou
Brittle Canvas

September 4, 2023

Poetry

I’m on hands and knees

Sketching your lips…

Into the dry mud of this meadow.

Wooden steps built here

To cross over the old wetlands.

Useless now.

In the past

We walked across

This meadow

When mist made trees rain.

We were awkward

Unsure

About our balance

About our steps

Thankful for a rare dry patch.

The path, in and around

Here

Brought us…closer

To mountain views

Sweet water springs

Where thoughts became lucid…

A lucidness

That aligns the heart

With blood & soul

Shapeless, wordless.

Now,

This beauty, these lucid thoughts

Lie hard beneath me

I stand at the edge of the meadow

As we had

Realizing the wetlands are no more.

We’ve misunderstood

Each other,

The land.

I can only think about us.

It is like

We balance on stilts

For no apparent reason

Poking & prodding the earth

Relinquishing the comfort

We had with one another

I’ve drawn your image into

This dryness.

Maybe it’ll last forever

And all who come here anew

Will see us, what we built

What we created.

What we loved about each other

What we lost between us

Those who see your image

Will be lovers like us

Who

Run with the pack

As we have ran

Eat from desires

Real & imagined.

As we have eaten

Look for the primary colors

As we have painted them

Upon brittle canvas

10 comments on Brittle Canvas