One thin linen layer
separates my spicy palms
from the vast unscoopable harvest
of the crystal-scattered light.
Sunbeams brace the icy sky.
Early bursts of starlight score the dappled shade
whilst snowcrush of silence
interrips our invitation-emptied poem page.
So strange how soft it is.
The insulation stationed
on the streetcorner of the universe
intersection: stars sky & stone below.
I'm stepping in and leaving shocks of shade
just above the blades of grass
with tangled roots that sink into the icy loam
and stone-stacked-stone,
the earthy bone that plumbs deeply
to the heart & hearth of Earth -
a hidden molten core, the nethers
of a depthless tunnel filled from core to feet,
my feet, and then my torso-mind-and-eyes
that see. How strange it is, how softly sets my gaze
upon this world, a fleshy inglenook in space
that sees itself and steps into the snow.
Oct 6, 2020
Oct 6, 2020 at 10:04 PM UTC
Love is fear's mother,
and she calls you to see
everything you are afraid of.
Let it be before you. Accept it.
Accept the broken glass
and childhood spilled
like lemonade, and the wrinkled
brow, and the nightmares
and the scary movie,
built to taffy-stretch the curl of your spine, accept it.
And let it go.
And the heaps of crumpled paper in your torso
will start to smooth in tandem with your opened fists.
While sweet, sweet words are written fresh
in clean tears of grief.
Oct 6, 2020
Oct 6, 2020 at 1:51 AM UTC
Say!
does Wednesday have a favorite snack,
doled out on paper napkins in a bright-lit kiddie school?
maybe trade some salty fish crackers
with its neighbors?
does it jump for joy when it's time to leave,
and giggle when it gets to go to school?
Little Wednesday,
the middle child.
every week, a little older,
but easily overlooked...
perhaps it dreams,
in the way of stories,
that it will do beautiful things.
Sep 23, 2020
Sep 23, 2020 at 12:20 AM UTC
We found neurons in the soil
while mining yesterday.
Dendrites broad as city streets,
and axons like superhighways.
There were ribosomes like raccoons
equipped with claws to clip, construct
cities in a stunning cytoskeleton:
the Bones of the Earth.
What, we wondered, does our planet think?
Does that mean we aren't the best anymore?
Is our planet a component of a greater ecosystem?
Is our planet a person of a species?
Thinkers think to survive.
Why does our marbled orb muse?
Are there galactic predators?
We scramble civilizations to prepare in fear.
Or is there rather interstellar prey?
We ready our harpoons either way.
Sep 23, 2020
Sep 23, 2020 at 12:02 AM UTC
Dusty trouser legs and well-trod boot soles
make their way beneath me while I walk
twixt distant-gazing cows and a cricket-filled
live oak forest in the sort of dawn that only comes
after a long night of quiet walking.
Homes. You’d think that they’d be easy to find
and keep and laugh in with warm light spilling out
over your shoulders when you throw open the door
to welcome a guest after their long night of walking
to end their journey with a bed-haven and hot-meal spirit.
It’s not. Human beings are blessings.
Self-respect is a blessing. Parents, pets, kids, attractive
love, successful communications, trees to climb and earth
to plant seeds in…
All these things are so good there’s nothing we can do to cook them up
from imagination and elbow grease and raw materials - they’re miracles.
We don’t “deserve” them. We’re anti-damned blessed
when we get them, just some by-the-way incidentals
while we wander with open eyes, open ears, open hearts.
As open to the light as our darndest can do.
Dusty trouser legs and well-trod boot soles
make their way beneath me while I walk
twixt distant-gazing cows and a cricket-filled
live oak forest in the sort of dawn that only comes
after a long night of quiet walking.
Aug 23, 2020
Aug 23, 2020 at 6:42 PM UTC
When you fall asleep,
Your brain catches fire
Burning up the less significant
Memories of the day.
As the flames rise
So do the swathes of smoke
Curling past your eyes
And around your ears
What we see and hear:
_~That is what dreams are~_
Feb 12, 2020
Feb 12, 2020 at 3:20 PM UTC
The geese are a honking loose thread across the sky. I can hear them in my wicker chair like they're sitting right next to me and I think their voices carry at least as far above as down below. So loud. The sound of changing seasons on the wing. You'd think a goose-whisper would be enough to keep their conversation going, but no. I need to hear them in my wicker chair too, apparently. I kinda like that. Maybe they are talking to me. Maybe their sounds are like street-songs for strangers, or God-praise, or apple pie cooling on a neighbor's window. Maybe they made something really pretty in their hearts, and it's so big they can't keep it down their noodle-necks anymore. And so they're singing it out, for the whole world to see, like a big grin, and it's just perfect that I hear it in my wicker chair, it makes it even better, and that's why they're so loud. It could be.
