"knowable" poems
As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.
Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game *****
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,
And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall--
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,
Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.
The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser--
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.
7.6k
Seven New Poems For Seven Days #3: Orphan
Orphan
The funeral will commence at 11:30 am.
Gives me one last review time before the
Final Exam.
Panicked, I discover a whole new chapter
for which I am wholly unprepared,
though its inevitable presence was
assuredly knowable long in advance.
Orphan
It doesn't fit, occur, imagery is of a young child to
soon abandoned, not a late-in-life curmudgeonly poet-boy,
who has been multi-times reincarnated.
I add this title to my list
of proper ways to address me,
titles earned by dint of hard work,
or just unlucky luck.
This new status, orphanhood,
bequeaths no special privileges,
other than, a semi-official
societal permission slip
to feel bereft, lost, and compose poetry.
Know a real orphan, from early, early on,
has never recovered and
never will for it is just impossible.
Just impossible.
So whom am I to make light of
my undesired, unrequested new degree?
I accept it and to my surprise,
It hurts.
7/21/13
Jul 30, 2013
Jul 30, 2013 at 11:56 AM UTC
The Harvest Bow
As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.
Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game *****
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,
And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall—
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,
Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.
The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser—
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.
by Seamus Heaney
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 8:02 PM UTC
"I can tell you that Dada was a leftist,
anti-bourgeois, non-Art birthed from WWI
and not some aleatory root to postmodernism
off-shot from a lurid acid rain.
I know that diffraction can be seen
on horizons in the early morning hours
of summer along smooth or dentate curvatures
and that it can have hues of blue, purple and
a soft-handed massage of orange that gingerly
applies pressure to your retinas with sugar-water.
If only eyes had lips that opened and closed.
"It is said that action is the birth of Manyness
and that non-action brings one's soul back to the Sage Mind,
the universe of Oneness, the cup longing to be fulfilled and how
upon brim overflow it longs to be empty once again
because of the relationship between Yin and Yang
and how one cannot Be without the other
and why perspective can change "full" to "empty"
so that the vicious cycle can never truly, truly end.
The difference between French Vanilla ice cream
and plain Vanilla is the degree of creaminess.
Fill up a bathtub and let it soak into my skin.
"There is no way for me to avoid being prolix about the things
I speak about in normal, day-to-day conversation. Science and reason
have accursed me to traverse this reality with the utmost care and precision
of language and society has forced pseudo-logic down my throat like
a bird screeching as it is forced past my pharynx and larynx.
Its sounds are amplified, beak-blared from my nostrils, and its wings are violent,
stretched against my neck skin, creating a pale-skinned, ship anchor image from my shoulders up.
I'll try to sing for you when you reach my trapdoor, I don't wish to eat you.
"I do not believe in anything because with everything comes a something,
a reason for its being. They are, 'from reason,' 'in reason,' and/or, 'for reason.'
There is no escaping this thought.
There is no escaping criticism.
I will find the Truth, mathematically calculated to infinity
from knowable circumstance and perception.
I will know everything and I will believe nothing."
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 9:02 AM UTC
In love am I
With the map of your mind.
In love with the lightning strikes
as it brushes with mine.
In love with its solarflares
and softlights.
I play the astronaut
In love with your night sky.
akin the universe, you're never fully knowable.
And that only pulls me closer to your side.
I'm lost in your deep space and theres nothing but you.
your , stars, galaxies, nebulae,
planets and distant moons.
I'm in caught deep in love and that's the truth
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 4:10 PM UTC
awas amidst
the bits and bobs of my pseudo-sleep,
check my watch oft habitually,
understand
that the precisive time is not
what I seek,
no,
what I desire is reassurance of
some sort, that time is present,
that it is
a measurable actuality in,
my about,
a breathable actuality
woven into my
Body’s Constructional
Constitutional Cconsciousness
that time is there, here,
for it is rhe
wondrous of all wonder,
it is a
present of, from,
and,
is love itself,
love is time…
(think on it)
it is all and only
butpossibility,
the future in
slow mo
is both
realizable & visible ,
even some part knowable;
its somes & sums,
as we daily
practice realizing it,
as if
time is a
smuggler of snuggles,
comforting but not
for too long
like
a new lover’s
exploratory
beginning beguiling explanations
reforming our ardor
into
viability
or
a glove
asking us each:
slow s l i d e
your hand inside,
then,
newly commence
waving yours,
airy all about
conducting a new self
into your
precious moment of precarious
existence,
that we dare not waste!
