The dough is molten at oven spring,
like a prayer to the historicity of things ..
Have we not imagined yesterdays
in the ritual of bread ? While our pasts
lay embezzled, on the tongues of men, the
sentiment of centuries colluded in germ,
echoing through heirloom remembrances
those floury philosophies of change.
While I stretch dough to gaze past
a windowpane, as far back as Khorasan ..
they were other names then, another
elasticity in time. Faith is a memory
of settled people in lands of milk and
honey, where every drought, every flood
spawns a new religion .. and the wheat,
always begs the same old question:
Are we there yet, in the fertile crescent
of opportunity ? The grains haven't changed
in their stolid countenance - long, subtle,
germy, cosseted. In the granaries of kings ..
they are willed by royal decree, never to die
in an eternal future and like humankind,
who score bread in the cuneiform of hearts,
grain is always thirsting to seed the land.
Sep 20, 2021
Sep 20, 2021 at 10:49 AM UTC
Yesterday, a cloud burst in mythologies
and the rain fidgeted over the retreat
of a tidal pantheon; deities swept away
by a current, and we stood awhile, watching
the moon elbow out the dusk. Breathing
is burdensome when cars float on water
and corpses leak out of cavernous
basements. Every tablet, etched, in the cold
heart of building code was read again
and then again. It wasn't enough to blame
Aeolian whim or the raging riposte of Apollo,
now that we had marvelled away Gaia's
ozone skirt. Her amnion always leaked
in folkloric floods each time she birthed
a parable. She once asked Noah to build
an ark so he could ride her waves
and we scrape the sky to impale her
in shards where her womb is soft and yielding,
as we sour the air and burn the water and strip
her of her emerald sigh and melt her hills
and silt her wetlands. Mostly it was the asphalt
plastering her yearning that calcified her veins
and arteries, as she died slowly under our feet.
We could hardly fathom her sorrow for the tears
rolled off her torso like an oil slick
and rode far into the subway for sewers.
Sep 15, 2021
Sep 15, 2021 at 4:29 PM UTC
An evening set in metered rhyme,
of pinecones, gainfully bracted
in the manner of spiralling time.
No perfect measure yields a woody cone
although conifer strobilus gilded ratio makes.
The standard mesh of numbers alone
symbolise a hope that a glorious God
assembled in a perfect factory line,
this defiant change to perfectly flawed.
Aug 24, 2021
Aug 24, 2021 at 9:36 AM UTC
Saying Grace
The day roped in happiness
like tidal waters
streaked with seaweed,
joyous to be afloat again.
The rocky inlet imbued
a stony demeanour, while
calmly contemplating
the resounding consonants
of a cavern within.
I could hear it swish syllables
as it lapped in the waves,
and I now channel
in gratitude,
that exuberant overflow,
and this,
which needs no rationale.
As we sit at a table,
enjoying a meal
cobbled together
from the sweet of corn,
the crunch of lettuce,
the ocean yield
of Piscean gleam,
it has begun to look
like Eden on a plate,
and I allow myself
to feel touched.
I am touched.
Gratitude is a verb
when I feel thankful
for being able to share
in the sacrificial generosity
of plants and animals.
Do we feel blessed?
We must,
for what could be sweeter
than that
we haven't been refused
- a share
of the Universal largesse.
From this bounty,
we take as we may,
so we simply survive
to another day.
It is wonderful to be alive
and I am grateful.
We are grateful.
Aug 7, 2021
Aug 7, 2021 at 10:51 AM UTC
In Parsley, a Levantine munificence accreted together in Tabbouleh,
herbage that covers fractured bedrock in a poultice of healing.
Secreted within, lie igneous outpourings of bloodied tomatoes,
those solid affections that had welled through an ocean floor
as Neptune quelled Gaia's contractions, her waters seeking to burst
beneath the wrinkled surface of a salty sea. She, an underbelly of sky,
pregnant in the overwhelm of magma, sweating out her heart in fire,
muted like a moon of Neptune, in his retrograde soliloquies, yet mirroring
hers in icy resurfacings of skin. The God of the Sea, boils an amnion
to hazy mists, how deep will his trident plunge to dislodge those Trojan ships
of deceptions ? Yet, Triton blows a conch for Gaia, not for man's duelling
and his warring tribes. He soothes her feverish gnashing of thighs
labouring continents. Some fires burn in water, like desultory heartbeats
moving the pace of rocks through the ocean floor, spiriting away
to stranger places still, marking maps of memories in the beauty of
a stillborn magma. The limestone they say is no blood relation to such
alien fructification, those oceanic intruders, bleeding still, spilling
secrets in reds and purples. The acid tears spilled in lemons merely
neutralised in syllables, sedimented to a community of limestone,
that possess no archaic remnants reminiscing through dead bones,
an age of glory. Now beauty lies in herbage over once raucous magma
and traces of a salty sea, freshness of life trailing her veins, in fragrance of Parsley
Jun 24, 2021
Jun 24, 2021 at 7:15 AM UTC
Sweet Angelica,
An overwhelm of your leafy
ramifications, waxed verdure
affections for a wayward wind.
