"folios" poems
From shelves and racks, or lying in stacks, Books,
Of all ages and epochs—adolescents and youths,
Aged and venerable, and e’en those in decrepitude,
Much eloquent, but in all silence, share with us
Experiences wide ranging, emotions well pent up,
Passions, love and hate, and joys and sufferings,
Triumphs, failings, histories, biographies and maxims.
A pat or stroke, or appeal in awe, or in supplication,
They’d unleash to you, in varied moods and temper,
Their stories, in letters, words, phrases, sentences;
In prose or verse on folios, or in acts and scenes,
Of Helens, Quixotes, Falstaffs, Holmes and Othellos,
In the highs and lows of their pleasures and pathos,
Of Lears, Tristans and Isoldes, and procrastinators.
Of the plucks and spirits of Arjunas and Achilleses,
Of the failings of the ill-fated Kareninas and Bovaries,
Of the unwavering faith of Jobs, Noahs and Abrahams,
Of the lovelorn Sakunthalas, and Sitas under Simsupa,
Of God’s Garden, and of the wisdom of the Himalaya,
They speak in silence, of the real and the imagined,
As mighty godlike genies waiting for our summons!
Nov 8, 2013
Nov 8, 2013 at 4:43 AM UTC
From shelves and racks, or lying in stacks, Books,
Of all ages and epochs—adolescents and youths,
Aged and venerable, and e’en those in decrepitude,
Much eloquent, but in all silence, share with us
Experiences wide ranging, emotions well pent up,
Passions, love and hate, and joys and sufferings,
Triumphs, failings, histories, biographies and maxims.
A pat or stroke, or appeal in awe, or in supplication,
They’d unleash to you, in varied moods and temper,
Their stories, in letters, words, phrases, sentences;
In prose or verse on folios, or in acts and scenes,
Of Helens, Quixotes, Falstaffs, Holmes and Othellos,
In the highs and lows of their pleasures and pathos,
Of Lears, Tristans and Isoldes, and procrastinators.
Of the plucks and spirits of Arjunas and Achilleses,
Of the failings of the ill-fated Kareninas and Bovaries,
Of the unwavering faith of Jobs, Noahs and Abrahams,
Of the lovelorn Sakunthalas, and Sitas under Simsupa,
Of God’s Garden, and of the wisdom of the Himalaya,
They speak in silence, of the real and the imagined,
As mighty godlike genies waiting for our summons!
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 8:51 AM UTC
Between conjecture and classification there is
observation, experiment, data (collection and analysis),
statistics, calculus, and a good guess
about God's intentions -- probabilities, fractals, chaos and complexity.
This is the thunderous city.
The form of the poem, the rhyme.
*Form cannot be first if you want to reach high artistic levels, since
you are then bound by form, and that form is very often a
betrayal of reality*.
Yet I find I am attracted all the time
to philosophies in short skirts, jewels and eyes lined with kohl.
I love where her legs lead, to her very soul.
Three women hike by under an umbrella in a winter rain. Two men
side by side run in rhythm.
An oil truck takes the hill in low steady gear.
My old Marine, 89, died last night without anxiety or fear.
May I overcome my pain enough to reach the place where the deer
lay down their bones
and, like them, die alone.
When making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world's innumerable
wonders.
The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn and Jim.
But soft,
what light through yonder window breaks?
It is a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second without which
nothing can be done or faked.
The temple bell stops, but the sound still comes out of the
flowers.
Forests and the composite species will be nameless. Genetic
prowess,
receiving the sacrament, performing Lohengrin from the Great
American Songbook,
the look of love in all the wrong places, facebook,
fakebooks, folios of old family photos on or in pianos.
When we took Pop-Pop off the ventilator,
we put him in a refrigerator.
He stopped eating, he stopped breathing. Circle with a dot.
He had his dream, he'd rowed his boat.