so:
write and right
are no accident,
but purposed
equals,
friends,
brothers and sisters,
one and both
coexisting
at
in
the same time…
Sep 17, 2024
Sep 17, 2024 at 7:36 AM UTC
In this violet hour, as dreams court demons and the seams holding the ocean of your soul threaten to split and spill forth your essence into the sky above, time almost seems to stand still. The space around you becomes skewed as gravity gives way to weightless flight above a world that never made sense to you in the first place. All the pain, persecution, and perils that are inflicted upon such immense portions of the populations of no one single nation, but all races, creeds, and castes, and at the end of the day it all boils down to the search for the almighty dollar. But none of that matters to you anymore. As you are borne on by invisible wings along the waves of the universe, guided towards the boundaries of feeling, you begin to embrace the emptiness that is nothingness. Your once harried mind now free from the chaos of being, unclouded by delusions of grandeur and eternity, you allow yourself all the time you need to enjoy this respite from thought. Time has become meaningless. Eons pass, knowable existence collapsing inwards on itself, only to explode into radiance and vitality once more. The cycle continues, hundreds of times in the space of time necessary to form a few sentences, while at the same time accelerating to such a point that galaxies could be traversed in the breadth of a heartbeat. Adrift in the void, with no tether back to the realm of mortals, the only course of action is to allow yourself to be lost to sightless visions and wordless descriptions of an existence that you can no longer remember.
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 12:08 PM UTC
*Sometimes I think;
therefore, sometimes I am.*
Sometimes I’m not sure.
Those are the best times,
when uncertainty renders me
an electron only knowable
by observing where it’s been;
a statstical state of non-being
where all wonders coexist,
where what I might be
is more real than what I am.
A dreamer dreaming dreams
in the presence of reason.
Mar 7, 2017
Mar 7, 2017 at 5:57 AM UTC
Oh, cumbersome language-
When one might reach, grasping and willing,
Toward a certain and knowable feeling
It is you who blocks the way.
No sooner is the feeling felt and clutched to breast
Than it attempts to mould to thunken word,
Where, with treacherous glee,
It flails and fails to fit.
So soon we stand with naught but putty in our hands,
As it cools and crusts to nonsense.
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 5:03 PM UTC
#Selmhem Naise
*What would you do
if you knew there was a light source whose
very nature could illuminate the back
sides of molecules and atoms; as if
the source did not come from its point of origin
but instead-- permeated all-throughout
from all sides at once.. in all directions--
at the same time; simultaneously..
yet also perpetually
..and if so-- where could one hide from the
knowing-ability of light of this nature
that chooses to have "known-ability".
What if
by chance, in life here on earth
we are given the dignity to choose, through
autonomy.. the freedom to hide--
the power to place, even if through illusion;
obstacle,
and create shadow from a light, that knows no shadow.
What if, the nature of love that is also light
chooses through muse, as one of its loving ways,
to pierce through obstacle created
by autonomy's oftentimes, need to hide-
What if.
Wouldn't that then be an act of kindness..
and also a beautiful act of honor towards autonomy
to not force its way in through power
but instead.. coax, through heart-persuasion?
..And that much more a gift muse would be
if one were to know that at the end of life
would be the complete and full removal of obstacle
in order to know
and be fully known?
Without loving acts such as muse
what would be "knowable" within us
if obstacle were never penetrated,
here
in the land of the living?
What if.*
#
Jan 29, 2021
Jan 29, 2021 at 8:19 PM UTC
Of no time and place...
save for due Truest North
of no time and place...a kindled
air as such...never a Draconian
night layeth upon...O Hyperborea.
Muse of Muse...whose tacit glory
begot lip and lyre...illumined
wholes that sayeth verily unto
illumined wholes.
