MoonCat

We Are But The Moon

July 8, 2024

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We lie naked

Underneath its glow

In several forms of desire

From waxing to waning, rising

Silver, blue, and crescent

That calm face of night

We claim as eternal muse

And use

As fire for the poetic

Invented expressions of scraps

Scratches, sounds, and shapes

Stories, paintings, and prayers for rain

Which hide deep within a lush memory

Of temperate evergreens and desert oasis

Quenching the mechanical intuitive

Steps

That move towards charcoal and ash

Fast

Via the eyeless sun, the harsh gardener

Who pierces through our ghost canopy

Wishing to reclaim its spent dust

Thinking only of its collection

Of cold baubles of gravity

Still we cling to the saliva in our cheeks

Dipping our glass

Into the infinite spring, myth or otherwise

Making love to the hope

Of touching one another

Yet, we are but the moon.

And we look with full face

When the clouds

And spin of our life does not

Hide

The stars, which frantically

Try to tell us truths

Through all time and all our own times

That have already been

I was passing this lamppost on my way back home one night. Someone had painted the globes and they looked like moons to me

18 comments on We Are But The Moon
Representation of a Song

June 24, 2024

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We fight amongst ourselves because there is no one else to fight, though we believe there must be…others. Our footsteps, indeterminate, conflicting rhythms, as if we are cockroaches running towards transformation, a change, of no presence, no reality. As if it is locked away in a room one wished existed. Still, we hear a song seeping through that room’s walls.

It’s her song, the singer who disappeared long ago, and it is a bitter elixir for our pang. We investigate its lingering melody and words like hunting dogs, but we can’t keep up with the number of wounds she sings into us, and our doctors can’t cure us of its beauty.

And now through our longing, she reveals herself or we conjure her, a semblance of her body, made up of spirit. We can see her open her mouth as if to sing but there is no sound. So, we put on the recording, and she sings along with herself, a self that was once alive… enough to place vibrations upon a static piece of media. She looks sad as her spirit mouth moves in sync with a mere copy.

This didn’t stop us from crowding ‘round her. We’re sorry but we can’t be destitute, can’t pretend, even if that would make her words materialize into harmony. Our crowd becomes thick, and her image disappears somewhere inside our throng. It’s too easy to forget to look for her, but we still hear the song.

We must have its sound and we don’t know whether it’s the song that inspires us to fight or our reaction to it. Perhaps it’s both that creates a hum in our ears. There’s no such thing as silence, no simplicity of solitude, no singular thought. We fight as a group. We fight amongst ourselves because there is no one else to fight, though we believe there must be…

(This piece is in response to Burke and Kant’s theories pertaining to the sublime.)

I have a few of these little creations.

10 comments on Representation of a Song
Mountain Stream

June 3, 2024

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I recognize how she is carved

From the liquid that shapes her

Fashioned by countless tumbles & snow melts.

It as if her hair is combed constantly

For strands flow for miles, making a long tress.

This hair of hers comes in an assortment of

Twists, turns, reflections, textures

Tiny waves, pressed, and curled.

Her body, cool, cold at times

Always in transit, flux, liminal.

Her banks, like persistent suiters

Follow her everywhere

Only interrupted by the abrupt advances

Of cliffs that dive in, but lose her

While holding her at the same time

For she is a trickster, more so than the ravens

Dippers, and geese who tease.

She will let me stumble

Upon her rocks and boulders

Like a babe learning to walk

Like an adult…learning.

You can see her inner personality

In the form of falls

Which roll over a series

Of large stones and hills

Or fall like a skydiver from

A precipice, landing in a boom and roar.

There have been times I’ve heard this

Rumble, as if she shakes the ground

With a message I must listen to.

I am small then, in her presence

My feet soft on her sides, my breath slow.

But one turn around a cliff

Into a secluded ravine

And she becomes quiet

As if she doesn’t even exist.