Later came organic computers using polymerase and qubits.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 6:05 PM UTC
I took the seat across and breathe deeply
Trying to ignite the will to last the night to make it easy
Folios with galloping notes reflected my eyes
Ascribing them as you started rippling nice
Taking your place behind those keys
while I guard the front as it seems
You fiddled the catguts, and I learned their secrets
And as you edify, I got lost in the sequence
You exuded the decree to keep my valiance
I lodged around the shadows keeping my silence
Risking the chance that was left of me
As I chant the cadence with complexity
I ogled before you with such esteem
As my mind creeps alone towards glaucous dream
Wishing that in every thing written in the sky,
You will always be my Marshall and I am your Spy
Dec 4, 2017
Dec 4, 2017 at 11:44 AM UTC
The sight of books wearing colored papers like party hats
Leads me to meditate on the distance between the books
And the stacks. The time is spent in carrels, and that's
not inconsequential for the readers whose studious looks
are defeated by the the books piled on the sidelines -
The ones with the colorful favors just beyond their spines.
Readers cherish the time spent perusing books in
the Babylon of culture that houses folios. But is it sin
to while away the moments of your life in another world?
The Borgesian maze that is home to ideas that are furled
in books of all sizes and languages lures too often-times.
While entry fees are paid with the cost of missed deadlines.
Nov 8, 2013
Nov 8, 2013 at 1:35 PM UTC
Bountiful bunches of baby beliefs
Flutter freely and flawlessly off frigid folios
To lavish lands where little logic is left
An alluring and angelic archipelago
In which wonderfully written words will make their whereabouts
Dec 30, 2016
Dec 30, 2016 at 2:13 AM UTC
Deux jeunes bacheliers logés chez un docteur
Y travaillaient avec ardeur
A se mettre en état de prendre leurs licences.
Là, du matin au soir, en public disputant,
Prouvant, divisant, ergotant
Sur la nature et ses substances,
L'infini, le fini, l'âme, la volonté,
Les sens, le libre arbitre et la nécessité,
Ils en étaient bientôt à ne plus se comprendre :
Même par là souvent l'on dit qu'ils commençaient,
Mais c'est alors qu ils se poussaient
Les plus beaux arguments ; qui venait les entendre
Bouche béante demeurait,
Et leur professeur même en extase admirait.
Une nuit qu'ils dormaient dans le grenier du maître
Sur un grabat commun, voilà mes jeunes gens
Qui, dans un rêve, pensent être
A se disputer sur les bancs.
Je démontre, dit l'un. Je distingue, dit l'autre.
Or, voici mon dilemme. Ergo, voici le nôtre...
A ces mots, nos rêveurs, criants, gesticulants,
Au lieu de s'en tenir aux simples arguments
D'Aristote ou de Scot, soutiennent leur dilemme
De coups de poing bien assenés
Sur le nez.
Tous deux sautent du lit dans une rage extrême,
Se saisissent par les cheveux,
Tombent, et font tomber pêle-mêle avec eux
Tous les meubles qu'ils ont, deux chaises, une table,
Et quatre in-folios écrits sur parchemin.
Le professeur arrive, une chandelle en main,
A ce tintamarre effroyable :
Le diable est donc ici ! Dit-il tout hors de soi :
Comment ! Sans y voir clair et sans savoir pourquoi,
Vous vous battez ainsi ! Quelle mouche vous pique ?
Nous ne nous battons point, disent-ils ; jugez mieux :
C'est que nous repassons tous deux
Nos leçons de métaphysique.
561
Perhaps it is easy
for those who have never been thrown in a tank and blasted
to say, “It is safe.”
But when you have seen them killed and buried in a
landfill under garbage bags labeld Biohazard;
when men, dressed in white, lock them up with their water-filled eyes; when you see her in the street wearing it which has caused torture/
And see the torture in their pores, pleasuring society, and see them
intoxicated in a garbage bag and crushed by machines in your mind;
when you have to take part of this torture, to earn a living, and see them sweating blood, and see them powdered up and powering down, and see their tortured lungs give up and collapse;
when you experience the torture first account, and notice no animal is
safe;
when they are deformed and become gruesome; when they are marked dead or eliminated
on the notepad in these men's pad folios
Jan 27, 2015
Jan 27, 2015 at 10:40 PM UTC