Unbroken gaiety...where the only
obscuration's the recesses of
witnesses in full bearing...Beauty's
Knowing...Knowable Beauty.
O Hyperborea...as light, lighteth...
yet lit be not--high heaped upon
high, celebrants of whir and fire...
fire and whir...whir and fire!
Thou danceth a sun's one-upmanship,
to emblazon the dreams of Thracian
peoples.
That the world may know, and know
well...the north wind...of no time
and place--due Truest North of no
time and place...be kindled by
Apollonian graces.
As an urn contains what's trialed by
fire, as fire...Beauty unbridled...poureth
forth under the Hyperborean sun...
never to casteth a shadow.
Nov 11, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 at 1:01 PM UTC
With known, knowable and knowledge,
I paint my picture,
nebulous ocean of unknowable baffles,
but I know, I am that.
Mar 2, 2013
Mar 2, 2013 at 1:14 AM UTC
The puppy seemed happy to see me
when I seen her at the park that other day.
you coulda seen it right away.
So the shrink lady she say, so what?
Dunnno, jisayin' somebody seemed happy
after seeing me naked paraded before all
who may have noticed,
maybe not.
What if nobody noticed and I am happily
seen a naked thing I am
unnoticeable save for seekers of knowns
believed to be known or
knowable
by you, down in the slew, Bunyan's slough,
ya got iron in yer blood?
ya areckon.
Yer Uncle Sam needs ya, boy,
you leave that Kansas lass to
stare at those July buttermilk skies,
there's a war awaitin' for Rough Riders,
Arizona reared and steered
Say what, sir? Steered? Not me. Done my time.
Played footballs, by damtotell, at Fort Bliss,
I threw hand grenades,
Football was Ft. Huachuca, autumn, 1967
Bien Hoa was in the spring, one day after
My Lai, my country's legacy from my year
beyond the whole idea of war. History said,
if we are not the Redcoats, we are the Hessians,
at least.
Allegiance to a legion because they are many?
Perish the thought.
Nov 6, 2018
Nov 6, 2018 at 7:17 PM UTC
Speak, you also,
speak as the last,
have your say.
Speak -
But keep yes and no unsplit,
And give your say this meaning:
give it the shade.
Give it shade enough,
give it as much
as you know has been dealt out between
midday and midday and midnight,
Look around:
look how it all leaps alive -
where death is! Alive!
He speaks truly who speaks the shade.
But now shrinks the place where you stand:
Where now, stripped by shade, will you go?
Upward. ***** your way up.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer.
Finer: a thread by which
it wants to be lowered, the star:
to float further down, down below
where it sees itself glitter:
on sand dunes of wandering words.
by Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger
Nov 10, 2021
Nov 10, 2021 at 3:02 PM UTC
what need we know,
what laws to posit,
mission clear
but still us,
we remain a wee unclarified,
the theoretical, lacking,
so today,
all scientists, all visionaries,
all literature professors,
critics and ******
today, only positing,
non-negating,
in order to
establish the tenets of
The General Theory
of Poetary Genius
once proofed and proved,
the theory capable,
discerned and predictable,
the foretold course
motion foretold of a
planetary body,
a special singular star,
a peculiar one,
plot not its course,
but it's discourse,
the emanating waves
of words arriving, self translating
in any and all languages,
but for all,
in their native tongue
The first element,
chiefest law of them all
is to pose the problem differently,
so that answers come from
a planetary poetic perspective radical,
enabling any old genius to see it
as no one has seen it before, till now
We mortal Joes,
ponderous weigh,
inexplicable unsolvable ordinary,
what is love?
The Poet Genius declares:
it knowable, it's real,
its solution a matter of a matter,
among two planes it coexists,
though in three dimensions...
what is love co-exists
in space and time at the
subatomic level
and moreover,
who gives a ****
The second element,
(To be continued)
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 3:06 AM UTC
Ok...I'm pretty sure I just walked in on you masturbating...but then again, I'm not really sure what your kinda people would call it.
Oh and now you're all over me like you were thinking of me the whole time. Uh-huh.
Wow. I'll give it to ya, you stay the course. Makes you pretty convincing.