Sep 6, 2019
Sep 6, 2019 at 1:18 AM UTC
I love stone. Don't you?
We forget ourselves for
a moment when we stand
beneath
a mountain. A true experience
of a mountain makes us
feel small, which is right.
Because we are. But
we only forget for a moment,
really less than a minute, and
soon we cast about for a little
sharp-edged rock to carve our
names into the cliffside.
Once, a person lost
their faculty for emotion.
That turned out alright, though.
He wasn't ever sad.
But it was sad. It was tragic.
Because we listen to our
little voices, and grind our names
haphazardly into the rock,
and it's really very silly
to try to be immortal. Even mountains
know that. And we live
with these very silly
voices drumming all the time in our heads,
and we think that's us.
We think that those voices are us.
And that person? The tragedy
is, I don't know if he ever gets
to be corrected. Do mountains
interrupt him? To forget ourselves
for a moment beneath a mountain.
Does he ever get the chance to ask:
Why do we forget ourselves,
anyways? Who is it that made us pause?
The mountain? It didn't move.
Our little voices? Ha!
It's something else. Something powerful.
It shuts up your internal monologue,
and in those moments, you are at your
most agile, most eloquent, most true.
On stage. In a sport. When you read
a set of words that hold power to change
your life. Does it have a name? It has many.
"Soul" is only one of them.
And that person? Yes, it's sad.
But ask yourself this: you've seen
your mountains. They made you
step back. I know they did. There
was an instant that your little voices
were completely, utterly hushed.
That moment happens, and it's
entirely out of your control. The
next moment is truly up to you.
So what do you do? Take a picture?
Carve your name into a rock?
Mar 5, 2017
Mar 5, 2017 at 2:43 AM UTC
Libraries: lots of books,
but not an easy place to learn.
Indeed, the texts are tenets
that pin it down
and fix it so we can point and say
"there is where we worship knowledge."
We humans so love
to build shelters
where our hearts may safely gather dust.
But breathe deeply,
and plunge into the sun.
Or is it the river that shines so brightly?
It's sleepy-warm out,
but the water is cold
and perpetual wonderment is the humblest profession.
'Tis wisest to remember
that we know next to nothing!
Only then do we dare to walk the edge
of our outermost circles,
our most cherished philosophies
which encompass all our virtue and vice.
And only then do we dare to circumscribe it all,
putting our trust in our present being
instead of the prescription that our Past has written for us.
Our cherished morals, our good conscience,
are part of a bigger picture.
Take the next step
when the light flashes across your mind.
Shuck your previous assumptions
like the shackles they are
and embrace the new saving grace.
And watch. It fixates itself.
And then we pin it down and point and say
"there."
"there is what we worship, no more no less."
And then. O, and then!
It will be your turn to take my hand and say:
breathe deeply,
and plunge into the sun.
There's never been a better day
to break away.
Us folks never rise so high
as when we do not know where we are going.
Mar 5, 2017
Mar 5, 2017 at 2:41 AM UTC
It is a midsummer storm, and the air is textured like heavy cream
warm and thick and sweet. It hasn't yet began to rain, and bare toes
grasp clods of dust, the kind with root fibers tangled inside,
and everything is keenly sensed: the smell, the taste, the touch,
the sound of the wind and the warmth in this charged moment.
It is impossible to not be humbled before these grey clouds,
massive structures that remind you of the roiling turbidity of silt
at the bottom of a river, freshly disturbed by a fish's tail
- except these grey giants, these clouds feel infinitely large.
Humbled, yes.
And powerful: the little human on the parched earth
feels vigor pumping through veins,
a feeling typically beyond recollection
that is difficult to trace to its source.
Where is this power flowing from? Not from some
deluded sense that this small mammal could shift
a single bead of moisture in the sky, no;
where is this power flowing to? Its effect is . . . unplanned,
it is spontaneous in nature, even though it feels so rooted
that no-one, certainly not you, could move it.
This power? The source is invisible, the fate uncertain.
The purpose? Take note. This is faith:
to be so confronted by reality that your inner monologue
forgets to stay in a continuous loop; at last, you hear your part
in a greater melody; to concentrate
on something outside the ceiling of your skull.
Reality will only be itself.
Either project your attention outwards to trust the truth,
or blind yourself with anxiety.
The power you feel inside the storm does not belong to you,
it belongs to the Greater Picture. But, the choice is always yours:
hide away, or raise your face. the rain
begins
to fall.
Nov 18, 2016
Nov 18, 2016 at 12:16 AM UTC