My eyes caught the emerald glint;
now they glisten green
in a poetic apotheosis.
Should I deem you guilty
that 'twas the devil's walking stick
that sired you,
as virid envelope,
so delicate that every leaflet
would blend to a fine herb repast.
So I brave your prickly defences
in my manner of white tailed deer
and nibble of your leafy poetry.
A half mouthed curse that you sting
but your arbour rose
where none grew and I thought
you bloomed especially for me.
Rhizomes spiralled for life,
and the taste of muddied rain.
Other wanderers tried pillage
those jejune early fronds and
you recoiled in thorny armament,
a conflicted poetry I read on you.
Look at you now ...
largest leaf than any other in a North wind,
towering panicles that draw
a chorus of winged angels, quills.
These be the battlements of love
that will shed for life, in beauty
for when Summer leaves, there'll be Fall,
then the long rest of seasons.
Jun 21, 2021
Jun 21, 2021 at 12:12 PM UTC
The soul must be a tuning fork,
for the pandemic flit past in a vibration.
Then all is still when the light gets the eyes
and the heart can define radiance,
simply in the clarity of lines and form.
The poetry of pathos is an epic elegy,
and of happiness, a paean to a heart beat.
A hive mind stilled to a limpid pool of reflection,
and a pall lifts, like the sun rises on glass held
in bezels of steel, on girders of strength.
Adored, blessed, loved, as clear as the day
is green. Time can be a blur in a cloudy soul
catharsis but the blue is simply sky, and
a warm heart's the colour of light. Structure
has wheels that are meant to turn.
Jun 18, 2021
Jun 18, 2021 at 1:59 PM UTC
She's risen coarse on rusted tracks,
through sandy loam, a summer sheen.
Rainbows are but colour barracks,
fair violet, through verdant green.
Through sandy loam, a summer sheen
sparked exile of Fall's fleeting mist.
Fair violet, through verdant green,
adds tint to sun in pigment grist.
Exile sparked in Fall's fleeting mist,
cleared light, silky ivory.
Adds tint to sun in pigment grist,
silhouette of this noble tree.
Cleared light, silky ivory
are petals cast in modest mould.
Silhouette of this noble tree,
tattered leaves, raging wind unfold.
Petals cast in a modest mould
are magi of summer solstice.
Tattered leaves, raging wind unfold
simply envy of breezy fleece.
Magi of the summer solstice,
Purple blush on sun dipped petals.
Raging envy of breezy fleece,
Scalding wind that scarcely settles.
Purple blush on sun dipped petals
Rainbows are but colour barracks.
Scalding wind that scarcely settles,
she rises coarse on rusted tracks.
Jun 6, 2021
Jun 6, 2021 at 3:47 PM UTC
Blessed are the poorly, for theirs is the kingdom of mudflats
The dispirited streak turgid waters
sinuously, through unsettled feelings
in the wake of boats shedding
filaments of fuel,
sheen on a turbid infusion
and the cordgrass nods a resilience
or an apathy as the silt settles
on their Piscean gleam
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see a salted heaven
Angelic Menhaden of the Atlantic,
are silvery stretches of scale,
dulled in death under a festering sun
and the retreating tide of dying waters
brined in ocean, freshwater spirited
to secret spaces, some dammed crevasse,
now tumultuous fate in a salted heaven
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled
At the Tabgha of this intertidal palette
Cattails whisper beatitudes
latched onto the tails of wind gusts
and the plovers descended
in a litany of bird song
amassed like the manna
trailing tidal waters
as the sea swallows herself.
Blessed are the herons, the mallards,
the geese. Time is measured
in the passage of fish that
cycle themselves through the innards of birds
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the rocks
The meek Menhaden, leaped
onto the rocks that hemmed the inlet,
escaping the hungry habits of herons.
They inherited Earth in agony
pounding a rocky surface,
but the air I swim, had no water.
I prodded these Menhaden of the Rock
to the fringe of retreating tides,
and they leaped to die once more
to breathe water that had no air
Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted
Blessed is the discomfiture
of my brackish tears
that streak marsh faces
as fish struggle out of dead water.
I take comfort I don't inhabit
tainted places or do I take comfort,
all places are the tint of poison,
the gleam of a genesis of sorrow
Jun 6, 2021
Jun 6, 2021 at 3:36 PM UTC
In an ocean of night, dreaming of a closed dining space / We were snooping in on a harsh conversation of strangers that we knew / Towards dawn you spoke / as real in the dream as an apparition in the real / of Father and Mother / of them cruising off on a road trip / You faltered at a word I recollect but won't spell / It absorbed into whale song ticking to a time piece / itching to signal morning / and I could feel the depth of many fathoms floating over a waking to Spring / like being pressed against a cherry blossom trunk / in a tug of war, a push and pull / Let's go Jungian on this, he is much more pleasant / I did see a bumble bee yesterday, not a golden scarab, although that could have been a circadian premonition / and I woke up to a shower of blossoms //
May 11, 2021
May 11, 2021 at 8:44 AM UTC