What else do you have to think about though?
I suppose the internet battles over freedom of speech don't mean much to you. You never did use it much...
I mean speech...somehow you're all over the internet but I've never heard you speak a **** full sentence in the time I've known you.
How the hell do you remain so connected? Language: the great equalizer?
Your scars run really deep...deeper than mine. I still don't know which side you fight for.
I side with life, for all it's misgivings, misleading mysteries, and willingness to harbor these words through...existence.
I fight for the right that someone or something gave me to be formed from atoms and other smaller unknowable ingredients as part of a less knowable system.
I fight in the dark for the hope that one day the sun will actually rise and show us all what each other look like.
and show us we're not fighting on sides like we thought we were. that we're the only ones left.
and, well...damn we better start making something of our existence that isn't...a fight.
I feel like you're ten steps ahead of me, which is all the time in the world when you've been seein' the light at the end of the tunnel just up ahead ever since you first opened your eyes, first set foot in the cave, first made the leap into a dark earth.
Ignorance is bravery here...but wisdom comes from outside...when we accidentally step out into the light for a second. And then we shuffle and shimmy past whatever bright new horrors we don't wanna see, slamming our eyes shut until we're back in the cave.
dark.
That's a
short suffering
For what we become.
Standing at the bottom of a murky lake
in the comfortable telling ourselves
this is it
We'll die where we were born:
Jan 22, 2012
Jan 22, 2012 at 7:26 PM UTC
Under the celestial heavens,
The sceptic, is so small, slight—
In a dull room, filled with gloss, vacant,
Unbelievers, hayseeds, who unbeknownst
To themselves, are all in an incestuous love cult,
A construct so vain, vacuous, of spineless comfort
And smarmy snugness, a tribe of loose, yawning tripe,
A spew of runny phlegms, a scheme of useless blue things,
Festering. What rational and clear clods, of beheadedness,
Cluelessness, in clefts of lobotomy, plain and clearly sightless,
Without seeing, they proclaim, all that their dull drivels, the dear
Elders had once spoon fed to them, preached, said— now, how,
They are sad, righteous and solemn in their preordained, oldness,
Incongruous, indifferences and prejudices. To have completely lost
Any warm, decent, actual feelings for emotion is foreign— the stars,
Do not align, the waters will not part, yet they are blind to the lies
In themselves. To have experienced— any real, beating, ******
Thing is beside the point, is beyond their ken, is not knowable,
Yet, kowtow-able, quantifiable, not actual, but unbelievable
They—the smug, slugs, under rugs, are dead, as dust,
Under celestial skies, deep, darkness inside . . .
Feb 28, 2014
Feb 28, 2014 at 11:48 PM UTC
Time, much time, beyond that humanly knowable
Shrouds the lie that many monkeys wrote war and peace
Unprovable even as Ulukadu exists in a far far place
But I know it lives, is green, has a rainbow tail, and flies
Jun 18, 2021
Jun 18, 2021 at 4:54 AM UTC
Cracks run through you, doubt has overtaken; in a blighted show of this modern world
Faith, no longer enough for those with razor minds, 'though all of us make a leap at some bedeviled stage
For life, 'tis not knowable in its entirety
One needs to opinionate themselves to a world view, slick reasoning giving way to crunchy ideas that rot the soul
A faction; to alleviate lonliness' in dogma
In this age of logic
We have lost our heart
Aug 7, 2013
Aug 7, 2013 at 9:42 AM UTC
Upon entering the microscopic
World one does not immediately
Forget what it is to walk a mile
But when there is no knowable
Way back one soon looks with
Greater interest on what there is
To notice-a whole other world.
How you got there is a mystery;
How you will ever leave another
Mystery. This too shall pass and
Every new thing is the beginning
and the end of the love for what is.
Now passes thru what now is.