It is within these areas of silence

Where she tells me secrets

Of everything and all, an endless epiphany

And I realize I already know these things and have

Known them, but, once I leave her whisper

I will remember them only by what they felt like

Recalling her faint rush of current

An echo of the river she will become.

Spring is the best time to visit a wild stream. You can see how alive they are.

25 comments on Mountain Stream
What Isn’t True

May 27, 2024

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Don’t sit and wonder why it’s gone

We did everything that’s wrong

Shades of black and white turn to color

Details of the reasons why we suffer

We don’t have to hold each other close

Those days are dead, like a ghost

We look like two (true) perfect lovers

But everything inside has been smothered

But I can’t shake…….

This love for you.

I don’t wanna lose……

What isn’t true.

Guitar Solo

I don’t have to sit and wonder why

I knew from the start this was gonna die

Things we thought we knew so well

Turned into reasons why we failed

Emptiness is a hollow thing to feel

Funny how nothing can be so real

It’s like the blue sky above us all

Gonna be the distance which we fall

But I can’t shake…….

This love for you.

I don’t wanna lose……

What isn’t true.

But I can’t shake…….

This love for you.

I don’t wanna lose……

What isn’t true.

Slow Fade Out

This poem is lyrics to a non-existent song. If you are a singer songwriter, please feel free to borrow it and arrange it the way you like. I’d love to hear it. …….Perhaps (and this is just a thought) there is no complete healing. We are meant to wear our scars. (Ironic for me to say. I have keloid). Healing is found in how we live with pain instead of how we cover it up or attempt to banish it from our lives.

23 comments on What Isn’t True
Infinite String of Finites

May 20, 2024

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The rain became a light drizzle.

“Another story just started. You must think I’m weird.”

“Sure, I like it.”

“I’m weirder than that. I don’t feel anything, just everything. Or I don’t feel everything, just anything. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, kind of. I understand what you mean.”

The rain stopped. Only drips were heard, falling off gutters and tree limbs.

“It’s so humid. That’s not normal for around here. And it’s changing. It seems there’s nothing we can do about it—it’s like those stories. I can’t find an end to them. I want them to end, but I don’t.”

“You can try. That’s what you’ve always done. Don’t worry, it’ll work out.”

“They keep my interest, but somehow, they’re waiting for something. Or is it me that’s waiting? Look how fast the steam is rising from the streets. You know, I think we’re like steam. First, we hit the streets hard like rain, then we move on, lighter.”

The sun poked out from behind a cloud.

“Sometimes I want to touch you, like no one has ever touched you before, but I only have these hands and they’re like everyone else’s.”

“I like the way you touch me.”

“Are my hands warm? I know I can be cold sometimes. There are different ways to touch.”

A couple of heavy raindrops fell unevenly from the sky. As if another downpour was about to start.

“Is all rain alike? I swear each raindrop touches the ground differently. I notice stuff like that. It’s soothing to me to listen to each storm, how different they are from one another. Do you think it’s true, that each raindrop creates a new life?”

“I don’t know. I guess it could be like that.”

The clouds began to move further apart from one another, and spots of blue sky appeared.

“There’s a sound to the dry days. It’s like voices rubbing against one another. I can make one or two of them out, for a while. I write those ones down. Then, I come back to read them. It’s gibberish, all just a bunch of gibberish. I’m scared the rain will stop forever.”

A pause, slightly comfortable, slightly uncomfortable.

“Can I touch you now? I need to know.”

“Will it help?”

Underneath a “raining” fresh water spring.

17 comments on Infinite String of Finites
Images

May 13, 2024

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Climate

I create art with the images I collect. A few other blogs have asked me to share more of my images. The following are a few of them.

Abstracts

Cracked Nova

Wood & Water

Embedded

Golden Era

Nature

Standing at the top of Twister Falls (Taken last week)

Lost Highway

Snow, good. Snowing, bad.

