"inertness" poems
complexity
is your beauty
simplicity
your mystery
interdependence
sustains you
once upon a time
we dipped bowls
into your waters
and brought up
draughts of life
now
Skipjacks go
fathoms deep
into endless
depletion
charting
entangled
dead zones
broadening
into a sea of
inertness
your delicate
eco-essence tips
toward oblivion
effluvia farmers
layer mechanized
blankets of
nitrates on your
sunset shores
weaving
green tendrils
of algae blooms
strangling the
entanglements
of all links in
your miraculous
food chain
the EPA
proscribes
a Jenny Craig
pollution diet
to halt the
slaughter in
oxygen
challenged
dead zones
where rockfish
are garroted,
oysters get drilled
by screwworms
and azure tinted
soft shell *****
dance soft
shoe taps
lifting a tinny
chorus of sad
Piedmont Blues
the flat-lining
watersheds
voiceless
warnings
tremble
rocking the
purged nests of
screaming ospreys
in vocal protest
of a sinking
Tangier Isle
anointing it’s
tombstones
of unvisited
cemeteries with
multicolored
guano
fitting
alkaline
tributes
to the lost
inhabitants
and forgotten
languages
sinking into the
brine of gray
brackish tides
Delmarva’s fine
intra-continental
balance skewed
by the oozing
industrial swill
of Frank Perdue
chicken farms
ruling the roost of
sanctioned sustainability
tinging clear watersheds
of finger lakes
set in splints to
repair dislocations
and complex
compound fractures
that may never heal
again
Music Selection:
Taj Mahal: Fishin Blues
jbm
Oakland
6/7/12
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 8:36 AM UTC
Wisps of fog dragged
upon the ground, as errant
raindrops bided gray time.
Eyes fixed afield, sharing
an inertness that revitalized
our gray matter.
Robins and blackbirds scattered
their weightless will upon the
damp field.
As nearly imperceptible twinges of
sunlight interrupted the air, then
vanished.
This occurred in confidences, everytime the sunlight gained
upon itself.
The fog began burning off in
decrepid scraps...put asunder
by the field's thundering
anticipation.
The fog was lifted to spring's hierarchies of light...as blackbirds
electrified puddles in a flurry of
wings.
Spraying droplets of water
adorning the sunlight, then flying to
a favored branch shaking dry.
Eyes fixed afield, I was showered below
by accolades of rebirth.
Mar 29, 2016
Mar 29, 2016 at 8:52 AM UTC
At the genesis of eternity,
Immortal love was born
When Matahari and Bulan were born,
Matahari is blazing fire;
Bulan is black ice,
The four seasons began their cycle
According to the positions of Bulan and Matahari
The conception of Fire and Ice
Gave birth to time
Matahari was born inert and golden,
With a radiance which makes Bulan snow-white;
Bulan would have been but a bleak bloat
Of darkness without Matahari
DEAR Matahari, our love is an airborne wisp;
Swept and whirled by Nature,
It flies in the air like a flight feather,
With not a care
About where its bearer takes it;
Swaying in this, and that way
Coincidence being rare,
It is only at full moon,
When I can trip upon your beam
And gladly embrace the ‘Light of Honour’’
Oh, my dear Bulan;
Our destiny was predetermined before creation
Our love is not easy to nurture
You have been the centre of my orbit,
And I have orbited all my life,
I dance around you Matahari,
Oh how I would love to dance a tango with you!
I have made myself vulnerable,
And have laid myself bare before you.
What effort have you made to reach out for me my love?
I will not lament over the brevity of life,
We are the elements of time,
We are time itself my dear
Each step I take as I orbit
Gives birth to the second,
Minute,
Days,
Months;
And years
I know eclipse is not enough Bulan,
But in our helpless passion,
I have chosen to shield you from my vehement desire;
But have hurt you in trying to protect you.
In my inertness
I have chosen to give life, warmth and light.
To give life is to love,
But is to love to give?
Matahari,
It’s the pain of separation,
There is a chimera chasing me,
I wish it would catch up with me soon.
It is a dream of us spiralling
Into some convivial space of the universe,
Dancing a tango
It is a dream of you holding me close
Unceasingly whispering endearments,
And I, gasping, moaning; melting…
Should the dream ever materialize?
Can Fire ever dance with Ice?
I do not know.
Love is long-suffering,
*Love is patient and kind,
True love is immortal.
Oct 29, 2015
Oct 29, 2015 at 7:10 AM UTC
Each day after school, and on many off days, I walked to my father's shop and took a fresh loaf of light-brown clay from the back-room. My father uses clay to record accounting information but he always had enough to spare for my needs. After dinner, while the clay was still warm and moist and malleable, I cut a slice about the thickness of my wrist and then kneaded it with a marble roller until I fashioned it into a roughly rectangular tablet the thickness of half my pinky finger and the width and length of a man's face. Sweat rolled down my brow for it was hard work but it was a work of love. I then worked quickly with the stylus to etch my thoughts on the tablet before it hardens.
A thin tablet of clay loses its moisture and malleability much quicker than a thick loaf. That is why I only fashioned another thin tablet after I had finished etching my thoughts on the previous one. Most evenings three tablets sufficed but during rare times I could not find inspiration and I stared with futility at the clay loaf and all I could see was its monolithic lifelessness and inertness.
On other rare evenings I became a geyser erupting with inspiration and I could no longer see an inert loaf of clay in front of me but instead, I could only see it as infinite forms superimposed one on the other and forming its body, and I then cut a slice from its effervescent body and I inhaled deeply from its pungency and consummated our relationship.
I adore the pungent aroma of fresh clay. I have come to associate it with a work of passion in progress. But I also adore, with equal measure, the subtle aroma of clay tablets after they've been sun-baked into a permanent hardness. Each day, before I departed for school, I laid the previous night's tablets on a table in my room and let the sun's searing light, through my west-facing window bare and bright, bake my tablets and give my thoughts permanence. It was during that fateful night, when I let in the moon's milky-white through that same window, that the whispers emanated from within the recesses of the soul. But it is the sun's strong light that baked these eternal whispers onto my clay tablets.
May 19, 2020
May 19, 2020 at 11:48 AM UTC
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,
Are you a star or an Illusion Bizarre ?
Large clouds filled with cold Gas,
Like a being wandering Aimless,
Seeking to outgrow its own Mass,
Shall I strive to be better than Nameless ?
Fighting against tension and Compression,
Ignorant towards the power of Energies,
Persistent to hold on to every Possession,
Can my purpose transcend my Memories ?
Collapsing against gravity kindling a fire Within,
A fusion separating the sky from Darkness,
Awakening of consciousness must Begin,
Rousing wisdom from its Inertness.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,
Nothing can shine without a Scar.

Sep 14, 2018
Sep 14, 2018 at 7:58 AM UTC
I Bloom in the presence of Rocks,
No matter what the world Talks,
My Color separates nature from Darkness,
Try harder, For I have Awakened from Inertness.
Sep 18, 2018
Sep 18, 2018 at 12:02 PM UTC
you stand
beside
each other,
gazing
at the
inertness of
her body.
there is
beauty
in words unspoken
for their
silence
held the
entire universe.
Dec 7, 2017
Dec 7, 2017 at 6:43 AM UTC