"daguerreotype" poems
There's the mosh...sordid details that thing...
creeping of sort...retelling...to stay in focus.
A silent film whose black borders encapsulate
a slab of skyward white.
Visages...opening...opened...to interpretation.
"The apparition of these faces in a crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough."....ashen...
daguerreotype of a Zen Garden.
All of nature's pretties cast in an occult brew...
stirred, and stirring...composite sketches posted
and burned upon lampposts.
At large...ritualistic making-of-face...illusion
trafficking the ever present primes of lives...
"the center of which is everywhere, the
circumference nowhere."...attestation o' mugs.
Visages...plucked from a year of our lord,
to be...rendezous of all light's putting to...
years thereof.
Alien unto thyself...oogly boogly, yet mirror-imaging...
behold/beheld/beholden.
By sleight of Hand...visages, who'd otherwise
be as soon pruned and leathery, inanimate under the
sun.
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 11:19 PM UTC
Skies like sheets of shale
floated above our pretty heads,
shedding fat drops of rain
upon an unseasonably warm
December day in Michigan.
I broke free from your grip
beneath our shared plastic umbrella,
ran into the yard
and spun around six times,
arms outstretched like an albatross,
face upturned to the miles and miles
of unbroken grey clouds.
I stopped and called to you,
fly with me.
as my palms turned up
and reached for you, involuntarily.
You laughed, staccato,
and your ambiguous smile
was nothing more than
an ugly daguerreotype
set before a landscape
of compassionate trees.
I'd rather not get wet,
you said
and I think
I've always resented you
for that.
Dec 24, 2014
Dec 24, 2014 at 2:18 PM UTC
I skirt the edges of humanity,
a lone wolf, incalculable
in silent black dresses that flutter
and colossal ideas that squirm,
yearning to see themselves
reflected back in the moonlight.
You shift on my horizons,
a quiet place amidst the swell
of violent noise and clenched teeth,
and something in you keeps
drawing me back- a magnetism.
I walk amongst your leaves,
feel your scattered light,
and it is calm. It is home.
You see me, not the smiling
daguerreotype that I paste up,
but deeper- inky black and serpentine,
with feelings that swell
and burst like balloons.
We tread lightly over the bones
of things we've left unsaid,
our eyes reflecting mirror images
of words that swim and satiate
this primal thirst, a spark
of unconventional
connectivity.
Mar 3, 2017
Mar 3, 2017 at 12:54 PM UTC
that hemlock i cracked in two days
was one of your best
deceptions.
the tumblers finessed the probe. your mode of disconnect
was exquisite pathos. and lesions.
we drank from dead wells to alleviate the tedium of sober springs.
we rigged the landscape
to provide clockwork wolves to whet their fangs to the marrow
of our Diaspora devoid of Momentum.
that devious fracture in your mind has surrendered to my advances.
i glean your glamour-tross.
cellos are coursing through my veins
as your ***** grinds my prime mate into scrap
and daguerreotype
Pompeii.
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 6:06 AM UTC
Death is my own covetous possession,
A hand-me-down with the worn edges
Of a closed, burnished keepsake box.
Death is the memory of a tree-lined walk,
A daguerreotype, a trompe-l'oiel des bois,
Sight itself turned within, but without end,
A forest of unstirring eyelashes, like long uncut grass,
Death is the stillness of pewter leaves,
And sorrow is sadness in love with itself.
Oct 26, 2024
Oct 26, 2024 at 11:17 PM UTC
my daughters deserve a daguerreotype;
daughters of the quietest mind-
their philosophy matches that
of the finest 19th cent. Gents
and whose morose morals lead the anarchist
internal world to unabashed victory
triumphant horns play
never ceasing, playing their song
a song of short stature
but repeated evermore
signals the triumphant okay-ness
signifies the oncoming entropy
greyscale geniuses grunt
as they
march in melancholy,
moribund but never malignant
crying casually, callously chanting
for the monsters to take hold in the dark,
only to find the dark monster
has had them in her grasp the whole time
the jazzy genius, jesting jubilantly,
with wilting wit, whispers
“wow”
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 11:20 PM UTC
Books
of
snow
in
daguerreotype
swollen
on
the
creases
sprinkling
from
where
only
peregrines
dare
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 2:43 PM UTC
immortality is easy-peasy. you play dead.
you live now. and simply continue. you just get on with it.
zig-zag in plain sight. like a shimmer in an old daguerreotype.
if you must fade. always do it sideways.
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 4:09 AM UTC
is not the howl of a canine,
or the gesticulation of a hand
alone, which if left unspoken to,
ceases to make meaning. what we
said is what shapes our mouth,
and what we mean curdles
the body of who hears it:
hurting which is another word
for weakness, and bravery which
is a transmutation of lout, this rigmarole
is far nothing but a ***** if you wish
to call it that, or perhaps a gladiolus,
a scimitar, a punched daguerreotype,
a subliminal stereo, a ludicrous cacophony.
and if there is much conspiracy to say that
the rind of words is tensely, the appropriation
of sound, then it shall be that the song
I sing, is for the world to own, unmindful
of its hapless victim. and because trees are
brindled, thatched to the Earth, reaching
for the desolate sky, it is the distance in between
where our words are, trying to make
ends meet.
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016 at 9:21 PM UTC
...At this evening nigh-tide, reptilian
brain bites back instinctively.
I am forgiven in all Houses...all postulations
bloat these blue veins.
Daguerreotype pictures cake their ashen
backdrop, that assures the comely smile
of cosmic forbearance.
As if these lips would dematerialize in search
of utterance.
Not for the entrained speakeasy of spotlit
here and now...but the energetic pulse tugged
at both ends of tongue.
The final straw struck back, to ingratiate the
greatest of pilgrimages.
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 11:11 AM UTC
Soot on LA highway signs. Billboard of you,
a real estate agent. All endeavor slides
toward inertia, extinction, forgetfulness.
It’s very tropical. Vegetation invades
the house unless constant inputs of joy
apply. The scientist in you feels the
great ape in you. The great ape feels
death growing wide. What about work?
I devote my present to my future existence.
In what way, in what sense
does one continue to resist. As
a dessicated cell, a mole of elements,
an ancient’s aura, a daguerreotype-like
shadow on a sidewalk, persistent headache,
paleolithic herbivore, potential energy, will.
Some wake up and pray, say thanks for
another day. Others curse their luck, stale breath,
the very thought of the rosy dawn makes them ill.
Lonely as leaf fall.
Nature knows no pity or self-pity
according to antiquity, the roof soot of the city.
I admire fire, tools and ore. Agriculture.
Cities, empire. Trading and taking (war).
Numbers, counting, writing. Libraries, discoveries, zero.
And the single-minded universe
that’s only a paper moon
without your love.
Oct 6, 2019
Oct 6, 2019 at 9:33 AM UTC
Tell them it was him
Tell them it was all a mistake
Show them something from your purse
And say that he gave it to you
Describe her face and the touch of her hand
Sing about places you stood together
Where your footprints have never been
And how the memories still burn in your soul
Dance the long-lived grudge against them
For reasons no one can quite remember
Paint it all with red and black
Mount your words on pikes
And your voice from the wires
And leave behind a Daguerreotype
That hangs suspended in the air
When you're gone
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 11:43 AM UTC