Bridge to Nowhere

Launch into Emerald

Snow in the Gorge

People

A Solitary Question

Curious About Light

Boy Watching

Cell Phone Summer

Urban

Concrete Jungle

Dark Bridge

Twins

Way Through the Blur

Extras

Circulatory

Standing in a River

Pioneer Gravestone

Not So Subtle

34 comments on Images
Simply Heat

May 6, 2024

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Such were our soft hands.

We thought we spoke a new language

Of skin – untarnished, a sweet sweat

When our tongues touched

And our fingers found their old purpose

Sprawling out a blanket upon the beach

Where the sun (or was it the sand?)

Burned the soles of feet. Our love’s

Stern arm, heavy as tenderness. ——

There were specks, sand on our lips

Licking fresh words or wounds

None knew the difference, but they slipped,

Travelled unscathed.

The embrace welcomed, encouraged

As if we were simply heat.

Such are our hardened hands.

Unable to speak the old language.

Remnants written on paper, a poor papyrus of

Conjugated verbs, glittering adjectives

Slippery nouns, tucked between brittle envelopes

Placed underneath threads and sewing needles

Inside Mason Jars and old tobacco tins

On basement shelves, a form of containment

Where the stairway creaks, the furnace flickers. ——

So much fire, two feet, just a walk

To the vague haze of old words or wounds

None know the difference, but they slip,

Travel unscathed.

The embrace welcomed, unwelcomed

As if we were… simply heat.

Deconstruction. An abstract image I made from water, rain, and clouds.

13 comments on Simply Heat
Landscaping

April 29, 2024

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Stop treating us like a lawn

Trimming the grass

Adjusting the lawnmower’s height

Sprinkling bags of weed and feed

Attempting to even out our growth.

We cannot be manicured.

Let us have a few dandelions

Who follow the sun

Bees circling their blooms

Worms, slugs, spiders, and caterpillars.

How about a fern or two?

Rhododendrons, fawn lilies, and western azalea?

Don’t edge us too neatly

Making perfect lines in our relationship.

It makes me feel like

I want to run off with a common ragwort

And cuddle up with a couple of creeping thistles.

Don’t even think about Barkdust!

Toss away the keep off the grass sign

And let’s mess up the flowerbeds.

A spring image from the eastern side of the Cascade Mountain range.

31 comments on Landscaping
Gatherer

April 8, 2024

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I’m a gatherer of growing seasons

From planter’s sun to harvest’s rain.

All, with their fallen leaves and early blooms

Placing the cycles inside form and thought.

So much I’ve seen, so much I’ve been

And like you, I can’t stop looking.

My eyes are road weary wise

Yet infinitely the infant of curiosity.

My voice is tuned to the key of

Movement, which I mimic, measured in the

Shake, rattle, & roll of the ground…having found

A lifetime of elixirs, fixtures, and pictures

Right underneath my feet, on this dusty dirtball

Dancefloor, Earth…where with pants and skirts

I bowed, curtsied, laughed, and danced

The Twist, the Mashed Potato, the Boogaloo

The Shing-a-ling, while planting sprouts

That grow strong, green, confident.

Their stems bending toward the sun.

Why? Because it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Though it’s true someday I’ll be dry stalks

Matter, to build nests for jays as well as hawks.

And upon those days, my limbs may appear hollow

Still, I will dance with toenails bent and yellowed

Looking forward to another coming of spring

Even if new branches, like love, it refuses to bring

I call this image “A Wormhole in Need of a Gardener”.

7 comments on Gatherer
The Moon and the Volcano

April 1, 2024

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Ingredients: Rain, Light, Sky, Reflection, & Camera

This image is a reflection. It is water during a rainstorm travelling through a chute. The image was taken at dusk, creating the dark blue sky. The moon is a streetlamp’s reflection, but it is also the reason the water has reds, yellows, and looks like flame and lava.

7 comments on The Moon and the Volcano