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 12:14 PM UTC
Mach my words, that time travel aye
foresee (rather than being
at a stand still, nee frozen
analogous to cry
oh ja hen nicks, or more particularly
going backwards)
this chap doth espy
great breakthroughs,
asper similar advances this guy
i.e. myself witnesses quantum leaps I
learn (reading The University Of Penn Gazette)
the Burmese doctoral
engineering student Kai
Sir Von Wilhelm Harris
made profound advances within
advanced combined research
laboratory of rocket surgery
and brain science set my
mouth ajar
(with rivulets of drool spilling forth)
constructing a simple
to assemble gizmo (avail able
common household materials
rendered unto YouTube), and/or Cable
Comcast, Fios, Infosys, et cetera
which accidental discovery
automatically codified feign
top secret "FAKE" news to enable
boot (simply for formality sake)
code named Clark Gable
yet in reality (a faux veil of secrecy)
to con Vince sing lee
foster an inimitable
mystique, button truth
for general public to unzip noble
no red bull) knowable
handy escape to past or future
and essentially unlocked laudable
simple "household solution"
to become the latest craze
(synonymous with an ****** - manageable
minus addiction, conviction,
and excruciation viz zit operable
via needle marks of the masses
within a fortnight necessary
supplies sans quantifiable
while Das Donald Trump
could enact legislation satisfiable
knowing majority being
totally tubularly oblivious unalterable
measures permanently infringing on inalienable
rights such as life, liberty
and the pursuit of winnable pacification.
Mar 23, 2018
Mar 23, 2018 at 2:20 AM UTC
She is always running
from what the world has to offer
instincts she trusts
spirits and lessons to ponder.
She's so strong
and she does not play the cards,
so strong and free
that he makes the life of boys go hard.
Her defenses are upright
with will to prioritize her wonders.
a wall high as heavens,
beliefs that cannot be shattered
A million salute to her ways
and she knows some day it pays.
she's a strong woman for keeps,
a rare kind, gentle but silently weeps.
She is running away
from the love that sips her life points.
running away and away
from the perfect, with her knowable decoys
Stepping backwards
but I can see the barricade's almost done.
but I don't want to spoil another spirit
so I will let this go. flee, and gone.
Dec 26, 2013
Dec 26, 2013 at 12:33 AM UTC
...you must love her a lot
I do...sometimes...i actually begin to think that this love might be outside myself, and greater than most anything ive ever laid eyes or skin on.
This love truly exists?
Is it really possible to find someone who sees love this way?
Who doesn't put it in a box, belittle it, say it's a feeling or a mere hormone
...but sees it for the mystery that it is:
something so simple and delicate
and yet
so powerful and strong
at the same time.
Something to not be taken lightly
but to be cherished and watered so it might grow...
The fingerprints of one who loves to caress our very souls
and lay such thoughts on our minds to ponder...
It does exist.
And though it may find itself flowing through the riverbeds of fingertips,
they cannot grasp it.
Though it may attach itself to and entwine itself into the skin - and those things deeper -
the heart- the mind - perhaps even the blood of human beings -
it is not able to be put in a vial.
It cannot be captured.
It always runs free.
It may be muted or obscured - but in its truest - its purest forms -
it is both knowable and unknowable -
in the sense that one may become intimate with it -
caress it -
hold it -
even kiss it -
but that it may not be intellectually or understandably grasped
by any inkling of any atom that exists -
the only thing that can possibly understand or encompass it - is the entirety of everything .
It is found in creation inherently.
It is in the sunlight and the blooms of spring.
It is in the rivers - the curves of smooth red cliffs-
It is in life turned to death turned into life again
it is in the hands of a creator of such magnitude that they are infinite -
and as the environment in which it exists is infinite and ever reaching -
so is that thing itself called love
Apr 16, 2013
Apr 16, 2013 at 11:20 PM UTC
if you have dreams like me
you dream of running. you dream of being pursued. you run down paths created by flights and fancy. you hide in holes deep and dark. you can't run. you can't hide.
the creature that pursues you has an indomitable will and is fueled with a indeplenishable store of energy. it doesn't know fear. it doesn't show weakness. it doesn't tire.
it is knowable intellect against unknowable power. there is no winning.
when i wake, i know the runner is where i am. the pursuer is where i want to be.
i am fearful of the future and energized by the possibilities.
if you don't have dreams like me...
i am sorry.
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 5:07 PM UTC